Changing The Messenger Will Not Sell Without Showing Change On The Ground

By Jehan Perera -December 23, 2013 

Jehan Perera

Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga is to visit the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) next month to explain the steps taken to address accountability issues stemming from the last stages of the war with the LTTE, which the international community is pressing for.  There is much faith being pinned on him as a capable and efficient public servant.  However, what those in the international community who are keenly watching developments in Sri Lanka will not wish to only hear another impressive governmental presentation of facts and figures that they cannot verify.   They need to believe what they are being told, and this can only come from a credible monitoring mechanism.   In its absence what they will listen to is the opposition and civil society in Sri Lanka.

The message from those who are not part of the government so far is negative and not getting positive.  Speaking at the opening of a rice mill funded by Australia last week at Vishvamadhu in the Northern Province, its Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran provided a summary of the issues faced by his administration. He said, “Firstly it is the fact that our Northern Province is under Army occupation even nearly five years since the end of the war. It is assessed that nearly 150,000 members of the Military are resident in the Northern Province. They occupy illegally lands belonging to our people. This denies our people access to their own lands for which many of them have documents though sometimes destroyed during the war.

“Secondly Sinhalese people from the South are being brought in secretly and made to colonise the lands belonging to our people. Even if the lands be state lands that does not give rights to any one and every one to colonize them. But the Army actively supports such moves.  Thirdly our people lack security. Our women are subjected to gender harassment. Many face the worst that could happen to them and they cannot talk about it in the open. The Police are aware as to the culprits but they are powerless. Fourthly, lack of Employment. We have put up impressive roads mainly to enable the Army to travel quickly keeping the Northern Province under repression. But we have not generated Employment opportunities for those affected by the war.

                                Read More

Jaffna’s First Art Gallery

Jaffna’s First Art Gallery

By Thulasi Muttulingam

A bright white building has just recently opened in Rakkah Lane, Jaffna. Enter it and the first thing the eye is drawn to, is a cold white sculpture of a flame; a beautiful blend of ice and fire, seemingly depicting controlled passions set alight. And thus is one introduced to Jaffna’s first art gallery, opened this December.

Jaffna’s First Art Gallery by nelvely

We Remain Hopeful Global Tamil Forum

Monday, December 23, 2013

With the idea of a South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) being proposed for Sri Lanka, the Tamil Diaspora is keen to see how far such a process will go – if implemented. The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) has been very active on the Sri Lankan issue and has even had talks with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa regarding Sri Lanka on many occasions. In an interview with The Sunday Leader, Suren Surendiran, Spokesperson for the GTF, shared the views of his organisation on a TRC in Sri Lanka.

Q: President Mahinda Rajapaksa had recently said the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) is keen to learn about the TRC process of South Africa. How does the Tamil Diaspora see the TRC process and the interest shown by Sri Lanka?

We Remain Hopeful Global Tamil Forum by nelvely

New mass grave found in Sri Lanka four years after war

12/22/2013 13:36 GMT

COLOMBO, December 22, 2013 (AFP) - An unmarked mass grave has been found in Sri Lanka's former war zone, the first discovery of an unmarked gravesite since troops defeated Tamil rebels more than four years ago, police said Sunday.

Construction workers in the coastal district of Mannar stumbled on at least 10 skeletal remains buried at a location where they were laying a new water pipe, said police spokesman Ajith Rohana.

"A judicial medical officer has gone to the site. Further forensic examinations are underway to determine the age of the mass grave," Rohana told AFP. "Additional staff are being inducted for the investigation."

There was no immediate indication who the victims were or how and when they had died.

However, it is the first time that evidence of a mass grave has emerged in the former war zone since troops declared victory over separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas in May 2009.

Both government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels have been accused of killing civilians during the 37-year separatist war.

Sri Lanka has denied allegations that its troops killed up to 40,000 civilians in the final months of fighting.

Earlier this year construction workers stumbled on another mass grave in central Sri Lanka, hundreds of kilometres away from the conflict zone.

At least 154 people had been buried in the grave at the central district of Matale, a hotbed of an anti-government uprising between 1987 and 1990.

Local forensic experts said it dated back to a period when the then-government led a crackdown on leftist Sinhalese rebels.

The insurgency by the mainly Sinhalese JVP was unrelated to the separatist campaign in the north and east by Tamil rebels.

The UN has estimated that at least 100,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka's Tamil separatist war.

aj/sm

© 1994-2013 Agence France-Presse

Why Financial System Stability Should Be A Function Of Central Banks

By W.A Wijewardena -December 23, 2013 |

Dr. W.A. Wijewardena

Central banks to produce inflation free worlds

Traditionally, central banks have been mandated to attain two objectives. One is to keep the value of money it has issued at a stable level known as ‘the price stability objective’. In the laymen’s language, this objective is known as maintaining an ‘inflation free world’ but in actual practice, it means maintaining an inflation rate at a very low level, say around 2 to 3%, so that it would not discourage people to save, invest and plan their activities taking a long term view of what they will do in the next five to ten years.

How this objective relates to Sri Lanka was discussed in a previous article in this series titled “Central Bank’s mandate is to attain both ‘economic and price stability’” (available here ).

Supervision of banks to be overridden by monetary policy objectives

The other is to maintain the financial system of the country – the institutional setup consisting of banks and other institutions that provide financial services to people – with no failure or disruption of the system known as ‘the financial system stability’ objective. In many central banks and even in Sri Lanka’s Central Bank before 2002, the price stability objective was the ‘supreme objective’ of the Bank meaning that it always overrode the financial system objective if the latter stood in the way of a central bank’s realisation of the price stability objective.

There is a valid economic reason for elevating the price stability objective to this supreme position. That is the conflict that arises when a central bank tries to attain both these objectives at the same time forcing it to seek to attain only one at a time. If a central bank has to sacrifice its ‘inflation-free-world objective’ simply because it had to support the banks and other financial institutions, it would be criticised later for having failed the main job it is supposed to do in an economy. That main job is to maintain the value of the money it has produced at a stable level.

Compromising the price stability objective  Read More

A Brief Note On Inexcusable Writing: Mangalika De Silva In Social Text

By Pradeep Jeganathan -December 22, 2013

Dr. Pradeep Jeganathan

I write to correct, for the sake of the public record, serious, egregious misrepresentations of two public interventions –  “ICES & I”, and “Sri Lanka’s Common Future,” that have appeared in print recently. In the course of an article published in  scholarly journal [Social Text 117 • Vol. 31, No. 4 • Winter 2013 :1-24], ( read here ) which will be cited here after as MDS) Mangalika de Silva, “interrogates,” i.e. questions, “ideologies… advanced by three prominent Sri Lankan public intellectuals…”(MDS:2). I am one of the “three prominent Sri Lankan public intellectuals,” whose work she questions. The others are Professor Michael Roberts, a senior historian and anthropologist, whose major works, including the Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931, are scholarly classics and Dr. Dayan Jayatillake, the author, among other work, of Fidel’s Ethics of Violence a landmark of erudition, originality and passion. My response, however relates only to the comments about my work; I look forward to future interventions by Roberts and Dayan Jayatillake, if they choose in write in reply. Nor I am concerned all that very much with de Silva’s larger argument here, except to note that it doesn’t amount to very much at all.

On the one hand, de Silva makes blanket generalizations about all three authors she is questioning. For example, she notes that they have an ideology of  “minoritarian… disposability,” “opposi[ing]… transnational humanitarian discourse”(MDS:2), “Increasing tolerance of routinized extrajudicial violence”(MDS:2). In another passage, de Silva claims that, “the complicit intelligentsia of the Sri Lankan war effort strove to humanize ethnocidal war crimes by casting Tamil victims as a historically stagnant, Orientalized, and roboticized rabble”(MDS:4). These are just a few examples of her generalizations. Focusing here, exclusively on my work, I underline that these are egregious and grotesque misrepresentations of the rather straightforward ideas in the two short, public interventions of mine that she cites.

On the other hand, in the section of her essay that is devoted to my work, de Silva’s misrepresentations move from the egregious to the downright false. Take for example this first example: “In response he [Jeganathan] proposed an affinity between the nation-state project and his version of radical democracy in accordance with the formula that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” thereby transplanting his anticolonial rhetoric and antifascist ethics into the encampment of counterinsurgency through Carl Schmitt” (MDS:15). I have not used the words appearing in quotation marks in de Silva’s text, ““the enemy of my enemy is my friend,”” in the two essays at hand. There is a very serious question here about de Silva’s quotation and citation practice that continues in this manner throughout the essay.                     Read More 

Devanagala - Latest in the racist agenda to provoke Muslims

By Latheef Farook-23 December 2013

Devanagala is a beautiful peaceful village in the central hills about six kilometers from Mawanella on the way to Hemmathagama. The village has been known for the rock called Devanagala Rock. There is a Buddhist temple and an inscription on the rock. According to those in the village Devanagala area was believed to have been the place from where Sinhalese kings dispatched garrisons to different places. Muslims in the village claim that they were settled there by Sinhalese kings to defend the Kandyan kingdom from invaders.

Devanagala - Latest in the Racist Agenda to Provoke Muslims by nelvely

2013 Round-Up

• by Sanjana Hattotuwa 
• - on 12/23/2013

Photo taken from 30 Years Ago exhibition in Colombo, held at the Park Street Mews in late July. See the project website here.

Groundviews published 142 articles over 2013. Our Facebook fan page grew by over 4,000. Our Twitter feed, the most probing, interactive and engaging of any media related Twitter account in Sri Lanka, grew by 3,000 followers.

Given the site’s guidelines, which require Editorial vetting of all content, at a conservative average of 2,000 words per article, I’ve looked at over 280,000 words of original content over 2013, plus well over that word count in comments. I’ve also penned over 10,000 tweets this year, averaging around 800 a month.

It’s been utterly exhausting – curating the site from airports, train stations, in public transport, from my car parked on the side of a road, over a range of devices and connections to the web, at all hours of the day, including staying up most of the night in New York after around a 24 hour journey there just to support through live updates of an important gathering in Sri Lanka.

It’s also been extremely fulfilling to give voice to and a space for issues and people mainstream media in Sri Lanka does not, and will not capture.

Some highlights for me include the launch of the new version of the site, Sri Lanka’s first and to date only fully HTML5 compliant, responsive media website, allowing anyone, from any device including smartphones and tablets (save for ageing BlackBerry’s), access the site content. The new site also features high-resolution images and a crisp web font, both specifically designed for Apple’s Retina displays on the Macbook Pro, iPhone, iPads and other high-resolution screens like the Google Chromebook.

Content-wise, we launched Sri Lanka’s first, and to date only media relatedFlipBoard magazine for tablets, smartphones and the desktop, with now around 150 readers. To commemorate 3 decades since the infamous anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983, Groundviews curated and launched a critically acclaimed initiative called ‘30 Years Ago‘, which has its own website.Historically vital audio recordings from four sessions held during the exhibition in Colombo were also made available online.

Throughout the year, the site published stories on the web, on Facebook and via Twitter well before other mainstream media, or to address a media blackout. Our coverage of CHOGM 2013 was resulted in the site crashing a number of times because of the traffic load. The site gave space to activists whose murder was openly discussed on live State radio (also see this tweet thread) to articulate concerns over media ethics and their own safety and security. We published disturbing reports of enforced birth control amongst Tamils in the North of Sri Lanka, and over controversial moves to ban the niqab in a leading University.

One of our most read stories this year was around what a brutish senior government minister did to Mohammed Irshad three years ago, and the trauma he and his whole family suffer to date in exile. We openly called out the blatant lies by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the United Nations as well as by Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister on militarisation in the North, launched an international media fellowship programme with Canada, and spoke in Toronto to commemorate Lasantha Wickrematunge.

During the year, we featured exclusive op-eds by Amnesty International and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

Groundviews also features complete, indexed and open archives of the historically unprecedented Twitter Q&A’s with Lalith Weeratunga, the Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka as well as the complete sham of an effort with the President himself, while he was attending the GA sessions in New York.

The site also extensively covered the growth of Islamophobia in Sri Lanka over 2013, and the growing violence of Sinhala-Buddhist extremism supported by the highest levels of Government. We began the year by some of the most in-depth coverage of the impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, including a primer for non-legal experts as well as a short form video Q&A with one of the country’s leading constitutional theorists.

Through content unique to the Groundviews, we bid a sad farewell to friend and mentor Sunila Abeysekera in September and to the equally irreplaceableNelson Mandela in December. Throughout the year, we extensively featured the compelling photography of Vikalpa, our sister civic media web initiative in Sinhala.

As recognised by Freedom House in 2013, Groundviews provides “… news and a range of commentary, even on sensitive stories and events that are barely covered by the mainstream media.” All of this content is generated by a few voices, largely in and from Sri Lanka, fighting for a just peace, with dignity for all and stronger democratic governance.

Hope to see you contribute and engage over 2014 as well.

Season’s greetings and best wishes for a safe, happy and healthy New Year.

Sanjana Hattotuwa
Founder and Curator

Does Sri Lanka Need A TRC? 

Monday, December 23, 2013
The Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) established in South Africa, after abolishing apartheid, to heal the country and its people, is generally considered as one of the successful reconciliation process.

Of late, the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has taken interest in studying the recovery process of South Africa, leading many to believe that GoSL is being considerate of TRC approaches in its own national reconciliation process.

Many are of the opinion that, if a TRC is being established in Sri Lanka, it needs to be contextualized according to the country specific requirements and should demonstrate transparency. However, some believe that the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) is a similar approach made by GoSL even though most of the recommendations are yet to be implemented.

Does Sri Lanka Need a TRC by nelvely

Find if Vijithamuni is behind missing white turtle - president

 Monday, 23 December 2013 

The president has ordered the IGP to immediately inquire into whether deputy Vijithamuni Soyza was behind the theft of a valuable white turtle from the Kosgoda turtle centre. He is intending to make maximum use of the opportunity thus opened up against the wildlife minister, with whom the Rajapaksas are having a very deep grudge. 

A key supporter of former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed had offered Rs. 35 million for this white turtle as Maldivians believe that a white turtle with a spell on its back will bring very destructive results if released into the sea. However, it disappeared as the deal was about to be finalised through singer Amal Perera, a very close friend of the white turtle’s owner.

The white turtle went missing on December 15 or thereabouts, soon after the presidential polls in the Maldives.

In an indication of his connection to the incident, minister Vijithamuni Soyza held a media briefing at his ministry and alleged Amal Perera was behind it, claiming that the singer had brought Rs. 20 million and met him several times with the intention of buying the valuable animal.

An employee of the turtle centre told us that it was very difficult to steal the white turtle, as there were advanced surveillance systems and three carnivorous dogs protecting it.

Also, catching a turtle needs special training, or else an untrained person can have his fingers bitten and severely damaged, he said.

Therefore, the white turtle had disappeared with the knowledge of the owner of the place, said the employee.

The president too, had suspected the minister and the turtle’s owner were behind the incident and ordered the police chief to give him an immediate report.

His sole intention is to silence Vijithamuni Soyza, a headache for the Rajapaksas in Uva province.

New mass grave found in Sri Lanka four years after war

olice tape closes off part of a mass grave, at the Matale hospital compound in central Sri Lanka. (File pic)

December 22, 2013
Colombo:  An unmarked mass grave has been found in Sri Lanka's former war zone, the first discovery of an unmarked gravesite since troops defeated Tamil rebels more than four years ago, police said on Sunday.

Construction workers in the coastal district of Mannar stumbled on at least 10 skeletal remains buried at a location where they were laying a new water pipe, said police spokesman Ajith Rohana.

"A judicial medical officer has gone to the site. Further forensic examinations are underway to determine the age of the mass grave," Rohana told AFP. "Additional staff are being inducted for the investigation."

There was no immediate indication who the victims were or how and when they had died.

However, it is the first time that evidence of a mass grave has emerged in the former war zone since troops declared victory over separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas in May 2009.

Both government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels have been accused of killing civilians during the 37-year separatist war. 

Sri Lanka has denied allegations that its troops killed up to 40,000 civilians in the final months of fighting.

Earlier this year construction workers stumbled on another mass grave in central Sri Lanka, hundreds of kilometres away from the conflict zone. 

At least 154 people had been buried in the grave at the central district of Matale, a hotbed of an anti-government uprising between 1987 and 1990.

Local forensic experts said it dated back to a period when the then-government led a crackdown on leftist Sinhalese rebels.

The insurgency by the mainly Sinhalese JVP was unrelated to the separatist campaign in the north and east by Tamil rebels.

The UN has estimated that at least 100,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka's Tamil separatist war.

Sand bags left over from Colombo Night Races poses threat to motorists

Details

 

Created On Monday, 23 December 2013 

Motorists in Colombo are faced with a problem when travelling on the streets in the Fort area due to the unclear sand bags, which are leftovers from the Colombo Night Races held last week.

The sand bags used as safety barricades at the Colombo Night Races are still on the roads for many days on the streets, with some having toppled over, causing risks to motorists.

Drivers have reportedly said that peak-hour and night travel in Pettah had been difficult due to the barricade sacks lying on the roads.

All-Island Three Wheeler Drivers’ Union (AITDU) President Lalith Dharmasekera has told the media that the fallen sandbags and tyres could topple a three-wheeler and harm passengers inside.

He has observed that the roads should have been cleared right after the conclusion of the races.

Lanka Private Bus Owners Association (LPBOA) President W. M. G. R Wijeratne has said concessions should be given to buses for being forced to take longer routes to Pettah during race week due to the traffic diversions.

“The authorities need to take initiatives that would be beneficial not only to the event organisers but the public and public services as well,” Wijeratne has said.

Chief Minister Prasanna Ranatunga has admitted the event had disrupted public routines for three days but asked people to view the effort as an investment made to the city to develop its infrastructure and tourism.

The race had also failed to bring in a revenue to the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) due to Western Province Chief Minister’s decision to waive the entertainment tax due to the council. The loss incurred by the CMC has been estimated at Rs. 3 million.

Trapped miners found dead 
Trapped miners found dead
 
  December 23, 2013 

 
The bodies of the two miners who were trapped underground in a gem mine that collapsed in Angammana, Rathnapura have been recovered by the Rathnapura Fire Brigade.
 
The Rathnapura Fire Brigade yesterday conducted rescue operations in an attempt to rescue the miners who were trapped 30 feet underground after the mine they were working flooded with water.
 
The reason for the deaths is believed to be drowning after the mine was flooded.

Principle arrested for assaulting student 



ByKamal Suraweera-December 23, 2013

Principle arrested for assaulting student 

A principal of a government school in Madolkale who conducted private English classes in Wattegama area has been arrested by the police, for severely punishing a female student who attended his class.

The principal had reportedly assaulted the student who attended his class, which resulted in the child being hospitalised. The student is currently receiving at the Wattegama Provincial Hospital due to a part of her ear being damaged due to the assault.

The principal has been arrested due to a complaint lodged by the student's father.

Family of murdered British aid worker in Sri Lanka still awaiting justice

Cover-up fears remain for fraught parents as trial date of six men linked to Christmas Day killing of Khuram Shaikh finally set

David Cameron has raised the murder of Red Cross worker Khuram Shaikh at the seaside resort Tangalle with the Sri Lankan president. Photograph: theguardian.co.uk

Sam Jones-Sunday 22 December 2013 

Mohammad Zaman Shaikh woke up on Christmas Day 2011 feeling sick and uneasy. He had slept badly but couldn’t say precisely why. All he knew was that something wasn’t right.

When, at 10am that morning, the police knocked on the door of the family home in Rochdale with the news that his 32-year-old son, Khuram, had been murdered in Sri Lanka, Zaman initially assumed they had made a mistake.

It seemed unlikely that his youngest son, a rehabilitation programme manager with the International Committee of the Red Cross, could have died in a hotel at the seaside resort of Tangalle. He had, after all, worked in some of the most dangerous and desolate places on earth, from North Korea to Ethiopia, and had gone to Sri Lanka to relax with his girlfriend after a stint fitting prosthetic limbs in Gaza.

After a little while, though, Zaman’s certainty began to evaporate.

"I remember my heart beginning to beat faster and faster and my eyes began to fill up as I started to think that the police information could be correct," he says. "When they told Khuram’s mother, she screamed and cried hysterically, then she fell to the floor and fainted."

Khuram is thought to have been attacked and killed while trying to protect his girlfriend from a group of men who had arrived at the hotel and started to sexually harass her. Two years on, Khuram’s mother still cries as she goes through the daily torture of trying to imagine her son’s final moments.

"While I worry for her health and mental state of mind there is very little I can do to help her," says Zaman. "A mother’s loss is different to anyone else’s and only a mother can explain that."

Zaman, a 67-year-old retired businessman, tries to cope by visiting Khuram’s grave several times a week and by clutching to the hope that one day his son will get justice.

But although the trial of the six men accused of murdering Khuram and raping his girlfriend is finally due to begin in March, and although Prince Charles and David Cameron have raised the murder with the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Zaman is far from confident about the island’s judicial system.

Frequent delays in bringing the accused to court – not to mention the fact that one of the alleged attackers is a politician with close ties to Rajapaksa – have taught him to limit his hopes.

"The Sri Lankan authorities have handled the case in a painfully slow manner," he says. "They are trying to brush it under the carpet in the hope that people will forget about what happened and that we will stop fighting for justice."

But what they fail to understand, he adds, is that “we will never stop fighting for justice”.

Zaman, who has been unable to speak publicly about Khuram’s murder until now, is succinct when he reflects on what the loss has done to the family: “It has shattered our whole world.”

He remembers Khuram as a happy, handsome and sporty boy who was obsessed with Liverpool FC and would take any opportunity to play football, cricket or snooker. “My son grew into the most kind-hearted, selfless and ambitious person you could ever wish to meet,” he says. “He put everyone else’s needs above his own and I am incredibly proud of everything he achieved in his short life.”

Zaman’s pride reached a pinnacle when Khuram got his job with the International Red Cross. Despite realising how dangerous the work would be, he knew his son had set his heart on it.

"When he explained that he wanted to use his skills and knowledge to help those less fortunate than himself, we started to come round to the idea," says Zaman. "He assured us that he would stay safe wherever he went."

The Shaikhs’ MP, Simon Danczuk, has travelled to Sri Lanka twice this year to ask ministers why the case is progressing so slowly, and was instrumental in bringing the matter to Cameron’s attention. “The loss this family has suffered is unbearable and I’ve seen for myself the pain in the parents’ eyes as they struggle to come to terms with what happened to their son,” says the Labour MP. “I do not want another Christmas to pass with Khuram’s killers still walking free.”

At the end of last month, Cameron wrote to Danczuk to tell him that he had raised the subject of Khuram’s murder “very directly” with Rajapaksa during the Commonwealth summit in Colombo, adding that he had told the president that the “shocking and appalling case” needed to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Until that day, the family is fated to remain trapped somewhere between grief and despair. Khuram’s father will keep up his near-daily trips to his son’s grave; his mother will tear herself to pieces trying to imagine his suffering, and his five-year-old niece will continue asking for the uncle she does not know is dead.

Closure, if such a thing exists for a family who have lost a son in such circumstances, is very distant – a fact of which Zaman Shaikh is painfully aware.

"Khuram was incredibly close with his siblings, especially his younger sister," he says. "Khuram was a mummy’s boy and although he has died once, I watch his mother die every single day."