Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
“I have memories of the future, visions of the past…” - ‘A Cloud in a Glass of Water’ directed by Srinath Samarasinghe
Ernesto Che Guevara famously autographed a copy of his slim volume ‘Guerrilla Warfare’ to Salvador Allende with the line, “to Companero Allende who is trying to reach the same destination through a different path”. When the tiny band of survivors of Che’s guerrilla column in Bolivia made it across the border, it was Salvador Allende who was there to receive them. Juan Somavia was a comrade-in-arms of Salvador Allende. Having been an academic at the Catholic University of Chile, Somavia was the advisor to the Chilean Foreign Ministry and an ambassador under Allende who would be martyred in a military coup in September 1973.
I had been an admirer of Juan Somavia from my mid-teens, but it would be almost four decades later when we met and worked together. He was the head of the ILO when I finally met him. I had just become the chairperson of the ILO’s governing body. Mahinda Rajapaksa arrived in Geneva to address the ILO barely a fortnight after I had handed my credentials as Ambassador/PR.
After the bloody military coup, Somavia spent decades in exile, doing political and intellectual work, setting up the famous Latin American think tank for the study of the transnational corporations. It was a dangerous business. A fellow ex-ambassador, Orlando Letelier, Allende’s representative in the USA, was murdered in 1976 by a car bomb planted by Chilean secret service agents and a US contractor, in Washington DC itself. It took two decades to bring the killers to justice. It was Juan Somavia who introduced me to Orlando Letelier’s son Juan Pablo, a highly respected (and long-haired) Socialist Party Senator. Read More
Human Rights Activists Plan A Trip To France
By Malinda Seneviratne -July 6, 2014
Malinda Seneviratne
Meanwhile In A Parallel Universe
‘We have to do something about it,’ Psychosothy Paranamuttu started things off at Celery Café, Colombo 3 where some hardcore HR hawks had gathered to obtain comfort of companionship in trying times.
‘Yes, since we are not nationalists, we have to show nationalists and everyone else that we are internationalists,’ J.C. Galamuna opined.
‘I agree. We are beyond narrow identities. We don’t do identity politics. We do identifying politics. We are not racists. We are human racists.’ That was Bimalka Ferdinando.
‘I second that!’ Mohan Edirmanne, on a short visit home from Nepal, chipped in.
‘Hey Mohan, long time no see. Where were you hiding, man?’ Johanne Perera was curious.
‘Doing this and that men, don’t you know?’
‘Did you order?’ Sankajaya Hattotuwegama was interested in getting on with the business at hand.
‘Your favorites, brother!’ Paranamuttu calmed the young man down.
‘I know I am not exactly an HR man, but we are all in this together, and I hope you don’t mind me tossing in my two pennies worth,’ Charlie Hadaland cautiously wanted inclusion. Read More
