Bullets For Water: Militarization Comes Home
By Tisaranee Gunasekara -August 4, 2013
“We asked for water tanks; they sent army tanks” -A woman resident of Weliveriya[i] (BBC – 3.8.2013)
They had every reason to feel confident and safe, to expect consideration and justice.
They were almost exclusively Sinhalese and predominantly Buddhist. They would have supported the military wholeheartedly (quite a few would have kith/kin in uniform) and rejoiced in the defeat of the LTTE. Many would have done the victory-tour, eating shellfish inJaffna, worshipping at Nagadeepa, laying flowers at the monument to their war heroes and inspecting Vellupillai Pirapaharan’s bunker. Most would have voted for the Rajapaksas, believing that their present was safe and their future assured in the ‘caring’ hands of the Tiger-vanquishers.
A victim - A protestor against the ground water contamination scandal in the Gampaha
When they realised that the water from their familiar wells had turned toxic, they would have believed that ‘their government’ will succour and protect them. After all, they were not asking for devolution or land/police powers. They wanted free pipe-borne water – a just request given that they were not responsible for releasing pollutants into the waterways. They also wanted the closure of the factory believed to be responsible for contaminating their groundwater.
They did not understand that the Rajapaksas, who waste billions on themselves, turn extremely miserly when it comes to addressing the ordinary problems of little people. And they did not know that the controversial factory belonged to a the premier economic-avatar of the Rajapaksas.
They did not realise that their demand for clean water would transform them from patriots to anti-patriots, from members of the Volk to stooges of the Tamil Diaspora and NGO-lovers. Read More
“The Law,This Violent Thing”: Dissident Memory And Democratic Futures
Dr. Vasuki Nesiah
2013 Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture[1]
“The law, this violent thing”[2]
dissident memory and democratic futures
Neelan
In 1999 I was a graduate student in the United States. That summer I returned to Colombo to work with Neelan at the International Center for Ethnic Studies (ICES). As was the case for many young people who went abroad for their studies but returned to Sri Lankain the summer, for me ICES was a magnet. ICES was our institutional summer home, but it was also much more. Neelan had created a utopic place that provided intellectual community and political camaraderie. Our conversations leapt from Tamil poetry to Swiss federalism, from ethnographies of Baila to the Habermasian public sphere, from caste discrimination to free trade zones. Whether we were engaging with Edward Said or with Kumari Jayawardena, whether we were discussing the political economy of the Mahaweli dam or Sinhala teledrama, constitutional reform or dowry, these debates and their stakes were—often implicitly, sometimes explicitly—calibrated with justice struggles in Sri Lanka. Thus our own intellectual and political maturing was shaped through an investment in Sri Lanka’s future. The ICES thatched patio was the enchanted place from which, in a very personal sense, we knit the political and intellectual bonds and commitments that showed us how to “abide by Sri Lanka” in the sense that Qadri Ismail has invoked.[3] Undoubtedly many of us were less radical than we thought we were; moreover, class and social location insulated us from what the majority of our contemporaries were experiencing in the rest ofSri Lanka. Yet even in that privileged space, Neelan, through his own example, taught us how to conduct our lives in ways that gave and risked everything. Read More
