Category Archives: sri lankan society

June 27, 2014 · 1:51 pm

Dinouk Columbage in the gunsights of Lake House

Amanda Hodge, in The Australian, 25 June 2014, under the title “Sri Lanka call to arrest reporter“

amanda_hodgeAS journalists around the world reel over lengthy prison sentences handed down to three Al Jazeera reporters in Egypt, a media freedom controversy has erupted in Sri Lanka after the editor of the Daily News called for the arrest of a local Al Jazeera journalist for reporting on inter-religious riots.  In a series of Twitter rants, the state-owned newspaper’s editor, Rajpal Abeynayake, accused Al Jazeera’s Colombo stringer, Dinouk Colombage, of inciting ­religious tensions by reporting on Buddhist-Muslim clashes last week in southwest Aluthgama in which four people died and about 80 more were injured.

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June 25, 2014 · 3:40 am

Victimized Muslims of Aluthgama-Beruwela express Grief and Legitimate Resentment

Dharisha Bastians, courtesy of Daily FT, 19 June 2014 ……. http://www.ft.lk/2014/06/19/what-was-our-crime/

Thousands of displaced people in the riot-rocked towns of Beruwala and Aluthgama are too afraid to go home again – and many of them have no homes to return to

Muslims protests etc- BBS 44…..Pix by Ishara S. Kodikara (AFP) and Shilpa Samaratung

The watcher at the Al Humeisara Central College in China Fort is compulsive about keeping the tall gates padlocked at all times. He ushers authorised vehicles in and hurriedly shuts the gates behind them, casting furtive looks on the road outside. Inside the closely-guarded gates, schoolroom desks and chairs are stacked in corners. All the signs of mass displacement abound – large water tanks, truckloads of relief items and make-shift first aid centres. Infants and toddlers snooze in the stifling noon day heat on the floors of fly-infested classrooms. Some of them are only a few weeks old. The children seem to be the only ones removed from the anger and sorrow that is pervasive in the schoolyard. Thrilled to be skipping school and surrounded by dozens of playmates, they put the Al Humeisara swing sets and climbing frames to good use. It could be Vavuniya or Batticaloa five or six years ago. Except that the camp lies barely 60 kilometres from the capital Colombo and this is not a war zone. Continue reading →

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June 23, 2014 · 3:19 pm

Undercover LTTE infiltration and operational activity within Sri Lanka 2014

from Udeshi Amarasinghe:  at “Modus Operandi:  Tamil Diaspora and LTTE Organisations” ….  in http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=Modus_Operandi_Tamil_Diaspora_and_LTTE_Organisations_20140605_05

Two suspects involved in LTTE propaganda activity was taken into custody while distributing posters in Jaffna in March 2014. Following investigations conducted by law enforcement officers, they trailed a known ex-LTTE cadre by the name of Gobi who had escaped the Vavuniya Welfare Centre after the end of the conflict. The suspect was hiding in a house in Kilinochchi and when the team went to arrest him, he opened fire on the team and an officer was injured. The house he was hiding in was searched and an F-3 type metal detector was found. Investigations further revealed that they were to use this metal detector to find arms and explosives dumped by the LTTE. This metal detector had been stolen from an NGO involved in demining operations in the east of Vavuniya. gobi's land Thevihan, Gobi and Appan Continue reading →

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June 23, 2014 · 2:34 pm

The Induction Oath of Tamil Tiger Fighters at their Passing-Out Ceremony

Michael Roberts

Adle plus Tigress Adele Balasingham and a LTTE fighter — BBC, 1991

Apropos of the misleading interpretations of suicide attacks by Western commentators such as the political scientist, Robert Pape, it is important to note that the act of suicide was initially adopted by the LTTE as a defensive tool to protect the organisation from the leaking of information after capture. It was also a mark of their dedication to the Tamil liberation cause and thus a method of drawing popular admiration. It was not till 5 July 1987 that it was deployed as a low cost precision weapon when Miller (a nom de guerre) drove a truck bomb into an SL Army encampment at Nelliyadi. This was but one instance of uyirayutham — life as weapon.

As training was formalised, like all armies the LTTE had a passing out ceremony for their fighters. The induction of a batch of female fighters is graphically depicted in a BBC documentary filmed in the LTTE territories in 1991 where one sees/hears them chant in unison in response to their female commander’s initial prompt:

“Our revolutionary organisation’s purified aim

is for a free society to achieve Tamil Eelam

My life and soul and all this I sacrifice to

our organisation’s leader, our brother, Mr Prabhakaran

We fully accept that for him we will be very faithful and trustworthy

The aim of the Tigers – Tamils’ freedom.” Continue reading →

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June 23, 2014 · 11:49 am

Blunders in Tigerland: Pape’s Muddles on “Suicide Bombers” in Sri Lanka

Michael Roberts, presented as one of the Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics, December 2007 and available in full, with its ‘surfeit’ of pictorial illustrations, at http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/7868/1/Michael_Roberts.pdf

ISBN: 1617-5069
ISSN: 1617-5069

ABSTRACT: No study of the LTTE can afford to neglect Sri Lanka’s cultural, historical, and georgraphical backdrop. The lack fo existential awareness of religious cross-fertilisation, the either/or foundations of Western reasoning and absence of local knowledge bedevil the scholarship that incorporates Sri Lanka within their global surveys of suicide attacks. Pape’s “Dying to Win” is an example. Here, the LTTE’s multi-pronged capacities are poorly evaluated. Too much significance is attributed to the coercive success of SMs in bringing the government to the negotiating table at various moments. Religious persecution has not been the main reason for the Tamil struggle. Comparative references to SMs elsewhere are occasionally interspersed in this review of the Sri Lankan scene. Continue reading →

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June 23, 2014 · 8:31 am

Sri Lankan Muslims at the Cross-roads … the full monty

Izeth Hussain, courtesy of The Island, where it appeared in a four-part series recently in May-June 2014

    Izeth-Hussain                    PART I      2a-Moorman Tamby =213

My last two articles in the Island were under the title Making sense of the Bodu Bala Sena, focusing in both of them on the anti-Muslim campaign of the BBS. There is now a view, still at the incipient stage but which can soon gain wide currency, that the BBS is on the way out. The argument is that extremist movements such as the BBS have no staying power in Sri Lanka, and that the forces of Buddhist moderation are now working to bring about the quick demise of the BBS and related extremist groups. But I began the first of my last two articles by pointing out that the conventional wisdom for well over a year – shared by the President himself – had it that if the BBS were ignored it would evaporate after some time. It did not, and in recent times it showed a renewed virulence.

 52-Muslim men prepare for worship Continue reading →

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June 22, 2014 · 1:52 pm

The Aluthgama Violence, US Embassy, BBS and Gotabhaya in Perspective

C. A. Chandraprema, in The Island, 21 June 2014

When this writer logged onto the Colombo US Embassy website at 8.30pm on Friday June 20, we found a statement issued on 16 June 2014 which went as follows: “The U.S.  Embassy condemns the violence that has spread over the weekend in Alutgama and Beruwela. We urge the government to ensure that order is preserved and the lives of all citizens, places of worship, and property are protected.   We urge the authorities to investigate these attacks and bring those responsible to justice. We also urge all sides to refrain from violence, exercise restraint, and respect the rule of law.”

Right below that statement on the web page was a photograph reproduced on this page, of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa with Galagodaatte Gnanasara and other BBS monks. The photograph was captioned “President Mahindha Rajapaksha’s brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksha with Sri Lankan terrorist Bodu Bala Sena”  (See: http://srilanka.usembassy.gov/pr-16june14.html)

GOTHA and BBS - island  Continue reading →

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June 22, 2014 · 1:26 pm

Editorials of English-media newspapers criticise the BBS vehemently

I. Editorial in The Island, 20 June 2014 entitled “Unstoppable psychos”

Prabhakaran is long dead and his mindless violence is a thing of the past. But, the country is not yet free from terrorism as has been seen from Sunday’s violence. Close on the heels of anti-Muslim attacks in Alutgama and Beruwala has come a dastardly assault on a Buddhist monk—not by non-Buddhists but by a group in yellow robes, according to the victim.

Ven. Watareka Vijitha Thera was abducted, assaulted and dumped on a road in the early hours of Thursday. Prior to the attack he had complained to the police that his life was in danger following an incident where he was threatened by the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), which also disrupted a multi-religious event he was attending. Subsequently, he was roughed up in public. Two policemen assigned to protect him were withdrawn about two weeks before Thursday’s incident. Why was he deprived of security in spite of threats to his life? An explanation is called for. Continue reading →

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June 19, 2014 · 6:20 am

Brewster reviews Moorcraft’s “Total Destruction of the Tamil Tigers”

DAVID BREWSTER David Brewster:  …..  Review: Total Destruction of the Tamil Tigers: The Rare Victory of Sri Lanka’s Long War by Paul Moorcraft (Pen & Sword Military, 2012) in Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, Vol.9 No.2

Although the civil war in Sri Lanka ended some four years ago relatively little objective military or strategic analysis has been published on it. Memories of the war may now be receding, but it was one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts the Indian Ocean region has seen in modern times – spanning some three decades and taking an estimated 80-100,000 lives.

MOORCROFT BOOK COVERPaul Moorcraft’s book, Total Destruction of the Tamil Tigers, does not seek to provide a comprehensive account of the causes of the conflict or even of the conflict itself. Rather, it tries to answer the question: how did the Sri Lankan government so decisively and completely destroy a major insurgency that several times appeared on the brink of victory? What can the conflict teach governments battling insurgencies and, perhaps, insurgent groups themselves? Continue reading →

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June 18, 2014 · 3:37 am

The Way Forward: The Dickwella Path to Religious Amity

P. D. De Silva …. http://www.ft.lk/2014/06/18/dhamma-the-dickwella-way/ ….  check this source for a range of comments … and also absorb the different threads of comment in protest against the Sinhala hate speech and the violence at Aluthgama in https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxbk4wYolphwOTRPUU40bUtDZnc/edit  AND at other pertinent news items at that site and at Colombo Telegraph

IN contrast to gory scenes a few miles away in Aluthgama, the Chief Incumbent Priests of eight Buddhist temples in and around Dickwella led by Dickwella Shasana Bala Mandalaya President Ven. Godellewela Rathananda in an exemplary move spent two hours on Monday night at the Muhiyibdeen Jumma Mosque at Yonakpura, Dickwella. The act of solidarity was to strengthen communal ties and avert any fears of an extremist uprising in the area as an aftermath of the unfortunate incidents in Aluthgama and Beruwala.

Dickwella priestly exchanges Continue reading →

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