ONE = Taylor Dibbert: “On Lord Naseby’s Sri Lanka whitewash,” Daily Financial Times, 21 February 2019
Sri Lanka’s civil war ended tragically in May 2009. Ten years on, the wounds of war remain unhealed. That has significant implications for the country’s future trajectory and ensures that, absent some big changes, a return to violence at some later date cannot be ruled out. Besides, victims and their family members deserve justice.
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, communal relations, doctoring evidence, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, Rajapaksa regime, rehabilitation, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, UN reports, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes
Michael Roberts
Gideon Haigh is an incisive and formidable researcher. He is a whiz-kid on the financial underpinnings of the business of cricket in India and even more adept in analysing the processes surrounding cricket matches in Australia, India and beyond. But in his recent excursion into Sri Lankan politics, he has dived into a morass he is not familiar with.[1]
He has seized on the standard interpretations in the western media world and, willy-nilly, become an agent of US-UK-EU imperialist designs. Take note of this summary survey on his part. “In noting that 2018 was a bad year for Sri Lankan cricket, we should note also that it was a very bad year for Sri Lankan democracy, rocked by President Maithripala Sirisena’s attempts to install his notoriously authoritarian predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister over the head of incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe……. by the estimate of The Economist Intelligence Unit, in no country did the cause of democracy retreat so far as Sri Lanka last year.”
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Michael Roberts
Having been forced to accept an UNP government by a Supreme Court decision in December 2018 after he had attempted to ditch them in a coup from above in late October, President Maithripala Sirisena utilised the opportunity provided by the swearing in of a new UNP Cabinet under Ranil Wickremasinghe on 16th December 2018 to deliver a sermon to a captive audience of ‘enemies’ who were, ironically, about to enjoy the fruits of victory and destined to assume state power.[1] Sirisena’s Address was delivered in Sinhala and is marked by pathos, recrimination and selective biographical tales from the past that illuminate aspects of Sri Lankan politics.
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This book offers an accurate and easy to follow explanation of how the Tamil Tigers, who are officially known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was defeated. Who were the major players in this conflict? What were the critical strategic decisions that worked? What were the strategic mistakes and their consequences? What actually happened on the battlefield? How did Sri Lanka become the only nation in modern history to completely defeat a terrorist organization? The mind-blowing events of the Sri Lankan civil war are documented in this book to show the truth of how the LTTE terrorist organization was defeated. The defeat of a terrorist organization on the battlefield was so unprecedented that it has rewritten the narrative in the fight against terrorism.
THIS NOTE is from http://www.lulu.com/au/en/shop/damian-tangram/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-tamil-tigers/paperback/product-23830132.html
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Niels Terpstra & Georg Frerks, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol 52, No 3, Special Issue, May 2018, pp 1001-42 … Article entitled “Governance practices and symbolism: ‘de facto’ sovereignty and public authority in ‘Tigerland’.”…. SEE https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/governance-practices-and-symbolism-de-facto-sovereignty-and-public-authority-in-tigerland/C8984207208087BF88EB93882D480FE3
Abstract: This article focuses on how the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) insurgency performed de facto sovereignty and public authority in Northeastern Sri Lanka. It is situated within the wider academic debate on governance by state and non-state actors. We venture to unravel the complex linkages between the LTTE’s governance practices and legitimation strategies by looking at narratives, performances, and inscriptions. While monopolizing the justice and policing sectors, in other sectors the LTTE operated pragmatically in conjunction with the state. The organization tried to generate and sustain public authority and legitimacy through a variety of violent and non-violent practices and symbols. It ‘mimicked’ statehood by deploying, among others, policing, uniforms, ceremonies, nationalist songs, commemorations of combatants, and the media. This not only consolidated its grip on the Northeast, but also engineered a level of support and compliance. We conclude that the LTTE’s governance included practices that were created and carried out independently from the Sri Lankan state, while others took shape within a pre-existing political order and service provision by the state. The article elucidates the LTTE’s mimicry of the state, as well as the operation of parallel structures and hybrid forms of state-LTTE collaboration. This facilitates a nuanced understanding of rebel governance beyond a simple state versus non-state binary. Continue reading
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Editor, Thuppahi: This passionate public statement in early November is a cry from the heart which conveys important historical details. Readers familiar with all the circumstances will be able to pinpoint what is missing and what has been unsaid about the major events that my friend “Uyan” traverses. I am not conversant with man y of the intricate details and strands in the politics of Sri Lanka; so this is an invitation for critical comment and additional information — data which can also take in the information and false news identified in the article arising from Bill Deutrom’s Incisive NOTE. viz, = https://thuppahis.com/2018/12/16/hatreds-chasms-bill-deutroms-insights-on-the-political-impasse-in-sri-lanka/#more-33101
]ayadeva Uyangoda: “The Political is Personal: An Essay in Despair from Sri Lanka,” 5 November 2018, https://thewire.in/south-asia/the-political-is-personal-an-essay-in-despair-from-sri-lanka
In his explanation of why he removed Ranil Wickremasinghe from the office of prime minister, President Maithripala Sirisena cited policy and personal differences between the two. An analysis of his speech shows that personal reasons are stronger than policy reasons and the personal is very much political. The text of President Sirisena’s address to the nation reminds Sri Lanka’s citizens of the explanation he offered in the latter part of 2014 as to why he left his former political boss, Mahinda Rajapaksa. There too, the personal was political. Continue reading
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Michael Roberts, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, 15 December 2018, where the title is different
Email Note from Bill Deutrom in Lanka to Michael Roberts, 8 Dec 2018
Thank you, Michael for your amazing collection of articles on the Eelam War and its aftermath as well as the present political impasse. Alas, they will not convince people who have already made up their mind based on emotion, ethnicity or with a hatred for Rajapaksa. Continue reading
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Michael Roberts ….. This article appeared first in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2007, vol. 30: 857-88.with the title “Suicide Missions as Witnessing: Expansions, Contrasts” and is reproduced here with its original American English spelling. The re-working of this article was seen to by Ms Nadeeka Paththuwaarachchi of Battaramulla. The pictorial images are embellishments that were not part of the original essay. I have also added highlighting emphasis in orange as well as a few hyperlinks to other standard sources of information. The bibliographical references are within the End Notes as in the original format.
ABSTRACT: Studies of suicide missions usually focus solely on attacks. They also have highlighted the performative character of suicide missions as acts of witness. By extending surveys to suicidal acts that embrace no-escape attacks, theatrical assassination, defensive suicide, and suicidal protest, one gains further insight into the motivations of individuals and organizations. Illustrative studies, notably the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and Sadat as well as Tamil Tiger operations, generate a typology that underlines the benefits of such extensions. The Japanese and Tamil contexts reveal the profound differences in readings of sacrificial acts of atonement or punishment by local constituencies. Norman Morrison in Washington in 1965 and Jan Palach in Prague in 1969 did not have such beneficial settings and the immediate ramifications of their protest action were limited. Morrison’s story highlights the significance of a societal context of individuated rationalism as opposed, say, to the “pyramidical corporatism” encouraging martyrdom operations in the Islamic world.
Jan Palach…19 Jan. 1969 
Nathuram Godse vs Mahatma Gandhi .. 30 Jan 1948
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Handy Perinbanayagam 
This is a reproduction of COMMENTS in a previous Thuppahi Item from 2012 — which presented an article by Rajan Philips in the Sunday Island of 26 February 2012. This unusual step is taken because the information therein: (1) about caste oppression in the Jaffna Peninsula even in the 1970s; (2) data on the politics of the Jaffna Youth congress and its boycott campaign against the Donoughmore Reforms and the 1931 elections in the north; (#) a reading of GG Ponnambalam (4) the contributions to the discussion from R, Sid Perinbanayagam and Nalliah Thayabharan — with Thayabharan’s slashing criticisms of the LTTE and Tamil diasporic supporters evincing a remarkable courage.
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