Category Archives: racism

Vale Harry Belafonte: A Labouring Seaman’s Son …. Superstar & Activist

HILLEL ITALIE in Associated Press, 25 April 2023, ….“Harry Belafonte, activist and entertainer, dies at 96” … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

Harry Belafonte, the civil rights and entertainment giant who began as a ground-breaking actor and singer and became an activist, humanitarian and conscience of the world, has died. He was 96. Belafonte died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his New York home, his wife Pamela by his side, said publicist Ken Sunshine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Escalation of Attacks on Hindu Shrines in Northern Lanka

Meera Srinivasan, in The Hindu, 23 April 2023, whee the title reads thus: Tamils flag escalating attacks on temples in northern Sri Lanka” … with highlighting added by The Editor, Thuppahi

Several Tamil parties have called for a protest on April 25 against the recent Temple attacksTamils in Sri Lanka have witnessed an escalation in the attack on Hindu temples in recent weeks, a trend that they note is part of the State’s “ongoing Sinhalisation project” in the island’s north.

 

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The Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka …. & Their Travails

Shamara Wettimuny in Financial Times, 12 April 2023 … with highlighting added by The Editor, Thuppahi

On a muggy Friday afternoon, the auditorium of the National Library of Sri Lanka slowly filled with an eager audience from Colombo, the Hill Country and beyond. It was the launch of a book by Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Mythri Jegathesan, of Santa Clara University.

Maithir Jegathesan

Her book, a work on and of solidarity with the Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka, ‘Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Post-war Sri Lanka’ was originally published by the University of Washington Press in 2019 to widespread acclaim. It was awarded the 2020 Diane Forsyth Prize for the best book featuring feminist anthropology research and in 2021, it won the Michelle Z. Rosaldo Book Prize for its significant contribution to feminist anthropology.

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Meditations: Jihadist Assailants, Flaming Suicidal Protest & Gandhi Within the Same Frame

Michael Roberts

Early in the month of February 2023, I was invited by a young friend, Dr Geethika Dharmasinghe, to deliver a Zoom Video Lecture to a small class of her students at Colgate University in New York. These students were following her course on “Religion and Violence in Asia.”

Gandhi speaking and Zahran Hashim in pact with fellow Lankan jihadists …. Zahran was one of the two suicide bombers at the Shangri La Hotel in Colombo on Easter Sunday 2019 where where 36 people died

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The Fate of the Roma Gypsies in Europe: From Nazi Holocaust to Continuous Marginalization

Celia Donert, in History Today, February 2022, where the title reads “The Roma Holocaust”

Europe’s Roma were the victims of Nazi genocide during the Second World War, but their persecution did not end in 1945

 

Robert Ritter, head of the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit of Nazi Germany’s Criminal Police, conducting an interview with a Romani woman, 1936

“In 1944, I was deported to the concentration camp in Terezín, where I was imprisoned until May 1945. After returning from the concentration camp I did my military service, and then moved with my family to the village of B., as part of the drive to resettle the borderlands … My family and I lived decently from what I earned as a forestry worker; I didn’t live like a Gypsy, and I always had a fixed residence. I have never had a criminal record. Despite this, I’ve been put on the new register of Gypsies in 1947, and I was issued with a Gypsy registration card. I am requesting that my name be removed from the Gypsy register, and that my registration card be cancelled. “

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Adolf Hitler’s Logic

Courtesy of Richard Koenigsberg in New York

HITLER: “If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret over the spilling of precious German blood, then I naturally also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin.” …..

Adolf Hitler raises a defiant, clenched fist during a speech.

circa 1933: German Dictator, Adolf Hitler addressing a rally in Germany. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Standing Forth as Ceylonese in the Early 19th Century

Michael Roberts  …. presenting the first section in Chapter X of People Inbetween (1989) pp 140-47. … The chapter is entitled “Standing Forth as Ceylonese, 1850s” *++*

Introduction

We need to begin by reaching back into the Maritime Provinces of Ceylon during the first decades of British rule after their seizure of these territories in 1795-96. We shall first recapitulate some of the points made in previous chapters.

We saw that the distinction between VOC officialdom and the Burghers quickly disappeared under the British; that the Hollandsche and even the Tupass of yesteryear were defined as Europeans in some British regulations. We also saw that there was some measure of social interaction between the British and creole families of respectable status during the early decades of British rule (supra: 50ff). In both social intercourse and collective designation, however, the old distinction between the Hollandsche and the Tupass persisted in the form of the opposition between the “Burgher Inhabitants” (or its equivalent, for example, “Dutch”) and the “Portuguese” (or Tupass, Topaz, Mestizos, Mechanics) when people used the English language; and in Sinhala between “lánsi” on the one hand and “tuppáhi” or “párángi” or sinno on the other.[1]

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The Power of Privilege: Illegitimate Progeny in the Plantations of Ceylon and Beyond

An EMAIL MEMO from RICHARD HERMON to His Good Friend ERROL FERNANDO, Circa 9 December 2022*++*

Dear Errol,

As a Eurasian myself on both sides, since both my Grandfathers were Brits and both my Grandmothers were Sinhalese: one Kandyan from Welimada, and one Low-Country from Baddegama to whom both my grandfathers were married.

 

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Potential for Terrror Attacks within Australia Now Lower

Clive Williams, in The Australian, 30 November 2022, where the title reads thus:  “Threat ‘lower’ but face of domestic terror is changing” ….

The announcement by ASIO director-general Mike Burgess that the terrorism threat level in Australia has been lowered from “probable” to “possible” reflects the view of the National Threat Assessment Centre that a terrorist incident here is now less likely.

An older woman praying and giving offerings at the ground zero site of the 2002 Bali bombings in the tourtist district of Kuta, Bali.

 

 

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Re-visiting the Case of Mark Anthony Lyster Bracegirdle of 1937: A Landmark Judgment that upheld the Liberty of the Individual and that affirmed the Fairness of ‘ British Justice’  

Prabhath de Silva, ... an article that appeared initially in the Daily Mirror, 25/26 November 2022– with highlighting in this version imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

Mark Anthony Lyster Bracegirdle (also known as Price) was born in Chelsea, England in 1912. His parents were Ina Marjorie Lyster and James Seymour Bracegirdle. His mother was a suffragette and an active member of the Labour Party. Bracegirdle migrated to Australia with his mother, and studied art, and later trained as a farmer. In 1935, he joined the Australian Young Communist League (YCL) and became an active young Communist.

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