Marga Storehouse of Knowledge ….. Commencing a series on articles from Marga Quarterly Journal published from 1972 – Abstracts of vintage literature are cited for requests of full articles
A unique facility for
Chathuri Dissanayake and Aanya Wipulasena in Galle ….. courtesy of the Sunday Times, 13 July 2013, where the title reads: “Washed up: How the Aussies torpedoed a voyage of dreams”
Two Sri Lankan families from the south planned a voyage for 41 asylum-seekers and a pet stray dog for what they thought was a new and prosperous life in New Zealand. Instead, they sailed right into the hands of Australian troops engaged in “Operation Sovereign Borders”. They complained of being ill-treated with food past its shelf life. The dog, however, was given a shampoo bath, fed milk and choice bacon.
SEE http://thuppahis.com/2014/07/10/sinhalese-asylum-seekers-are-dumped-back-in-galle-while/#more-13295
AND “Australian minister visits Sri Lanka, snubs Tamil groups” … courtesy of Gulf News
Colombo: Australia’s immigration minister, defending Canberra’s policy of turning back boats of asylum seekers, visited a focal point of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war against Tamil separatists, but came under fire for meeting no Tamil political or civil groups.
Stefanie Balogh, in The Australian, 9 July 2014 in a news items i within the hard copy which has several images of Sinhalese asylum-seekers in line for court hearings after being brought ashore at Galle by a SL Navy vessel
THE Abbott government has no intention of sending 153 asylum- seekers at the centre of a High Court challenge to Sri Lanka where Tamil refugees claim they face persecution, as fresh doubts surfaced over the route of their voyage and the identities of those on board. After weeks of denying the boat’s existence, lawyers for the government yesterday revealed the group was being held on a Customs boat after it was intercepted outside the country’s migration zone.
Filed under accountability, asylum-seekers, Australian culture, australian media, cultural transmission, democratic measures, island economy, people smugglers, politIcal discourse, Rajapaksa regime, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes
The Economist, reporting from Negombo, 4th July 2014: “Paradise Lost”
DOZENS of Pakistani asylum-seekers have been locked up in a detention camp in southern Sri Lanka following mass arrests that the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, says it never saw coming. The sweep started on June 9th in Negombo, a breezy seaside resort famous for its churches and beaches,on Sri Lanka’s west coast. Police went door-to-door with immigration officials and rounded up 142 men in seven days. Families wailed as the men were whisked away, without explanation, to a notorious prison known for housing terrorist suspects. On July 3rd the government broadened the crackdown to include Afghans.
This article highlights commonalities of regional nationalism between the poetry and song of two Hela Havula (The Pure Sinhala Fraternity) members: Rapiyel Tennakoon and Sunil Santha. I reveal how their creative works advocated indigenous empowerment in opposition to Indian cultural hegemony, and against state solicitations for foreign consultation about Sinhala language planning and Sinhalese music development. Tennakoon challenged the negative portrayal of Sri Lankan characters in the Indian epic, the Ramayana, and Santa fashioned a Sri Lankan form of song that could stand autonomous from Indian musical influence. Tennakoon lashed out against the Sinhala-language dictionary office’s hire of German professor Wilhelm Geiger as consultant, and Santa quit Radio Ceylon in 1953 when the station appealed to Professor S.N. Ratanjankar, from North India, for advice on designing a national form of Sri Lankan music. Such dissent betrays an effort to define the nation not in relation to the West, but to explicitly position it in relation to India. A study of Tennekoon’s and Santa’s careers and compositions supplement the many works that focus on how native elite in South Asia fashioned a modern national culture in relation to the West, with an awareness of the regional nationalist, non-elite communities—who also had a stake in defining the nation—that were struggling against inter-South Asian cultural hegemony.
Keywords: Regional nationalism; Sinhala poetry; Sinhala music; Linguistic politics; Song text; Modernist reforms.
Read full article here
Daya Gamage, former US State Department Political Specialist ….. with the pictures being acts of editorial license that are informed by some of the central contentions in this essay: namely, that in early May 2009 USA wished to mount a rescue operation off the coast of north-east Sri Lanka that would save the remaining mass of Tamil civilians as well as the disarmed Tamil Tigers, inclusive of the LTTE leaders so that the LTTE would survive and persist as a pressure group. These objectives were guided by policies fashioned by staff within the American embassy in Colombo in the 1980s and 1990s in collaboration with officials in the State Department at Washington who oversaw South Asian Affairs. TIMELINES have also been inserted by the author& Editor so as to assist readers — Editor’s Note.
US cavalry charge forward – symbolizing their role in the conquest of the West from Native American hands
The shaping of the United States policy toward Sri Lanka’s ‘national issue’ since the 1970s has been influenced by a number of factors: namely (1) the Sinhalese domination of Sri Lanka’s polity, (2) the visible decline of the (Jaffna) Tamil influence in the areas of education, trade, commerce and state sector employment since Independence, (3) the ‘awakening’ of Sinhalese nationalism seen from 1956, a movement and a process that was an explicit challenge to the disproportionate Tamil stake in the areas referred to above; (4) the race riots of 1977 and 1983 and finally (5) the emergence of Prabhakaran’s Tamil Tigers. These developments intensified the debate in US government circles and heightened their concerns about the status of the Tamil minority, 12% of the population in a polarized society. The goal of safeguarding Tamil people and their rights was juxtaposed alongside a desire to defeat “Tiger terrorism”. This dual track was aptly reflected more recently in Robert O. Blake’s address to the University of Madras in Chennai in May 2008.
Mr. Blake, who was addressing the University in his capacity as an official of South and Central Asian Affairs in the State Department, and who had formerly been his country’s deputy ambassador in New Delhi and ambassador to Sri Lanka, summarized the “carefully developed” American policy toward Sri Lanka’s National Issue in this manner: “One reason for the lack of recent progress on a consensus APRC (All Party Representative Committee) document is that some in Sri Lanka believe that the Government should first defeat the LTTE and then proceed with a political solution. The U.S. view is that the Government could further isolate and weaken the LTTE if it articulates now its vision for a political solution.” Continue reading
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, centre-periphery relations, citizen journalism, constitutional amendments, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, law of armed conflict, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, nationalism, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, Rajapaksa regime, Tamil migration, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, TNA, UN reports, unusual people, world events & processes
Nigel Kerner, a reprint from The Island, 5 October 2013
I am an expat Sri Lankan and I wrote about this some years ago and it was published in this paper. It is time for a reminder, in the light of recent happenings, for the wheels of innovation in Sri Lanka sometimes grind exceedingly slow.
The recent internationally featured article on the chaos that reigns in Ruhuna (YALA) National Park in Sri Lanka has brought into focus the utterly asinine situation that prevails in the beautiful National Parks of lovely Sri Lanka. The description that this island is a true paradise is not a tourist euphemism. It is topographically, scenically, historically and culturally just that, a Paradise. However, as with most things, the mote in the eye of the beholder runs a ragged route and there is much that is yet untended and out of focus in the Sri Lankan tourist industry. Continue reading
R. K. Radhakrishnan, courtesy of The Hindu
RECONCILIATION IN SRI LANKA — Voices from former War Zones: Minna Thaheer, Pradeep Peiris, Kasun Pathiraja; Pub.by International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2, Kynsey Terrace, Colombo 8, Sri Lanka.
The packed hall at the Galle Literary Festival was stunned into silence by a series of abuses hurled on a Sri Lankan human rights activist by a member in the audience. The hurler of abuses, a well-known journalist, questioned the activist’s patriotism, labelled her pro-Tiger, and described her as a ‘stooge’ of the Western nations. Oh yes, that was just the printable part.
The activist at the receiving end was Sunila Abeysekera. She was one of the panellists on ‘Aftershock: The lingering legacy of civil war,’ presented by the BBC World Service. Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and event moderator Bridget Kendall (BBC’s diplomatic correspondent) were on stage. The exchange presented a clear idea of the differing perceptions on the concept of reconciliation. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, democratic measures, disparagement, economic processes, female empowerment, historical interpretation, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, reconciliation, rehabilitation, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, welfare & philanthophy, women in ethnic conflcits, working class conditions, world events & processes
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