Victor Ivan, in Ravaya, where the title is “Barring of Nagananda Kodituwakku from Practicing Law”
The Supreme Court has issued an order barring Nagananda Kodithuwakku , Attorneyat-Law and Public Interest Litigation Activist who has entered the political arena of Sri Lanka as a prospective presidential candidate, from practicing as a lawyer for three years. I think it is important that we assess Kodithuwakku’s role in the light of this incident.
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Lakshman Gunasekera
ONE. Lakshman Gunasekara: “Politics vs Constitutionalism,” in Horizons, 9 December 2018 …
When the Bandaranaike International Memorial Conference Hall (BMICH, what a mouthful) began hosting conferences in those old-fashioned 1970s, we, the ordinary citizens hadn’t a hope of freely strolling into its premises (let alone its halls). One needed a conference invitation to enter the gates and some ‘delegate’ or ‘media’ tag to enter the main hall or ‘committee rooms’ (as they were quaintly termed then). Today, in our lower-middle-income country comfort zone, people are constantly streaming in and out of the BMICH, for weddings, exhibitions, conferences, convocations, concerts and seminars, all at the same time (and I am sure there is romance in those verdant gardens). Continue reading
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Suvendrini Kanagasabai Perera, in Island, 26 December 2018, where the title reads “In the thick of it: Anne Abayasekara, Unfaltering Witness. Review of book – ‘Telling It Like It Is’ … emphasis via highlights below being the work of The Editor, Thuppahi
Reflecting on her life at an address to the Rotary Club in 2012, Anne Abayasekara made a telling comparison between the life of the creative writer and what she described as her own “enduring love affair with journalism”: “The distinctive feature about journalism … is that in writing for newspapers, you don’t sit in solitude, but have to be out on the street, in the thick of people and events.”
Anne Abayasekara spent over 65 years in the thick of it, thoroughly enmeshed in a world she relished and clearly loved, but nonetheless viewed with great clarity. Her extraordinary career spans Independence in 1948 (she attended the festivities as a young reporter for the fashion pages), the three grim decades of the war and the unpromising peace that has succeeded it. Through it all, she held up a mirror to the society she loved, bearing witness to its atrocities and most egregious failures, as to its small acts of grace and moments of beauty. This carefully distilled selection of her writings provides an important snapshot of this period. At the same time, emerging from its pages is a picture of the writer herself: a spirited, large-hearted, deeply humane woman, characterised, above all, by a rare, sustained courage. Continue reading
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Johan Mikaelsson, in Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, 5 November 2018, where the title is “Impunity Island: Sri Lanka’s “predator emeritus” on rebound,”
Many local journalists feel discomfort when they hear the name Gotabaya Rajapaksa[1]. He is seen as a ruthless person, who was behind the murder wave that took the lives of their colleagues. They see it as unthinkable to contact him and ask critical questions. The few foreign journalists who tried to put some pressure on him when he held his powerful position 2005–2015 were met with anger. After 2015, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has been almost invisible in international media.
‘Gota’, the nick-name under which he is usually known, is now often surrounded by a glow, a shimmering luster. Many want to see more of ‘Gota’, they regard him as a wonder maker. Most editors avoid challenging him. A few journalists in the domestic English-language press have asked difficult questions, but ‘Gota’ appears to be ready to move on, possibly as a candidate in the presidential election in 2020.
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Sri Lanka Guardian ….
http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2018/10/the-political-dog-fight-in-sri-lanka.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+srilankaguardian%2FIGKI+%28Sri+Lanka+Guardian%29 Filed under Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, life stories, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, Presidential elections, press freedom & censorship, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes
P K Balachandran, in Financial Times, 27 October 2018 -where the title reads “Decline of Secularism in South Asia”
South Asia’s multi-religious countries, namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, started off with a noble wish to be ‘secular’ and keep religion out of the business of the State. Hindu-majority India, under the leadership of the avowedly secular Jawaharlal Nehru, explicitly stated that it would be secular.
Nehru
Jinnah–Getty Images 
DS Senanaayke
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Gerald H. Peiris, being an article serialized recently in The Island, under the following heading “Alleged ‘Land Grabbing’ by the Security Forces in Sri Lanka” … with highlighting emphasis being impositions by The Editor, Thuppahi
In view of the significance accorded in recent public debate and discussion on the subject of ‘land grabbing’ in several conflict-ridden countries of the Third World it is necessary to devote attention to a series of facts that are of crucial relevance to a balanced understanding of the related situation in Sri Lanka.
Figure 1 – post-conflict releases of land from the Palali HSZ
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THOSE who stew and fume in this world as fervent feminist victims –or victims tout court — are asked to look at themselves …. as incisively as the good cartoonist does.
Alexandra Ma, in UK Business Insider, 17 August 2018, where the title runs “Why the Muslim world isn’t saying anything about China’s repression and ‘cultural cleansing’ of its downtrodden Muslim minority”
China’s crackdown on its Uighur citizens, a mostly-Muslim ethnic minority group, has faced heavy international scrutiny in recent months. In August the United Nations said it was “deeply concerned” by reports that China had forced as many as 1 million Uighurs into internment camps in Xinjiang, western China. In April, the US State Department said it had heard of Uighurs who had “disappeared” or were unexpectedly detained.
Meanwhile, Muslim countries have been deafeningly silent.
Map showing the projects subsumed under the Belt and Road Initiative as of December 2015. Reuters
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THE SPECTATOR, Editorial, 18 August 2018, with title “Terrorism isn’t ‘losing’. It has already lost”
By now, the routine is familiar: a lone wolf strikes, roads are sealed off, buildings locked down and a biographical picture begins to emerge. Often, the perpetrator turns out to be born and bred in Britain. His astonished friends and neighbours say they saw no signs that he had succumbed to fanaticism. It later emerges that radicalisation happened incredibly quickly — perhaps inspired by online videos — and the terror plan was so low-tech that interception would have been impossible. How, it might be asked, can any country protect itself against such threats?
Pic from Getty
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