Lionel Bopage, in Sri Lanka Guardian, 29 March 2019,where the title is ‘The Frozen Fire’ — Art and Political Reality
The Split within the JVP in 1983 and the Programme of State Repression in the 1980s
Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, communal relations, cultural transmission, historical interpretation, insurrections, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, working class conditions, world affairs
Marie Colvin’s Media Lies about Homs in Syria
Rick Sterling, in off Guardian, 29 January 2019, where the title is “Marie Colvin, Homs and Media Falsehoods about Syria”
n April 2014 I was part of an international delegation which visited Syria for five days. The delegates came from many different countries. Among the notables were the Irish Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, a Syrian-British heart surgeon and Julian Assange’s father. We spent time in Damascus, then traveled by bus to Latakia and then Homs. In each city we had meetings with political, religious and social leaders but also had time to wander about and talk with people on the streets.
In Latakia, I met Lilly Martin, an American woman who married a Syrian and has lived there, raising a family for the past twenty-five years. She told me how wrong the western media coverage was. Contrary to media claims, she said protests in Latakia were violent from the start. After the first outbreak of violence, Syrian police and military were ordered to not carry weapons. Protesters continued to burn and destroy government offices with incidents of knifing and shooting unarmed police. Continue reading →
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British Government Stance on War and Aftermath castigated by Defenders of Lanka’s Realm
Rajeewa Jayaweera. in Island, 26 January 2019, with this title “Boycott UK Defense Advisor”
According to a recent media report, UK government (GoUK) has recently appointed a Resident Defense Advisor in Sri Lanka after an absence of ten years. The story was accompanied by a photograph of the newly appointed Colonel David Ashman with Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne taken during a courtesy call paid by the British RDA on the CDS. His purported mission is to help the Sri Lankan military to fulfill the obligations as required by the UNHRC 30/1 Resolution originated by the US and UK and so pusillanimously co-sponsored by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe-Samaraweera triumvirate.
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Sovereignty, Space and Civil War in Sri Lanka: Porous Nation
Anoma Pieris has produced yet another book, this time with the prestigious Taylor & Francis imprint. In hardback it runs to 236 pages and has line drawings, tables and 35 illustrations — so it is expensive: Aus $ 216.88
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Kilchurn Castle in Scotland
Because born and bred within a Fort with around 5oo dwellings, landscape for games and sea for swimming and games, castles and forts have always fascinated me … Michael Roberts
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No Surprises with Sirisena. Challenging Mike Roberts
An Introductory Note from Michael Roberts
Gerald Peiris and I were undergraduates at Ramanathan Hall Peradeniya in the late 1950s and met on occasions when we were pursuing postgrad studies in UK and I visited Cambridge. Thereafter we were colleagues in the Arts Faculty at Peradeniya University from 1966 to 1975. Quite vitally, we were active members of the Ceylon Studies Seminar. During those seminars and at times in private tête-à-tête over drinks the two of us occasionally engaged in discussions, sometimes with sharp disagreements on specific issues.
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Pathos. Comedy. Revelation. President Sirisena’s Sermon to a ‘Captive’ Cabinet
Michael Roberts
Having been forced to accept an UNP government by a Supreme Court decision in December 2018 after he had attempted to ditch them in a coup from above in late October, President Maithripala Sirisena utilised the opportunity provided by the swearing in of a new UNP Cabinet under Ranil Wickremasinghe on 16th December 2018 to deliver a sermon to a captive audience of ‘enemies’ who were, ironically, about to enjoy the fruits of victory and destined to assume state power.[1] Sirisena’s Address was delivered in Sinhala and is marked by pathos, recrimination and selective biographical tales from the past that illuminate aspects of Sri Lankan politics.
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Tamil … with David Shulman
Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil—language, literature, and civilization—emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Tamil is a living entity, and this is its biography.
Tamil: A Biography, The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2016
HARDCOVER , $35.00 • £25.00 • €31.50 …………….ISBN 9780674059924
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Prejudiced and Infantile Readings of Sri Lanka at Chatham House in 2019
Introductory Note from Michael Roberts
The public event organised by Chatham House to discuss recent events in Sri Lanka on 17th January was chaired by a University Lecturer at University College London whose specialty is “human rights,” rather than any one of the Sri Lankan specialists teaching at British Universities (for e.g. Rajesh Venugopal, Asanga Welikala, Sujit Suvisundaram, Zoltan Beidermann and Alan Strathern). The combination of ignorance, distortion and prejudice that guided the organisation and direction of the debate was exposed in the opening lines of this Chairperson, one Kate Cronin-Furman. “[We are meeting today some ten years after the “final push” of the Sri Lankan Army in a war that ended in May 2009 – “a final phase where the UN estimates said that more than 40,000 civilians were killed by that military [action].”
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The Divided Island debated by Chatham House in London, 17th January 2018
Chatham House Public Notice: “A Divided Island: Sri Lanka’s Constitutional Crisis” … 17 January 2019 1:00pm to 2:00pm ……………….Chatham House | 10 St James’s Square | London | SW1Y 4LE ….. NB: “Chatham House” is The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Overview: …… A decade since the end of Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war, the country has recently been plunged back into turmoil. A constitutional crisis created by the sacking of Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe by President Maithripala Sirisena, and a plan to replace him with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, paralysed the country’s legislative and executive branches as both Wickramasinghe and Rajapaksa claimed the office of prime minister. Against this background, the panel considers how Sri Lanka’s opaque domestic politics is reflected by the government’s slow progress toward its pledges to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to address accountability and political reconciliation emerging from the country’s 26-year civil war. Looking forward, will Wickramasinghe pursue reconciliation, and accountability for past abuses? And what will Rajapaksa’s disputed return to frontline politics mean for a nation still reconciling the violence of its recent history?
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