September 15, 2014 · 2:04 am

Tamil Person and State: Pictorial … Images Listed

Michael Roberts

     Contents

Acknowledgements v

Preface vii

List of Pictorial Items xvii

Abbreviations xxxiii

Prologue xxxv

Visual Imagery within Political Struggles and Manoeuvres …. pp. 1-44

Photographs …. pp. 45-208

Postface: BBC Blind …. pp. 209-29

Bibliography …. pp. 230-51

List of Appendices … pp. 252-92

Appendix I: Media Personnel transported to battlefront by Min-of Defence … pp. 252-63

Appendix II: Estimates of the Death Toll among the Fighting Forces of the LTTE and Government of Sri Lanka …. pp. 264-66

Appendix III: NGOs providing Relief at the Mānik Farm Detention Centres …. pp. 267-70

Appendix IV: US Ambassador Robert Blake’s Secret Despatch, 19 March 2009…. pp. 271-72

Appendices V: Inaugural Meeting of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, Colombo, 18 December 1949 … with Presidential Address by SJV Chelvanayagam …. pp. 273

List of Pictorial Items

Illustrations for introductory chapter

  1. Ecstasy and a karate kick before the kill, 24/25 July 1983
  2. A killing victim at Varanāsi, 23 December 1992
  3. A Muslim shot by police during Seelampur riots, Delhi, 1992
  4. Hindu mob assembled at night during Bhagalpur pogrom, 28 October 1990
  5. Massive crowd of White Americans assembles to watch thelynching of a Black American, Henry Smith, at Paris, Texas, 1 February 1896
  6. A case of torturing: two interpretations

F1: The image and its tale in The Cage

F2. The unmodified image discovered by GSL sources … with tell-tale slippers suggestive of Tiger troops

  1. DiManno’s slanted pictorial pick: a weak attempt to fool the public about the scenario of the Last Redoubt

H1, 2. LTTE video of auxiliary mobilisation for belligerent activity

  1. David Cameron’s visit to Jaffna draws world attention to the anguish of kin seeking the “missing”
  2. Tamils greet Cameron with demonstration depicting photographs of missing kin
  3. Tamil women seeking their kin in public expressions of grief and anger
  4. Tamils abandon Thamilīlam and walk through jungle at night to safety of Army terrain, February 2009

M1, 2. Mobilisation in search of the “disappeared” kin, 2012 and 2013

PONNA CHELVA  GG Ponnambalam, SJV Chelvanayakam and C Vanniasingham, of the Tamil Congress in 1947

2b-Chelva hustings  Chelvanayakam campaigning 13c--Prabha with pistol-2 the talaivar Pirapaharan with automatic handgun … probably a Glock Continue reading →

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September 14, 2014 · 3:17 pm

Tamil Person and State: Essays

Michael  Roberts

L 135a --Medivac child at Pulmoddai

50-LTTE senior commanders -tamilnet

Essay – Cover 

        Contents

THE LTTE AND PRABHAKARAN

CHAPTER 1.….Inspirations and Caste Threads in the Early LTTE … 1-43

CHAPTER 2…..Hitler, Nationalism, Sacrifice: Koenigsberg and Beyond … 44-68

CHAPTER 3…..Hero Figures and Hitler in Young Pirapāharan’s Thinking … 69-89

CHAPTER 4…..Tamil Tigers: Sacrificial Symbolism and‘Dead Body Politics’ … 90-100

CHAPTER 5……Killing Rajiv Gandhi: Dhanu’s SacrificIal Metamorphosis in Death? 101-31 Continue reading →

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September 13, 2014 · 2:05 pm

Jaffna. Exorcising the past and holding the vision

Neville Jayaweera’s autobiographical reflection on the ethnic conflict … is already raising a storm in Sri Lanka. Here is the PREFACE by Susil Sirivardena

jayaweeraThis book is a testament to a lifetime of action and reflection by Neville Jayaweera, a Sri Lankan Civil Servant, endowed with a rare vision of what it means to be civilized. Its distinctive feature is its granite-like commitment to ethics and values, supported by an intrepid intellectuality. While remaining rooted in his native soil he also comes across as drawing strength from a reality beyond the mundane and while he seems a person of the Enlightenment and of modernity, he also seems undergirded by an unflinching commitment to his conscience. Summing up the impossible contradiction of his role as the Government Agent of Jaffna in the mid-sixties, Jayaweera says that it was like keeping his nose to the grindstone while at the same time keeping his eyes focused on the stars! Whilst remaining firmly anchored both to heaven and to earth Jayaweera’s career seems an attempt to fill the space in between, both as Yogi and as Commissar, as he describes it, borrowing the title of a famous essay written by Arthur Koestler. Continue reading →

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September 13, 2014 · 1:23 pm

A Bloomberg Boost for Sri Lanka

Influential global media house to add Sri Lanka to its international release of Economic  Forecasts

Sri Lanka’s profile for business and investment will get a big boost shortly when the world famous and influential premier source for business and financial market news, Bloomberg includes the country into its global service providing economic forecast.

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September 13, 2014 · 1:17 pm

Fabulous Lanka: a Drone works for the Sri Lankan Tourist Board

Here’s fabulous drone footage of Sri Lanka:
Here’s the DJI-Phantom Quadcopter:
courtesy of Viran Corea

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September 13, 2014 · 1:11 pm

WikiLeaks reveals that US embassy in Sri Lanka was ill-informed

Philip Fernando **

The WikiLeaks that Dr. Michael Roberts crisply detailed in his Blog confirms that the US embassy in Colombo looked woefully uninformed during the last phase of Eelam War IV. The US ambassadors and their cohorts knew only an inkling of what they constantly thought they were on top of. Countering Sri Lanka’s drift towards an Asia-based (China in particular) alignment – away from US radar, the Colombo embassy changed gears from good intelligence gathering to a more subjective probing — and seems to have been sucked into a quicker ‘regime-change mode’.  WikiLeaks indicates that the Rajapaksa administration—indeed the Sri Lankan polity- -and the US embassy were on two parallel lines that never met. Here are a few instances where the US embassy failed to grasp or interpret data …. With the WikiLeaks quotations being in italics and numbered 1 to 6 – and my comments following). Continue reading →

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September 11, 2014 · 9:27 am

Advertising TAMIL PERSON AND STATE by Michael Roberts

59- VP signs peace accord 2002-BBC  53- Pongu Thamil Geneva 2003

TAMIL PERSON AND STATE – ESSAYS = Rs. 3500/-

TAMIL PERSON AND STATE – PICTORIAL = Rs. 4000/-

This set of books is the latest anthology from Michael Roberts that caters to the reading public in Lanka and elsewhere by collecting his essaying interventions in the public realm, usually on web, within one cover. These articles were written between 2009 and 2012. Two long articles, however, are new products drafted in 2012. One explores the significance of a Karaiyar caste coterie within the LTTE, while clarifying the ideological currents that inspired their opposition to the Sinhala-dominated state. The other clarifies the circumstances of the Tamil peoples within the de facto to state of Thamilīlam from 2002 onwards and especially within the crucible of war in “the Vanni Pocket” in 2009 and thence to the detention centres at Mänik Farm. Continue reading →

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September 3, 2014 · 10:33 am

Bus Shelters and Charities for Departed Loved Ones: An Exploration from An Ignoramus

Michael Roberts

A friend in England recently gave me a set of photographs that he had snapped of a bus shelter for the general public along a road in the province of Uva. It had been constructed as a public charity by the parents of a young Sinhalese soldier who had died in combat during Eelam War IV. As I live abroad and my regular visits are mostly to Colombo I had not noticed such outcomes before; while my nourishment in non-Buddhist familial settings had not exposed me to this phenomenon (though I could make some conjectures about the motivations and purposes of such acts).

I decided to test these surmises and to seek data of an anecdotal kind by posing a question of fact-cum-interpretation before a number of friends and acquaintances. Some live abroad; a few are academics and a few are from urbanised middle class background. But a number also had deep roots in rural countryside arenas by virtue of upbringing and/or contemporary residence and/or occupational experiences. Continue reading →

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September 1, 2014 · 10:35 pm

Winning the War: Evaluating the Impact of API WENUWEN API

Michael Roberts

During the course of my regular visits to Sri Lanka in the 2000s for familial and research purposes I happened to see a television programme that focused on the armed services of Sri Lanka in a captivating manner so as to encourage recruitment. That short burst of pictures and text surprised me. “Api Wenuwen Api” (“We for Us”) was a far cry from the wooden and prosaic campaigns associated with government departments. It was slick, catchy and motivating.

I have since discovered that it was initiated in 2007 and designed by a professional advertising agency located in Colombo: namely, TRIAD ADVERTISING. Their own resume of the programme Api Wenuwen Api is now featured as an independent posting in thuppahi.i

  66-THOPPIGALA 22-md 33 Commando units mark the capture of the LTTE’s mani stronghold at Thoppigala in the eastern Province in August 2007

K 131a -- old 71a-MR==Fony-May 2010 President Rajapaksa and General Sarath Fonseka mark the victory in May  2009  with a symbolic handshake

Api Wenuwen Api is now known to have contributed to the continuing enlistment of volunteers to the Sri Lankan Army, Navy and Air Force in the late 2000s. An official letter of thanks from the Secretary for the Ministry of Defence, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, speaks of its “phenomenal success,” while explicitly refusing to specify statistics.ii However, figures from elsewhere indicate that the SL Army recruited as many as 36,021 and 33,457 personnel in 2007 and 2008 respectively (De Silva-Ranasinghe, “Good Education,” 2009g: 5). As the phrase highlighted in red indicates, in my conjecture many factors contributed to this tale of mobilisation and it may be erroneous to attribute a revolutionary impact to Api Wenuwen Api. Continue reading →

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August 27, 2014 · 9:47 am

Ball-by-Ball through Wikileaks: US Embassy Despatches from Colombo, 2009: ONE

Ball-by-Ball through Wikileaks: US Embassy Despatches from Colombo, 2009: ONE

The issues associated with Eelam War IV and its last stages have drawn a huge array of reports, books, essays, video presentations and commentary. For a single mind to secure mastery of the material is a gargantuan task, well-nigh impossible in fact. Though I have essayed commentary on the topic from early 2009,[1] I meet new facts and useful new contentions on a regular basis.[2]

Recently, this problem has been exacerbated. An old treasure trove has reached me through the good offices of Citizen Silva.[3] This is the result of the espionage work of Julian Assange and those associated with WIKILEAKS: they have disclosed the whole range of American official documents from the Sri Lankan end. My store now has those in the years 2005-2010. As my initial foray I am slowly working through those for the first half of 2009.

ROBERT O BLAKE  M rajapaksa

Here I introduce a partially distilled summary of selected despatches from US ambassador Robert Blake (or his aides) to their superiors in the State Department in Washington. I do so in temporal sequence. More will follow from time to time. I encourage readers to essay commentary. In due course I will fashion an article myself. Continue reading →

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