SEE http://www.dailymirror.lk/video/38982-muttiah-muralitharan.html — Video by Sanath Desmond and Waruna Wanniarachchi) Continue reading
Category Archives: riots and pogroms
Confusions and erasures around Black July among some educated Sinhalese youth
Iraj De Alwis, from GROUNDVIEWS, 31 July 2013, where the title is “Forgetting Black July” .. so go to http://groundviews.org/2013/07/31/forgetting-black-july/ – because that post includes (a) recordings of some interviews with young Sinhalese and Tamils, with the Sinhalese revealing appalling ignorance about the events of July 1983; and (b) a few comments that were appreciative of De Alwis’s presentation in thoughtful ways. ALSO refer to http://www.flickr.com/photos/sacrificialdevotion/
Pic from BBC
I was born ten years after Black July. I am a Singhalese. A week or so ago, as the thirty-year anniversary approached, for curiosity’s sake, I did a small experiment. I asked some of my peers a question: “What do you know about Black July?” Of twenty-two Sinhalese, eighteen did not know what it was. I asked eight Tamil friends, all of whom knew, and had family experiences to share. Here are a few of those responses. Continue reading
Black July 83: Two Statements in The NATION
I: Editorial: “Black July 83 never again,” 21 July 2013
Remember Black July ’83’ is a print-ad campaign designed by the advertising agency JWT for the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a controversial NGO that has come in for a lot of flak from multiple quarters on grounds of financial dishonesty and aiding and abetting separatism. ‘Never to repeat’ is the payoff line. The campaign is to be launched shortly, The Nation learns. ‘Black July’ is remembered and remembered differently and for varying purposes by those who remember. Whatever these differences may be there is commonality in agreement on one thing: it should never happen again.
A Scene in Borella–Pic from Victor Ivan
There’s nothing to say that ‘Black July’ will not recur. There’s nothing to say that it must. On the other hand, if it is not to happen again, it is important to remember what happened. It is important to acknowledge that it inflicted a deep wound on the nation, the people who make it, their collective and individual memory; a wound that has bled into many other lacerations. This has been a common view expressed by many across the political spectrum. Continue reading
Black Memories: July 1983
GROUNDVIEWS, 18 July 2013
In August this year, Groundviews will launch a compelling collection of content to commemorate 30 years since Black July. The content will feature original podcasts, photography and writing on a dedicated website. Building from the critically acclaimed Moving Images two years ago, Groundviews brought together leading documentary filmmakers, photographers, activists, theorists and designers, in Sri Lanka and abroad, to focus on just how deeply the anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983 has shaped our imagination, lives, society and polity.
Photo by Natalie Soysa, for Groundviews
The resulting content, featuring voices never captured before, marrying rich photography, video, audio and visual design with constitutional theory, story-telling and memorialising, has no historical precedent. Curated by Groundviews, the project is an attempt to use digital media and compelling design to remember the inconvenient, and in no small way, acts of daring, courage and resistance during and after Black July. Continue reading
Postcolonial Politics and History as dramatized in the Theatre
Shelagh Goonewardene
Ernest McIntyre
The ancient land of Lanka emerged as a modern state when, as Ceylon, it was granted Independence in February 1948 by Britain who had been the last imperial power to rule it following the Portuguese and Dutch. This meant a recognition and re-emergence of its own identity after approximately four hundred years of foreign rule. It is a matter of history that violent episodes initiated by civilians and even the waging of war by the state have accompanied the founding of several postcolonial modern Asian states such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka, the country this paper will focus on, armed insurrections planned and executed by disillusioned and disgruntled youth took place in 1971 and during the period 1987-1990 which had nothing to do with the birth-pangs of gaining independence but everything to do with the policies and politics practised by the main political parties which affected education and economic development. The objective of this discourse is to highlight both politics and history as it can, and has been, effectively dramatized in the theatre by commenting on the theatre of that particular time in Sri Lankan history. Included is the detailed examination of an re-enactment of that period in a play which was written in 2009. Continue reading
Poles Apart! Yet so Alike!
Pongu Thamil oath of loyalty to Thamililam [EELAM] at Trincomalee in ceasefire period circa 2006 
Budu Bala Sena c0mmitment of faith today
Are these people peas of the same pod yet at opposite poles and part of the processes that have been thus tearing Sri Lanka apart by aiding in the reproduction of each other! Continue reading
Marakkala Kolahālaya: Contemporary and Secondary Literature on the Anti-Moor Pogrom of 1915
Compiled by Michael Roberts to assist present-day debates on Sinhala -Muslim tensions …with RED identifying contemporary material
Abdul Rahiman, W. M. 1915 Letter from WM Abdul Rahiman to Sir Robert Chalmers [Governor], 1 July 1915, in Colonial Office 54/782.
Ameer Ali, A. C. L. 1981 “The 1915 racial riots in Ceylon (Sri Lanka): a reappraisaof its causes,” South Asia 4: 1-20.
Amunugama, Sarath 1978 “John de Silva and the Sinhala nationalist theatre,” Ceylon Historical Journal 25: 285-304. Continue reading
