Category Archives: Tamil civilians

January 21, 2025 · 12:00 am

Kittu as LTTE Commander: A Violent, Tempestuous History

DBS Jeyaraj in The Daily Mirror,  20 January 2025, where the title reads “How Tiger ‘Col’ Kittu lost a leg when a bomb was thrown at him in Jaffna”

Former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Jaffna District Commander Sathasivamillai Krishnakumar alias ‘Col’ Kittu was regarded as the uncrowned king of Jaffna in the mid-eighties of the twentieth century. The greater part of Jaffna peninsula was under LTTE control then. This state of affairs [received] a rude shock when an unknown person lobbed a bomb into the vehicle driven by Kittu. The incident which rocked Jaffna in 1987 resulted in the Tiger commander losing a leg. The third part of this article focuses primarily on matters related to that explosive incident.

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January 12, 2025 · 1:54 pm

The Maaveerar Dead as A Perpetual Inspiration For Eelam

Mario Arulthas, in Al-Jazeera,  9 January 2025 …. with highlightinging emphasia imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The Maaveerar Dead as A Perpetual Inspiration For Eelam

The nationwide electoral success of the anti-establishment NPP does not mean Tamil nationalism is on the decline.

An election official holding a ballot box gets off the bus outside a vote counting centre after the voting ended for the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2024 [Thilina Kaluthotage/Reuters]

“They’re trampling on our graves with their boots,” said Kavitha, a Tamil woman, as the torrential rain lashing our faces washed away her tears. Standing barefoot and ankle-deep in mud at the site of a former cemetery in Visuvamadu, Sri Lanka, she was lamenting the adjacent military base built on the graves of fallen Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters, including that of her brother.

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January 8, 2025 · 1:18 am

When Extremists Feed Off Each Other …. Pertinent Reflections from 2012

Michael Roberts

Just today I came across an old political essay of mine, one entitled “Prejudice and Hate in Pluralist Settings: The Kingdom of Kandy.” While the essay is of continued relevance today for Sri Lankan as well as world politics, let me bring readers face-to-face with several insights reposing within two of the COMMENTS which the article attracted, one from Dr Jane Russell and the other from Professor Chandre Dharmawardena.

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January 6, 2025 · 8:02 pm

Remembering Karen Roberts Who Chose Writing …..

Renuka Sadanandan, whose original title runs thus: “Karen Roberts Writing. Her Way of Staying Close” **

Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara

It was probably the single most frightening thing that happened to her. Having to walk alone from the advertising agency in Kollupitiya where she worked part-time to her home in Dehiwela, through the streets aflame. Those terrible scenes stayed imprinted in her mind though it was many years before she would think of putting them down.

“On twenty-third of July 1983, the day the world went mad, was how Karen Roberts would later write about the ethnic violence in her book ‘July’. Her world changed that day, she says sombrely. “Until then my life was great…..my only concern was what to wear on Saturday night!” Her father was abroad, her mother had to fetch her younger sister home from school and her brother was stuck somewhere and the 17-year-old Karen had to fend for herself amidst the mayhem and madness that saw the familiar Colombo landscape turn into killing streets.

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December 22, 2024 · 10:09 am

Chandra Schaffter Features in the TPS Website

https://thuppahis.com/2023/03/30/a-cricketing-saga-extraordinary/

March 30, 2023

A Cricketing Saga Extraordinary

Chandra Schaffter … responding to an earnest request from Michael Roberts**

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December 20, 2024 · 4:04 pm

UN Agencies That Deployed False Death Figures re Eelam War

Palitha Senanayake, in The Island, 20 December 2024 …… ‘UN fudged Lankan casualty figures’ – Lord Naseby

The United Nations Human Rights Council at its 57th session adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Project on Sri Lanka Accountability by one year. Babu Ram Pant, Deputy Regional Director for South Asia at Amnesty International, has commented extensively on this resolution.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (L) arrives at a hotel for a joint press conference with Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Affairs Rohitha Bogollagama in Kandy on May 23, 2009, after Ban visited Menik Farm camp, home to thousands of civilians who fled the war zone. UN chief Ban Ki-moon came face-to-face with the despair of Sri Lanka’s war-hit civilians as he toured the main refugee camp and flew over the devastated war zone. AFP PHOTO/ROSLAN RAHMAN (Photo credit should read ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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December 19, 2024 · 3:37 pm

Beyond Imagination – Chandra Schaffter’s Life of Service

Ravi RUDRA has composed an extensive web-item describing Chandra Schaffter’s services to Sri Lanka,  S. Thomas College, cricket, hockey, the Tamil Union CC’, insurance services in the island and humakind in general. The account includes photographs and is so extensive that it is best presented in segments. THIS is the first instalment. As this segment includes heaps of photographs, it will take me time to insert all of them…. so the present version is incomplete .…. Editor, TPS 

Compilation by Ravi RUDRA …. with this title ‘The Phenomenal Journey of Mr. CHANDRA SCHAFFTER 94* Story of Vision, Resilience, Disappointments and Success” …. 1 December 2024 

Mr. Chandra Thomas Adolphus Schaffter (born 3 April 1930) ‘The Father of Sri Lanka Insurance & Much, Much More’

“If you cannot do something for those who work for you, but you seek to get the best out of them and not worry about them, then, I don’t think life is worth living. What I am today, I owe it first to God and then to my School”– Chandra Schaffter

 Legendary Thomian (Jan 1937–March 1950)

“I was very fortunate to attend S. Thomas’ College because I had a good education and a good foundation. I lost my mother when I was only 3 and my father when I was 11, so I never had real parental guidance in that sense.But my school masters, especially in my early years, and some of my relatives were very helpful in making me find my way around.

S. Thomas’ was a great place to be in, as you learnt a lot of good values which you don’t see in the outside world. This up-bringing has stood me and many Thomians in good stead.”– Chandra Schaffter

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December 13, 2024 · 1:03 am

Three Promising Young Tamils in Present Sri Lankan U19 Squad

Information from Prakash Schaffter of Janashakthi Insurance in response to my Request, December 2020 ….. Editor, Thuppahi

Sharujan Shanmuganathan, born on April 25, 2006, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, is a promising left-handed wicketkeeper-batsman representing the Sri Lanka Under-19 cricket team. He gained early recognition for his elegant stroke play, drawing comparisons to former Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara. At just five years old, during a 2011 Test match between Sri Lanka and Australia, Shanmuganathan was spotted playing a graceful cover drive, earning him the nickname “Little Sanga” from commentator Tony Greig.

Shanmuganathan honed his cricket skills at St. Benedict’s College, Kotahena, and further developed his talent under the guidance of coach Nelson Mendis at the CCC School of Cricket. He showcased his potential by scoring 1,000 runs in the U19 Division One Interschools Two-Day Cricket Tournament for the 2022/23 season.

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December 12, 2024 · 11:49 pm

Seeking Ethnic Reconciliation Through Commemoration of the Dead-in-War

Capt Prasanna Rajaratne, SLN … in DAILY FT, 6 December 2024, ….. where the title reads “National security only through national harmony“
They may still feel trapped in the same plight, and unless that perception is acknowledged, addressed, and their aspirations realised, the resurgence of dissent is not merely possible but inevitable

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December 2, 2024 · 5:36 pm

Politics of Identity in Lanka: Mithran Tiruchelvam’s Introduction in 1997 to his Book

Introduction by Mithran Tiruchelvam …. a son of Neelan Tiruchelvam of the ICES [who was tragically assassinated by the LTTE in front of the ICES offices one year later]

The present collection of essays arose out of a symposium held at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), Colombo from 13-15 March 1997, where researchers and scholars presented some of their recent research interests. This volume seeks to gather the threads of a hybrid collection of essays and weave them together in their shared historical moment. An anthology of this nature seeks organizational cohesion based on the papers’ common origins at the symposium, thereby sacrificing some degree of thematic or disciplinary unity. It is intended that such a collection make available to the general reader and to the scholar alike, a sense of the variety of social science pursuits being undertaken in Sri Lanka today. As such its purpose is to flavour as much as to nourish the reader’s palate, providing a sampling of the eclectic diversity of topics, methodologies and critical perspectives. engaging the social scientist today.

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