Monday, September 10, 2012

Pyramid Schemes: Beware Of Crafty Marketers Posing As Respected Persons To Lure Customers

By W.A. Wijewardena -September 10, 2012 |

Dr. W.A. Wijewardena

A salutary reader interest on share market regulation

A reader of the previous week’s My View titled “SEC: Not a mere watchdog, but a bloodhound mandated to bite” has raised an important issue with this writer. He has asked the question why it is necessary to have a regulator to police the financial markets and why can’t the market system punish the miscreants. Such a public interest on an important issue like the one in hand is a welcome development.

Market can fix the problems but it takes time

The answer to the reader’s query is ‘yes, the market system could punish the miscreants, and it would do so eventually, but since the miscreants use distorted information to gain profits at the expense of others, it takes time for the market system to pass the information to all. Hence, by the time the market would have punished the miscreants, it would have been preceded by a catastrophe that had killed everyone on sight – the participants, the national economy and even the bystanders’.

This can be explained by taking the ‘pyramid scheme market’ or known in a more respectable way as the ‘multi-level marketing market’ as an example.

Charles Ponzi: Offering secret to quick richness

Pyramid schemes are not novel developments and even in mid 19^th century, as illustrated by Charles Dickens in some of his novels, they had been present sporadically in England. But in modern times, the major financial scandals involving a pyramid scheme started in USA in early 20^th century with an unknown Italian migrant, Charles Ponzi, coming up with a super-profit scheme to lure investors. Having noted the price differences in International Reply Coupons or IRCs in USA and the rest of the world, he suggested to his investors that they could make super-profits – 50 per cent in 45 days and 100 per cent in 90 days, by buying from the low-priced market and selling at the high priced market. Economists call this arbitraging.

IRCs are a system of facilitating postal replies to trade inquiries. For instance, a trader in Sri Lanka could buy an IRC from local postal authorities and send it to a customer in USA so that he could use IRC to buy the required postal stamps from USA to reply the trader in Sri Lanka. The coupons are valued at the postage cost in the respective country. For instance, in our example, suppose an ordinary airmail letter costs in Sri Lanka Rs 50. If the exchange rate of the rupee to US dollar is, say, Rs 100, by spending one US dollar, a US citizen can buy two IRCs in Sri Lanka. If an airmail letter in USA costs $ 5, the two IRCs could be exchanged in USA for stamps to a value of $ 10. Ponzi told his investors that by selling those stamps in USA, one can make a huge profit. According to our example, it is a profit of $ 9 or just 900 per cent which no sane person can resist if offered as a profit opportunity.

Charles Ponzi: It is a crime not to exploit those willing to be exploited Read More

Asia Broadcasting Corporation (Pvt) Ltd.

SLMC to align with government in East; Rauff Hakeem makes revelation during government party meeting

Hakeem's comments came during a meeting which held under the patronage of

President Mahinda Rajapaksa at Temple Trees this morning.

Leaders representing the constituent parties of the UPFA were also present during the meeting.

It is also reported that President Mahinda Rajapaksa had extended his gratitude towards the party leaders for ensuring the UPFA's victory during Saturdays polls.

None of the parties which contested the Eastern province was able to obtain a clear margin of victory over the province.

Hence the SLMC remains the crucible in obtaining power over in the East.

The UNP obtained four seats over in the East while the TNA obtained 11.

If both parties amalgamate the total number of seats would stand at 15.

However the UPFA in a solo attempt managed to garner 14 seats over in the East.

If the National Freedom Front decides to support the government the number of seats would stand at 15.

A majority of 19 seats is required to establish power in the east when considering the total number of seats available in the province.

Hence the SLMC remains a crucial factor in maintaining the power shift in the East with 7 seats in its possession.

However the Supreme Council of the SLMC is due to convene tonight to decide

on its allegiance in the East.

Former Deputy Mayor of Colombo Asath Sally speaking to our news team expressed these views concerning the power shift in the East.

Sally who contested the Batticaloa district under the SLMC banner noted that congress did not have a future journey with the government.

However speaking at a function held in Kaduwela today, General Secretary of the UPFA Susil Premajayantha noted that the alliance will establish power over in the East.

Meanwhile the UNP & the TNA has notified the governor of the East that the parties were prepared to establish power over in the East.

The notification had been jointly issued by the leader of the TNA R. Sambanthan & General Secretary of the UNP Thissa Aththanayeke.

Our news team meanwhile obtained the Views of Attorney-at-law Gomin Dayasiri with concern to establishing power in a provincial council when the required majority was lacking.

peaking further he also had this to say…..


TNA to stake claim to form EP Council MONDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER 2012

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which secured the second highest number of seats at the Eastern Provincial Council yesterday said it would stake a claim to form the council with the support of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and the United National Party (UNP).

The TNA won 11 seats at the election, the UNP four and the SLMC four. Commenting on the outcome, TNA MP M.A. Sumanthiran told the Daily Mirror that since all these parties which were opposed to the UPFA which had clinched the absolute majority, it was entitled to run the council.

“The United People Freedom Party (UPFA) got 14 seats. In addition, UPFA ally National Freedom Front won a single seat by contesting on its own. Altogether, they have 15 members elected but the parties that are opposed to the UPFA exceeds that. Therefore, we stake a claim for the formation of the council,” he said.
Mr. Sumanthiran said the TNA initiated a dialogue with these parties.

‘We will write to the Governor staking a claim to form the council,” he said.

Also, the TNA charged that the abuse of state resources, threats and intimidation and malicious propaganda distorted the outcome of the election this year.
“The TNA could have got three more seats from each district in the east, had there been no malpractice. Then, we could have emerged as the clear winner. We cannot call it a free and fair election. There was a campaign against us. Even bogus leaflets bearing the forged signature of our leader R. Sampanthan were distributed to mislead voters.

This clearly had an impact on the final results,” he said.(Kelum Bandara)

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Eastern-North Central- Sabaragamuwa Province - FINAL RESULT

மட்டக்களப்பு மாவட்டம் - மட்டக்களப்பு மாவட்டம் இறுதி முடிவு

கட்சிகள்	பெற்ற வாக்குகள்	வீதம்	ஆசனங்கள்
தமிழ்த் தேசியக் கூட்டமைப்பு	104682	54.53%	6
ஐக்கிய மக்கள் சுதந்திர கூட்டமைப்பு	64190	33.44%	4
ஸ்ரீலங்கா முஸ்லிம் காங்கிரஸ்	23083	12.03%	1

செல்லுபடியான வாக்குகள்	205936	92.28%
நிராகரிக்கப்பட்ட வாக்குகள்	17223	7.72%
அளிக்கப்பட்ட மொத்த வாக்கு	223159	64.29%
பதிவுசெய்யப்பட்ட வாக்குகள்	347099

PC Polls 2012

Sabaragamuwa Province - FINAL RESULT

UPFA wins the Sabaragamuwa Province FINAL RESULT with 488,714 votes securing 28 out of the 44 seats. Click to view full result...

September 9, 2012 09:52 am

Ratnapura District - FINAL RESULT

UPFA wins the Ratnapura District

North Central Province - FINAL RESULT

with 274,980 votes securing 15 out of the 24 seats. Click to view full result...September 9, 2012 09:47 am

Eastern Province - FINAL RESULT

An Army Major Is Hospitalised; Mervyn Silva’s Son Malaka Silva Has Done It Again

By Colombo Telegraph -September 9, 2012

Army Major Shri Pradeep was admitted to the National Hospital after being assaulted by a group led by controversial minister Mervyn Silva‘s son Malaka Silva at a five star hotel in Colombo last night, according to a complaint made to the police.

Army Major was assaulted by Malaka Silva, Former Minister Mano Wijeratne’s son and five other persons at the Jaic Hilton car park at around 3.30 early this morning

Police spokesman Ajith Rohana said a corporal who was with the Major at the time of the incident was also injured during the clash. The Slave Island police have recorded a statement from the Army Major who charged that his official pistol had been taken away by the group.

Chaminda Senasinghe and (inset) Malaka Silva

Not unlike his father, Minister Silva’s son Malaka has been notorious for terrorizing Colombo and its nightspots and is also a paid government official in Minister Silva’s Ministry. No one dares speak out against the Silva family due to their connections both with the underworld and their immunity due to presidential patronage.

Malaka’s track record

In September 2007 Chaminda Senasinghe was attacked by Malaka Silva at the Bistro Latino Restaurant and Salsa Bar.

Malaka Silva and two of his bodyguards on November 2, 2006 pleaded guilty to attacking attacking Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) officers who were on a drug raid at a night club in a five star hotel.

Colombo High Court Judge Upali Abeyratne ordered each of them to pay compensation of Rs. 10,000 each and enter into a bond in Rs 100,000 each to be of good behaviour for one year. The accused were Malaka Silva and his bodyguards Sampath Kumara Rajapakse and Prasanna Kumara Suresh. The judge ordered that the compensation be directed to the Police Rewards Fund.

In a direct indictment by the Attorney General the three accused were charged with willfully causing hurt to deter a public servant from his duty. Malaka Silva was charged with intimidating and obstructing the PNB team which went on a narcotics raid with a court order to the night club My Kind of Place at Taj Samudra in the early hours of July 24, 2005.

The accused were indicted with assaulting police personnel including PC R.W. A. Dayan Lasantha – an offence punishable under Section 323 of the Penal Code.

According to the statements given by PNB officers and PNB OIC Buddhika Balachandra at the magisterial inquiry, on the said date the narcotics team, on a tip-off had raided the night club to arrest an ‘ecstasy’ dealer who was said to have been trafficking the drug at the hotel. When the PNB officers who were in plain clothes were leaving the night club after completing the ten-minute raid, Malaka Silva had obstructed them and abused them in foul language. Malaka Silva had allegedly threatened the police officer at gunpoint and assaulted the police officers. Later he had called his bodyguard who was armed with a pistol and attacked the police officers.

The PNB team had allegedly withdrawn from the place as the accused were armed and as they did not want to create a problem there. Later they had complained to the Colombo Fort police station.

The accused had later surrendered to the police station. Ironically two days after the attack former Police Chief, Chandra Fernando, announced the release of Malaka Silva and his mates saying that there was no evidence. Media reported that the police were under pressure not to work hard on the case.

In his attempt to defend his son, Mervyn Silva abused journalists in filth and stated that he knows what to do with the owners of Sirasa and Swarnavahini – two privately owned media outlets.

Earlier in connection with this trial Malaka had also been banned from entry into night clubs after 7 p.m with a warning that if the ban were violated the one million rupee bail on the two persons would be converted to a fine and charged from them. (Sunday Leader September 9, 2007)

Drug king pin ‘Wele Sudha’ amassed assets worth over Rs. 180m in 2 years

By Damith Wickremasekara
Flees SL from police net and conducts operations here from Singapore, India and Dubai

One of Sri Lanka’s biggest drug traffickers, Samantha Kumara Vithanage alias ‘Wele Sudha’ from Badovita off Ratmalana, who started off as a bootlegger and later switched to heroin trafficking for its ‘greater returns’, amassed assets worth a whopping Rs. 180 million or more in two years.

He fled the country last year with his wife, just when the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) opened investigations into his activities early last year. However, his operations still continue.But, almost a year later, his wife, Gayani Priyadharshani (32) alias ‘Suji’ returned to the country, leading to her arrest at Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA).

A senior CID officer, who was not authorised to speak to the media, said on grounds of anonymity, that, since her arrest they have been able to gradually unearth information about drug trafficking operations and their wealth, but they believe her husband was still conducting operations through his net works from India, Singapore and Dubai.

“We are aware that there are a number of persons connected to Wele Sudha who are continuing his operations”, the officer added.
To date, CID investigations have revealed that Wele Sudha owned two luxury apartments worth over Rs. 45 million, two houses in Bagatalle Road worth over Rs. 40 million, and two houses in Pannipitiya and Madiwela worth over Rs. 10 million.
He also owned a 16 perches land in Dehiwala worth Rs. 16 million and 14 perches in Nedimale worth Rs. 14 million.
He also owns three luxury vehicles and gold jewelley.

Pictures show a luxury house, a car, cash and jewellery – some of the assets the couple had amassed over the past two years

The Final Verdict In The Case Of Pahalagama Somarathana Thero

Sunday, September 09, 2012

Pahalagama Somarathana Thero pictured with President Rajapaksa

On May 3 this year, the Isleworth Crown Court convicted Pahalagama Somarathana, a high profile Sri Lankan Buddhist monk living in Britain, on four counts of indecent assault. He was on trial for crimes he committed more than thirty years ago, when he sexually assaulted a 9-year old girl. The monk was then 33.
Victims state that attacks took place over a period of time, where the girls were enticed by the monk with sweets. The court heard that one girl was attacked in the shrine room, another reportedly in the monk’s living quarters. The girl who had been assaulted in the shrine room was told that if she revealed what had happened to her, he would kill her father.
He faced nine charges of rape, and was convicted on four counts of indecent assault. He was sentenced to seven years in prison by the presiding judge, who spoke at length about how the actions of the monk permanently scarred the adult life of one of the victims.
Below, we reproduce excerpts from the sentencing remarks made by the presiding judge, with the names of the victim removed.
JUDGE MATTHEWS: You are clearly a young man of some ability, because within 3 years or so, you were entrusted with the setting up and
development of the temple in Selsdon, where from the start you were the chief Buddhist monk, and you retained that role over some 30(?) years or more. Simultaneously you’ve been central to the development of an orphanage and school, together with the temple in Gampaha in Sri Lanka, and you have a devoted following in both countries. However, within weeks of your arrival in Chiswick, you committed the first of four indecent assaults on a young girl, who was aged 9 at the time. The first three of these assaults took place in your room at the temple. The attraction for the 9-year-old was the offer of fruit polos. On the first of those occasions, while seated at your desk, you put your hand under her dress and under her knickers and touched her in the area of the vagina. Each of the two subsequent occasions followed a similar pattern but progressing to you penetrating her vagina with your fingers. The fourth and final occasion moved from your room to the shrine room. You were dressed in your robes, you pushed her against a wall, you pulled her knickers down, you inserted your fingers into her vagina. She felt excruciating pain. You said if she told anybody, not only would her mother be very angry, but her father would die. This crime, the fourth and final occasion, has been difficult for many to comprehend, the digital penetration of the vagina of a 9-year-old in the shrine room, in the presence of the Buddha. A betrayal of your religion, betrayal of the Sri Lankan Buddhist community in this country, but above all, a betrayal of the breach of the trust placed in you by XXXXXX XXXXXXXX and others on her behalf, not least her parents, who were strong supporters of you at the time.
You pleaded not guilty. Your mitigation is inevitably limited. The conduct of your defence involved pointing the finger of blame at your fellow monks. I make it clear that’s not an aggravating feature but it does nothing to assist your mitigation. There has been, even now, a total absence of remorse, you preferring, if the author of the pre-sentence report is correct, to allow, if not encourage, your public to believe that this is all a terrible mistake. I take into account of course the loss of your good name. I bear in mind the passage of time that has elapsed since, and the very many good things that you have undertaken during that time. However, it cannot be said that at the age when you committed these offences you were young and immature.
I take into account that you are now aged 66. And when I read all the tributes, the glowing tributes paid to you by very many people in places high and low, and indeed I heard many of them speak very eloquently about you during the course of the trial. I have read your personal letter to me, and I’ve read everything that’s set out in the pre-sentence report, and I’ve listened very carefully to the very able submissions made on your behalf by Mr. Stone.
The principles the court should follow in cases of this kind, as both counsel have reminded me, are correctly set out in a case called Hall(?), a recent case reported last year, and I am also reminded that when I consider the seriousness of the case, that a section of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, section 143, directs me to look at the offender’s culpability in committing the crime and any harm it causes.
When you said to XXXXX XXXXXXX that she mustn’t tell anyone because her father would die, she believed you, such was your power. And she says in her victim impact statement that she felt as if everything in her life had changed. She loved school, where she was already an outstanding pupil, but she was forced to spend substantial periods away. Her parents who, I repeat, were great supporters of you, had no idea what had gone on. Her (inaudible) doctors (inaudible) brought in a consultant paediatrician to see her. Fortunately for her and indeed for you, that particular crisis period passed. But as she got older and matured, she says – I’ve no reason to disbelieve her – that it affected her relationships with those closest to her, in particular her previous partner and her husband. And if truth be known, the full extent of the impact of your behaviour on her will never be known.
I pass sentence in accordance with the sentencing regime in force at the time of the offences, and the maximum sentence for indecent assault on a female under 13 years of age was 5 years. And in passing sentence, I bear in mind the principle of totality. So please stand up.
The sentence I pass in relation to count 1 is one of 12 months’ imprisonment, on count 2, 2 years’ imprisonment, count 3, 3 years’ imprisonment.
All those to be concurrent to each other. In relation to count 5, 4 years’ imprisonment, but consecutive to the 3 years on counts 1, 2 and 3, making a total of 7 years altogether.

Outlook attacks The Hindu’s Sri Lanka deception

A Tamil school in Kokku'laay, a sensitive location of Sinhala colonisation in Mullaiththeevu district, bordering Trincomalee district
A Sinhala Buddhist stupa built in 2012 at Vadduvaakal adjacent to Mu'l'ivaaykkaal in the Mullaiththeevu district
Another Tamil school in Kokku'laay, Mullaiththeevu district

[[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 September 2012, 00:31 GMT]

The Hindu’s Sri Lanka policy came under severe attack in an article written by S. Anand that appeared both in print and online editions of a mainstream Indian media, Outlook, on Saturday. Viewing what unfolded in Tamil Nadu in the past week as a “vulgar charade of competitive righteousness on the part of all players, including the media,” the role played by The Hindu’s orientation was brought out in the article in the following words: The Hindu’s former editor N. Ram had said within two weeks of the end of the war: “Justice has not been done to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government for its astonishing feat of rescuing by military means close to 275,000 civilians.” And later, a Sri Lankan minister picked up on the perverse cue and described the war as “one of the greatest humanitarian operations in modern times.”
Outlook is one of India’s four top-selling English Weekly Newsmagazines.

The outlook article by its former journalist and Navayana activist Anand came hard on The Hindu for casting a deception on the situation of Eezham Tamils.

Earlier this August, the establishments of both New Delhi and Colombo got Carnatic musicians T.M. Krishna and Unnikrishnan, and Bharatanatyam dancer Alarmel Valli to perform at a three-day festival held in Jaffna’s Nalloor Kanthasaami temple, marketed as the first such event in 30 years.

“The media’s abetment in this manufacture of normality has been crucial. So The Hindu—ever-eager and Rajapaksa-doting—obliged with a slew of reports that certified this festival as a sure sign that the region was ‘limping back to normalcy’. Neither Krishna, Valli nor The Hindu may have cared to notice the 28 new Buddha statues that have sprung along the A9 Highway that leads to Jaffna, especially near Vavuniya, a Tamil area where hardly any Buddhists live,” the Outlook article pointed out.
While sarcastic about the recipe for forgetting the wounds of war being clearly a mixture of tourism, sport, music, dance and literature and occasional military training from a “friendly” neighbour, Anand’s article said that what is “more worrisome is the apathy of India’s writers and intellectuals.”

The article was citing the examples of Githa Hariharan who campaigned to boycott Israel, having no qualms about going to Galle literary festival and to India-Sri Lanka foundation deliberations, and historian Mukul Kesavan having a holiday in Sri Lanka coming out with a ‘tourism’ literature.

According to Anand the current deliberations are a run-up to Sri Lanka hosting the CHOGM in 2013, when 54 heads of nations will gather—an exercise that is expected to condone the well-documented war crimes.

But it is not merely the CHOGM. Before that there will be the UNHRC session. Harping on between the 13th Amendment and the LLRC implementation, the deliberations are orchestrated at various fronts by various actors. The ultimate aim is successfully establishing the model of annihilation of a nation through genocide, yet coming out impeccable from the crime – the most deceptive part of the ‘counterinsurgency’ of Washington and New Delhi, commented Tamil political activists in the island.

S. Anand

The New Delhi initiative: Alarmel Valli performing at Nalloor last month [Photo courtesy: Dailynews]

The Hindu is only part of the script perfected over decades. As it is based in Tamil Nadu, it has been chosen to play the role of the kingpin media actor, to lead the Goebbels campaign of an array of dubious writers and actors, the political activists said.
On the issue Anand was raising, The Hindu’s line was quickly picked up on Friday by D.B.S. Jeyaraj, who titled a feature on a music workshop with pianos for the elite girls’ schools in Jaffna by British-Sri Lankan Dr. Tanya Nissani Ilangakkone Ekanayaka, as “Post-War Jaffna Children Feel the Heeling Touch of Music,” the Tamil political activists cited.

At least there is an awakening in India now over the deliberations of New Delhi. This is mainly because of the powerful grassroot movements. Popular political leaders cannot escape or engineer for long. But the one-million-strong Eezham Tamil diaspora and the dealers and survivalists that come from it detract political uprising and shield the ‘scriptwriters’ in the West, hoping that the establishments would do something for nothing, the Tamil political activists in the island further commented.

Australian diaspora - UK initiative: Dr. Tanya Nissani Ilangakkone Ekanayaka of Edinburgh College of Art, UK, taking a piano lesson at Chu'ndikkuzhi Girls College in Jaffna on Friday. The workshop, initiated by diaspora's St. John's College alumni (SJC87) based in Australia, was attended by students of Chu'ndikkuzhi Girls College, Uduvil Girlds College, Vempadi Girls College, St. John's College, St. Patricks College and St. Antonys College. No school event with diaspora assitance could take place without permission of the occupying SL military. [Photo courtesy: Daily Mirror]

Shock And Awww!

Fret, frown, forget. A formula for untruth and reconciliation.

S. ANAND

How do you efface memories of the fact that at least 40,000 civilians (Tamils) were killed in the final phase of a genocidal war in Sri Lanka, the majority of them by the Sri Lankan army’s shelling of hospitals and “safe zones”? How do you move on when 3,00,000 Sri Lankan Tamils were internally displaced—and continue to be treated as suspects by a chauvinist Sinhala regime? You encourage tourism, pilgrimages, music and dance performances, literary festivals, football friendlies and, of course, cricket tournaments. Once these vital signs of normality are in place, you look the other way as Sri Lankan Air Force personnel train at the Indian Air Force station in Tambaram, near Chennai, or are shifted out of the state when Tamil Nadu’s politicians file their obligatory grumbling.

What’s unfolded in TN in the past week is a vulgar charade of competitive righteousness on the part of all players, including the media. So when the Sri Lankan government sends handpicked, vetted tourists—mostly Sinhalese Christians, but a handful of Tamils too—to visit the Velankanni church in TN, it paints itself as a mature state honouring the sentiments of its minority population. Earlier this August, the governments of both nations got Carnatic musicians T.M. Krishna and Unnikrishnan, and Bharatanatyam dancer Alarmel Valli to perform at a three-day festival held in Jaffna’s Nallur Kandaswamy temple, marketed as the first such event in 30 years. Lost a limb to a bomb? Ayyo! Here, Kannamma, this Subramanya Bharathi song will be a balm! The media’s abetment in this manufacture of normality has been crucial. So The Hindu—ever-eager and Rajapaksa-doting—obliged with a slew of reports that certified this festival as a sure sign that the region was ‘limping back to normalcy’. Neither Krishna, Valli nor The Hindu may have cared to notice the 28 new Buddha statues that have sprung along the A9 Highway that leads to Jaffna, especially near Vavuniya, a Tamil area where hardly any Buddhists live. After all, The Hindu’s former editor N. Ram had said within two weeks of the end of the war: “Justice has not been done to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government for its astonishing feat of rescuing by military means close to 275,000 civilians.” And later, a Sri Lankan minister picked up on the perverse cue and described the war as “one of the greatest humanitarian operations in modern times”.

What we don’t read is how more than one person disappears every five days in post-war Sri Lanka. On August 30, the International Day of the Disappeared, over 500 families of abducted persons gathered in Vavuniya demanding justice and the whereabouts of their loved ones. India, with its own army’s brazen record of making more people (8,000) disappear in Kashmir, can teach some statecraft to Sri Lanka.

Tamil Nadu’s political class, having failed to do much when Tamils were slaughtered in 2009 when the general election was under way, now has to make the mandatory noise. They have to play their part in a script perfected over decades; but Tamil Nadu’s politicians have been as insincere as the Sri Lankan and Indian states. And should they cut some slack when Rajapaksa is mounting such a diplomatic charm offensive, they will look like fools. More worrisome is the apathy of India’s writers and intellectuals. The Rajapaksa regime has more blood on its hands than Narendra Modi’s in Gujarat, and yet writers of a liberal-secularist persuasion in India, such as Githa Hariharan who spearheads the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (INCABI) and had rightly campaigned against Amitav Ghosh accepting the Dan David prize from Israeli president Shimon Peres in 2010, have no qualms about participating in the Galle Literary Festival. She’d happily hold a workshop about “writing conflict” on a trip sponsored by the India-Sri Lanka Foundation (established by an MoU between the two governments in 1998; whose mandate now is also to send two Sri Lankan writers to the Jaipur Litfest in exchange for two Indian writers delegated to Galle). The embers of the 2009 war hadn’t even cooled when historian Mukul Kesavan, after a year-end holiday in Serendip, wrote in January 2011 about the “civility and courtesy that marked my transactions as a tourist”, “the non-stop prettiness” of the landscapes; he praised Sri Lanka’s achievements on the human development index front, and gushed over the “welfare state”, saying it “isn’t an aspiration, it actually exists”. In The Telegraph, not some tourism ministry brochure.

All this is a run-up to Sri Lanka hosting the CHOGM in 2013, when 54 heads of nations will gather—an exercise that is expected to condone the well-documented war crimes. In the interim, let’s sit back and be entertained by the T20 World Cup to unfold in Sri Lanka. The recipe for forgetting the wounds of war is clearly a mixture of tourism, sport, music, dance and literature and occasional military training from a “friendly” neighbour.

The Long Arc Of Nandikadal

By Sanjana Hattotuwa - September 9, 2012

Sanjana Hattotuwa

Recent events in Tamil Nadu demonstrate the risk inherent in what most suggest is the Rajapaksa regime’s LLRC gambit – to drag on a process of enfeebled accountability and reductive reconciliation until the sections of the international community interested in independent, international investigations into allegations of war crimes lose interest, shift focus or both. A little time coupled with support from the Beijing consensus, they believe, would clear them of their deeds.

Activists Beyond Borders by Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink was published 14 years ago, long before the telegenics of recent social and political upheaval in the MENA countries. It is referenced in a new publication by the United States Institute of Peace on how new media (Internet communications, web based social media and mobile content), though it may not immediately change the dynamics on the ground within a country, may actually shore up longer term support for political reform and indeed, regime change, from outside. As New Media and Conflict after the Arab Spring by USIP flags, Keck and Sikkink argue that “boomerang effects,” in which activists in one country can create political momentum in another country to put pressure on their own home government, may make it more costly for the leadership of the country under duress to violently suppress protests

For example, it’s very unlikely that though the Rajapaksa regime shot and killed an FTZ worker during the suppression of violent protests last year – and adroitly navigated the resulting public outcry – it will use live ammunition against a protest march by FUTA. The movement has, quite remarkably, quickly embraced web based social media. FUTA’s Facebook Group Page has, at the time of writing, nearly 11,000 members. Any physical harm against FUTA will be documented, discussed and disseminated, in addition to and independent of mainstream media, opening a world of grief within the country and from beyond that the government will not be able to control, contain or easily censor.

Conscious of the shrinking space to kill, abduct, maim, threaten and censor – as it did with wanton excess and completely impunity during war time – the regime will embrace more overtly conciliatory tactics, buying and biding time with domestic and international critics. The greater negotiation here will not be between the regime and activists, but between key individuals within the regime, who need each other to survive, but will oppose each other’s responses to post-war Sri Lanka’s growing public discourse. This regime on regime contest will be interesting. From memes to cartoons, tweets to blogs, video to websites, op-eds to documentaries, Facebook groups to new books, there are new damned spots that can’t be easily washed away, much as the regime would like to. Thus far, the government’s responses are liberal servings from the Authoritarianism 1.0 recipe book. Censor, block and rekindle ancient laws to stifle free expression. Abduct and torture a few, surveil many more.

Yet this is not stopping the dissent.

This presents an opportunity, but not for facile regime change in the near term. There are growing opportunities for the strategic weakening of the regime’s stranglehold of the public imagination. These must be seized. USIP’s report suggests very clearly that new media is absolutely no guarantee of any immediate or sustained political and systemic change. This puts paid to what for example the UNP loudly proclaimed, in 2011, would be the inevitable trickle down of social activism from Tahrir Square to Lipton Circus. What is does imply is that not unlike the reported travel of our Foreign Minister to London over the FCO’s new travel warnings on Sri Lanka, the more the regime tries to suppress inconvenient narratives, the more the international community will be reminded of its deeds – the inescapable paradox of a regime seeking to erase inconvenient domestic narratives, yet only succeeding in bringing into sharp focus what it has erased, internationally. There’s no winning this war through the Nandikadal rulebook. This is a new information domain, what Julian Assange has called an age of radical transparency, where you cannot hide what you’ve done to erase and censor, even if the targets of censorship were successfully shut down or forcibly shut up.

The corrosive impact and illogic of Tamil Nadu’s imprudent politicians warrants no repetition. Yet it’s a humbling reminder to our government that it simply can’t control how the world sees and remembers Sri Lanka, no matter how much Conde Nast features our more cosmopolitan side.

There is no forgetting the inconvenient, and Nandikadal’s boomerang, thrown early 2009, will return.

Sajanana’s blog ; http://sanjanah.wordpress.com/