The Jaffna Divisional Secretary informed the public, well in advance, that St. Anthony’s Feast in the Kachchativu island had been cancelled this year due to the Covid- 19 pandemic. The decision was well understood by devotees of both Sri Lanka and India.
Filed under accountability, architects & architecture, centre-periphery relations, charitable outreach, communal relations, cultural transmission, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, performance, pilgrimages, Rajapaksa regime, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, transport and communications, travelogue, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
Gehan Gunatilleke: “The Right to Memory: The Forgotten Facet of Transitional Justice* with highlighting emphasis imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979)
Introduction
Memory does not explicitly feature among the four pillars of transitional justice: truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence. Hence the precise role memory plays within a transitional justice process is often left to those negotiating the contours of the process. Memory is a vital ingredient in ascertaining the truth and in securing evidence to ensure justice for victims and survivors. Moreover, memorialisation of loss has a place in the symbolic initiatives owed to victims and survivors under the reparations pillar. Meanwhile, public memorials commemorating man-made tragedies contribute towards a society’s collective commitment to non-recurrence. Thus memory often becomes the lifeblood that preserves and binds the traditional pillars of transitional justice.
Filed under accountability, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, education, European history, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, UN reports, unusual people, war crimes, war reportage, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
The Frontispiece on Google
The China Research Group was set up by a group of Conservative MPs in the UK to promote debate and fresh thinking about how Britain should respond to the rise of China. The group’s work looks beyond the immediate Coronavirus crisis or issues relating to Huawei, with the aim of considering the longer term challenges and opportunities associated with the rise of China and its industrial and diplomatic policies.
Tom Tugendhat & Neil O’Brien 
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, australian media, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, conspiracies, disparagement, economic processes, governance, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, security, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes
Cuba is one of the most admired countries in the Global South. Cuba stood up for Sri Lanka at UNHRC, with a speech calling for defiance and resistance. These are the hallmark attributes of Cuba which have won global admiration.
Sri Lanka is on the right side of history. With China as an ally and support of the rest of Asia (bar one – South Korea) which did not vote in favour of the Resolution against Sri Lanka, the signs are clear of the Global Split. Between the rapacious Colonial countries of the Global North and ex-colonies of the Global South.
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, australian media, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, Cuba in this world, economic processes, ethnicity, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, Indian Ocean politics, Islamic fundamentalism, landscape wondrous, legal issues, liberation tigers of tamil eelam, LTTE, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, truth as casualty of war, UN reports, unusual people, world events & processes
Ajit Singh: “Independent’ report claiming Uyghur genocide brought to you by sham university, neocon ideologues lobbying to ‘punish’ China” … 17 March 2021, at https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/17/report-uyghur-genocide-sham-university-neocon-punish-china/
US media hailed a Newlines Institute report accusing China of Uyghur genocide as a “landmark” independent analysis. A look beneath the surface reveals it as a regime change propaganda tool by interventionist operatives at a sham university.
Ajit Singh
Throughout March 2021, headlines in corporate media outlets from CNN to The Guardian blared about the release of the “first independent report” to authoritatively determine that the Chinese government has violated “each and every act” of the United Nations convention against genocide, and therefore “bears State responsibility for committing genocide against the Uyghurs.”
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, conspiracies, elephant tales, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, law of armed conflict, legal issues, life stories, meditations, military strategy, news fabrication, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, security, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, world events & processes, zealotry
Tony Donaldson
I enjoyed reading Michael Roberts’s short essay titled “Michael’s Testimony for VE Day in Britain, 8th May 1945,” published at Thuppahi on 10 May 2020. But I felt the story ended too quickly, leaving me to ponder where the story goes next. It would be good if Michael could continue this story. In the meantime, the following short note was triggered by Michael’s comment about the “insidious impact of Movietone News or Pathe News.”
After 3 September 1939, when Britain went to war with Germany, the British Ministry of Information (MOI) began arranging with numerous companies the release and distribution of their newsreels. One example was The Battle of Tobruk which was sent by plane to Colombo in March 1941. It was cleared through customs and distributed to cinemas in Colombo in time for screening at the evening shows on the same day the film arrived in Ceylon.
Filed under British colonialism, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, law of armed conflict, life stories, military expenditure, military strategy, modernity & modernization, news fabrication, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, transport and communications, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes
Michael Roberts
All those addressing the fervour that promoted the killing work of the Zahran Hashim jihadist network in Sri Lanka in April 2019 must come to grips with the modern currents of Wahhabi political thinking that go back to the outpourings of the Egyptian intellectuals Sayyid Qutb[1] and Al-Zawahiri[2] in the latter half of the 20th century. This step will then take investigators to the Al-Qaida movement[3] and thence to the more recent brand of Wahhabism embodied within ISIS.
Sayyid Qutb 
al-Zawahiri
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, arab regimes, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, chauvinism, communal relations, conspiracies, cultural transmission, disparagement, Eelam, ethnicity, fundamentalism, governance, historical interpretation, insurrections, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, Middle Eastern Politics, Muslims in Lanka, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, propaganda, racist thinking, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, suicide bombing, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes, zealotry
Michael, I am afraid there are no niceties in war. War is brutal as is the detritus of war. Unlike in a conventional war where the behaviours of troops are defined by the ‘Geneva Convention,’ it is not applicable in a civil insurrection especially one that attacks a legitimately elected democratic government. No country is bound to tolerate a secessionist group especially one that utilises terror to achieve its ends. History is replete with examples of civil wars that were prompted by secession. The most glaring example is the United States civil war. We also have an example from Vietnam and currently ongoing is the Korean debacle.
Tiger dead collected by the SL Army …. and Tamil civlians incl Tigers in civies leaving the final battle arena east of Nandhikadal Lagoon
see Roberts, Tamil Person & State. Pictorial, Colombo, 2014 for details and more Pix
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, communal relations, discrimination, disparagement, doctoring evidence, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, Rajapaksa regime, refugees, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, tamil refugees, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes
Fair Dinkum in Email Message: “Michael, Have you seen this? Do you think it is a fair assessment? Or is this about making India look good and China bad? In other words, propaganda.”
Filed under accountability, China and Chinese influences, communal relations, disparagement, doctoring evidence, economic processes, foreign policy, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, island economy, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, transport and communications, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, world events & processes
thuppahi
