Category Archives: women in ethnic conflcits

April 14, 2022 · 7:24 pm

Female Leaders at the Grassroots in a COVID-19 World

Samanthi Gunawardana & Nedha De Silva, at https://lens.monash.edu/@celebrating-influential-women/2021/03/08/1382925/listening-to-women-in-grassroots-leadership-in-a-covid-19-world  …………. “It is a virus, we can get it anywhere, [but] we have a responsibility, and if we let go of workers now when they need us the most, what is the point?” – Chandra Devanarayana, Revolutionary Existence for Human Development, Sri Lanka

Long before COVID-19 hit Sri Lanka’s shores, grassroots women’s organisations fought poverty pay, long hours, and unsafe working conditions in the country’s garment manufacturing districts.

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April 5, 2022 · 12:57 am

A Kilted Scottish Lady who confronted the Fascists in spain in the 1930s

Item in Glasgow Live 20:41, 3 April 2022, bearing this title “Remembering Fernanda Jacobsen: The kilted woman who left Glasgow to fight fascism”

Barely 20 years after women got the vote, Glasgow secretary Fernanda Jacobsen became the unexpected leader of Glasgow’s ambulance unit that travelled to Spain in 1936

By Glasgow Live 20:41, 3 APR 2022

A Glaswegian woman in a kilt with a ‘big bottom’ hardly sounds like your typical war hero. But that’s exactly how Fernanda Jacobsen was described by those that met her when she was sent to Madrid – the beating heart of the social revolution – to help the wounded as the Republican government faced off rebel armies in 1936.

17th January 1937: Members of a Scottish ambulance unit in Glasgow before their second visit to the Spanish Civil War

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February 24, 2022 · 10:42 am

Introducing Siva and His Artwork

Gaya … at http://isrilankan.com/ …on 6 March 2021

Siva is an artist,  survivor, citizen and a human most extraordinary.  His work is a testimony to how the human mind with artistic expression can transcend the violence of war, the other myriad constraints and negotiations that await the unsuspecting human and the navigation of pain and moving beyond. 

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November 27, 2021 · 6:42 pm

In Appreciation of “Our Sam” … The Samarasinghe Family Collective

It is with profound sorrow that we share with you the passing of Prof. Stanley (Sam) Samarasinghe on Monday, Nov 22, 2021. Our husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, teacher, colleague and friend fought his illness with relentless courage and undiminished fortitude for several years. His enthusiasm to live his life to the full did not abate. Except family and close friends, no one else had even the slightest inkling that he was battling an invasive enemy within.

 

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November 26, 2021 · 1:12 pm

Exploring Sri Lanka’s Experiences with Democracy

Sarah Kabir and ROAR on “A Journey of a Demcracy: The Sri Lankan Story”

ROAR is embarking on the generation of a documentary thatseeks to create awareness and understanding of Sri Lanka’s post-independence history…… SEE INITIAL NOTICE: https://thuppahis.com/2021/11/19/imaginative-explorations-of-sri-lankas-history-on-the-cards/#more-56776

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project Intervention

It has been over a decade since the end of Sri Lanka’s protracted conflict, but what we have today is ‘negative peace’ – which is the absence of overt violence. Limited understanding of Sri Lanka’s history, politics, democracy, ambition, intent, and the refusal to acknowledge acts of intolerance and discrimination that destroyed lives and led to bloodshed makes it increasingly difficult to avoid the recurrence of violence and we risk repeating the same mistakes. Today, we are confronted with choices that could lead to positive peace or a resumption of cycles of violence. Even now, the difficulties of dealing with COVID-19 and the resulting economic fallout could lead to social unrest that may morph into inter-communal violence if manipulated. Continue reading →

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November 18, 2021 · 11:56 pm

Kokkadicholai: An Outpost in Wartime Batticaloa

This Item appeared in Dilshy Banu’s Facebook post and I have borrowed it and its photographs for circulation via Thuppahi – in part because it marks a little “outpost activity” in the course of the war and largely because I have met Dilshy and respect her courageous career choices and her lines of philanthropic endeavour….. Michael Roberts, 18 November 2021

Dilshy Banu: “Kokkadicholai in Batticaloa: Traversing Tension during Eelam War IV”

 

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November 5, 2021 · 10:12 pm

Hassina Leelarathna: In Action, In Words And In Commemoration

LT Times,  November 2021

Hassina Leelarathna, a co-founder of the only Sri Lankan newspaper in the U.S. and an activist who spurred fellow immigrants to help when disasters struck their homeland, has died at age 73. Leelarathna died in Sherman Oaks on Oct. 17 after battling lung cancer for the last five years, said her son, Sahan Gamage.

 

Hassina Leelarathna co-hosted a bilingual radio show called “Tharanga,” focusing on news, music and culture. The program began in San Francisco at KFJC-FM, pictured here, before migrating to Los Angeles when the family relocated south in 1985 (Sahan Gamage)

 

 

 

 

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October 20, 2021 · 3:40 pm

Chandrika Kumaratunge as President: An Unique Amalgam of Graciousness and Toughness

Chandra Wickremasinghe, in The Island, 17 October 2021, where the title runs thus “CBK had an impulsive streak but was gracious in admitting mistakes”

With President Chandrika Kumaratunge assuming office, there was once again a flurry of activity in the Presidential Secretariat and in the Ministries, as she was anxious to expeditiously push through various development programmes she had in mind. Although she did not believe in an overly centralized system of Presidential rule, she kept a close tab particularly on the major development projects and programmes of Ministries by having regular review meetings with them.

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October 14, 2021 · 1:14 pm

The Smuggling Networks & Wherewithal of VVT: A Key Factor in the Rise to Power of the LTTE

Jane Russell and Michael Roberts in Interaction

ONE

“Once, while waiting for a CTB bus at Kurumbacciddy Junction in 1974, I saw a blackboard advertising a lecture by the then proto-LTTE which showed speedboats pulling the Jaffna peninsula across the Palk Straits and joining it to Tamil Nadu.”[1]

DEAR JANE, WHEN precisely in 1974?

Yours is an intriguing piece of ethnography … The Tamil New Tigers were a tiny group then[2]…. and the ISSUE IS: who had the vision/imagination to formulate this prospect and/or this propaganda line? KP? Pirapaharan? …………………….. michael

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October 11, 2021 · 1:53 am

Child Soldiers in the LTTE, 2009 …. Eelam War IV

Matt Wade, in The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 May 2009, …. where the title runs thus “Kill or be killed: 11-year-olds forced to fight for Tamil Tigers”

IT IS hard to imagine Christine* in combat. But the diminutive 14-year-old with a cheeky smile and dancing eyes knows how to handle a Kalashnikov and detonate grenades. A Tamil speaker from northern Sri Lanka, Christine says she was abducted by Tamil Tiger cadres in March and forced to undergo military training. She performed drills using dummy weapons in preparation for battle and, as with many female recruits, her hair was cut short.

  No place for a child … (left) Young fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, and (right) a 14-year old conscript at the Kegalle district centre.CREDIT:AP/GEMUNU AMARASINGHE/MATT WADE

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