Category Archives: social justice

July 28, 2021 · 1:43 pm

Columbathurai School for Disadvantaged Tamil Children

A THANK YOU NOTE addressed to MOHAN SAMARASINHE, 27 July 2021

Dear Respected Sir

I would like to extend my sincere thanks for coming forward to establish a Pre-school in our place and begin for the poor and needy. I highly appreciate your great service towards our people especially it is how important to see that a Sinhala  person has come forward to help Tamil  who have suffered so much since 1983. Even though we tried to get help from many people they didnt give us proper reply. Then only I requested Mr.Mohan Samarasingha. You accepted our request without any hesitation to support us to begin the school succesfully. You have already given nearly four hundred thousand rupees to renovate the building. Now the building has come up  yet we have to do little work to finish. So we hope to receive  your support in future too. Once again I extend my sincere thanks to your love and grate service towards us.

Thank you
Amitha
Colombuthurai
Jaffna.

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July 25, 2021 · 8:51 pm

Remembering Manouri Muttetuwegama nee De Silva

ONE REQUEIM from Gamini Seneviratne , in The Island, 25 July 2021  v

In the early nineteen sixties when we met, politics here was in a kind of crisis. The Left parties were defining themselves and each other in terms that emasculated such terms as ‘socialist’ of the meanings assigned to them not just in the literature but in the practice of revolution. We had sama samaja ‘new’ or without qualification, united socialist, revolutionary socialist, Bolshevik Leninist, Stalinist aka Communist, Trotskyite, Maoist and, lurking not far behind them every nuance of Democracy and Socialism. In hindsight all that seems innocent given the skulduggery that came to be sort of enshrined in a “Constitution” that enjoyed the distinction of being totally unconstitutional / illegal. So much more has been done since that J R J, the breaker of laws and trasher of justice would be chortling in whatever shades he now resides.

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July 7, 2021 · 11:58 pm

Leonard Woolf’s WELIWEWA and Its Terrain

Gerald Peiris**

After getting the article in Thuppahi on Leonard Woolf and Silindu presented by Ernest MacIntyre, I read Village in the Jungle (for the second time since long ago) and found it difficult to connect the essence of the Woolf narrative with what the producers of the play referred to as an attempt to portray village like in a remote setting in the interior of the ‘deep south’.

Leonard Woolf in his aging years & glimpses of village women gathering tank-water in 2oth century Ceylon

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July 5, 2021 · 1:23 pm

Captain Cook Symbolically Demolished in Canada

A Pseudo-Filipino named “Sir” Roger O’Neil

I can well understand why some Canadians knocked Captain Cook’s statue of its perch into a harbour in British Columbia.  

The only reason the Canadian PM has given a token apology about colonial crimes against indigenous peoples in Canada is because Canada has just been caught with its hands in the cookie jar with the discovery of mass graves. The Canadian government pursued a genocidal policy against indigenous peoples for 150 years — depriving them of language, forbidding the use of their indigenous birth names, medical neglect, sexual abuse, to name a few of their crimes. The government knew of it and were responsible for it for 150 years.

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July 4, 2021 · 11:44 pm

Lionel Rose: Aboriginal Boxer who united Australia

Will Swanton, in The Weekend Australian, 3-4 July 2021, where the title runs “Lionel Rose: battler who united Australia” 

Lionel Rose unified the nation more powerfully than Bradman, if more briefly — Bradman never had 250,000 cheering him through the streets.

Lionel Rose turns to embrace Fighting Harada … after he is pronounced the winner 

Lionel Rose met Paul Keating. Snipped him for a hundred. The Prime Minister reckoned he never carried any cash. Rose persisted. Did him slowly. Come on, mate. Can’t you spare a lousy hundred for a battler? Larrikinism abounded in Australia’s sporting stars of the 1960s and 1970s. Rose, Dawn Fraser, John Newcombe, larger than-life characters. It was the 1990s by the time Rose hit Keating where it hurt. The hip-pocket. Mischievousness was alive and kicking in Rose, and part of the reason for the request, but he needed the dough, too.

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July 3, 2021 · 9:17 pm

Industrialization in Lanka!! Searing Comments on Athukorale’s Article

ONE: A NOTE from Mevan Pieris in Colombo, 1 July 2021[i]

The underlining in bold Black is HSM Pieris’s work; that in red has been imposed by the Editor, Thuppahi….. and so, too, any red underlining in Vinod Moonesinghe’s intervention. Both sets of Comments were sent by Email in response to my invitation to a cluster of personnel.

Thanks Michael. Read with interest Premachandra Atukorala’s paper…. [viz. https://thuppahis.com/2021/07/01/an-appraisal-of-sri-lankas-industrialization-strategy/#more-52644%5D

The platform JR Jayawardene Government laid starting in 1977 for an industrial revolution supported by availability of adequate hydroelectric power, was dashed on the ground by the LTTE war with Indian interference, which was beyond even for JRJ to manage in his second term of office. Thereafter the assassinations of strong political successors to JRJ too diluted the leadership of our country. An industrial revolution can only be sustained by a continuity of strong leadership; but with the assassination of Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake we lost all of it. Leave alone policy making, not even the Central Bank could be protected. So why waste time trying to figure out what went wrong in industrial policy.

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June 27, 2021 · 5:12 pm

Ernest Macintyre’s SILINDU of BADDEGAMA

A play in five acts derived and adapted from LEONARD WOOLF’S novel THE VILLAGE IN THE JUNGLE.

 SILUNDU OF BADDEGAMA, by Ernest Macintyre, was first performed at the Erindale Theatre Canberra on 16 April 1994

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June 17, 2021 · 8:42 pm

High Noon in Mid-Air, August 2019: For the Murugappans of Biloela

ABC Account on 30 August 2019, with this title “Who are the Tamil family from Biloela and why are they being deported?” ……  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-30/who-are-tamil-family-from-biloela-why-are-they-being-deported/11463276

Last-minute injunctions have stalled the deportation of a Tamil family who have spent years fighting to stay in Australia. The plane carrying the Sri Lankan couple and their Australian-born daughters had already left the tarmac at Melbourne Airport when a judge granted a reprieve over the phone. Here’s what we know about the family’s case:

Dozens of people rushed to Melbourne Airport in a bid to stop the family being deported on Thursday night..   … Supplied: @HometoBilo)

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May 9, 2021 · 3:04 am

Dujuan’s History Lesson for Non-Aboriginal Australians All

Vibeke Venema of BBC News, 6 May 2021, where the title reads “The ‘smart and cheeky’ Aboriginal boy teaching Australia a lesson”

A documentary about a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy’s experience in school, In My Blood It Runs, has reignited a debate about Australia’s failure to give indigenous children a good education and a fair start in life.

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April 7, 2021 · 3:24 am

Sustaining Memory as a Central Facet of Transitional Justice

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.

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