The End
Rising from the ashes…

Jan
17

As part of my journalism studies the studies, I’ve headed out to Raichur with a team of others to cover deprivation in rural India. My experience in covering poverty so far has been either with one of the many places that I worked for as field visits, or during my work with Perambara last year.

I didn’t really know what to expect, since the stories I’ve heard about poverty in India were bad – and the ground reality of things were pretty different from the forms of poverty that we experience in Sri Lanka.

We Sri Lankans complain a lot about our education system – I’ve done so myself in this blog. Something that we notice in Sri Lanka, even in the most rural of places, is almost universal access to Primary education that you get. That is something that I don’t see happening in India, despite a mid-day meal consisting of rice and sambar (and occasional side dish of extra veggies) being served everyday thanks to the Government.

Some photographs from the first day are posted below. As always, they are released into the public domain. High resolution versions of the photos would be available upon request.

This post was written while I was in Raichur, but I didn’t get to upload it since India’s mobile connectivity kind of sucks. Doing it now, about a week later.

Dec
02

A new video showing alleged summarily executions of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres by the Sri Lankan military has been released online and aired on Channel4, amidst a rough welcome to the Sri Lankan President during his state visit to the United Kingdom.

The Sri Lankan Government issued a statement from the High Commission in the United Kingdom drawing parallels to a short version of the same video which was released last year, categorically denying its authenticity.

The statement referred to a video which was released last year by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), later aired by Channel4, which the Sri Lankan Government claimed was fabricated.

“Last year when Channel 4 News telecast a similar video the Government of Sri Lanka clearly established, by reference to technical considerations, that it was not genuine but fake,” the High Commission said in it’s statement. “The present video is nothing more than an elongated version of the same video”.

The claims that the first video was fabricated were refuted by United Nations’s Special Rapporteur Prof. Philip Alston, who after investigations which included a panel consisting of a forensic pathologist, a forensic video analyst and a firearms expert concluded the video to be genuine.

The new video, running for nearly six minutes, shows the execution of two blindfolded naked men by persons dressed in Sri Lankan Army uniforms, speaking in Sinhala.

At the beginning of the video a voice of someone appearing to be a commanding officer tells “Everybody else leave. Now enough”, immediately prior to one execution. Read the rest of this entry »

Nov
28

As much as people, and the Government, carry on talking about it, Hambantota will never be the next Colombo, nor will it be close to it. Yes, there is an airport that will be coming up, there is the famed harbour, there is a new Indian Consular office, but there are some simple reasons why Hambantota will never be what the Government wants it to be.

Getting airlines to change flights to Hambantota will not be an easy task. Whilst Mahinda Rajapaksa Express Mihin Air would do it on whim, no other airline would. There should be sustained passenger flow for that to happen.

Hotels will still be in Colombo, and so will the facilities – meeting locations, lifestyle places, diners, shopping, living areas et cetera. In essence, the psyche of Sri Lanka’s “glamourous” employment is Colombo – Galle Road, World Trade Centre, Colombo 2, 3, 7.

Colombo will also continue to host the workforce. Colombo still houses the best schools in the country, and in this country of equal education to all – where a Thomian in theory is no better than one from Harispattuwa Central – the workforce coming out of those schools will continue to be there and their lives will continue to revolved around Colombo.

Sri Lanka has been established for a pretty long time, and Colombo has been the hub for centuries. Change is not easy, and change will never happen when it’s done over the whims and fancies of a single politician or his family.

As a farce to garner the support of the South, the Hambantota scam is working quite well. Rajapaksa is helping Hambantota – but we all know how is Helping Hambantota works.

Nov
19

Mahinda Rajapaksa swore in today for his second term. The 18th amendment gives him a chance to run ad nauseam. By the looks of it, he will. Whether he will win the election or not is a different story, and I plan on staying in the side of the sceptics. Six years is a long time in any political sphere, but in Sri Lanka a lot of things can change over that time.

Rajapaksa has managed to establish the ultimate constitutional monarchy through weekly fishing trips to the opposition parties to ensure that his grip in the legislature grows, and he doesn’t seem to be running out of things to give to the opposition. Opposition MPs will run out before he runs out of goodies.

He has brought development, has brought money, and in a sense he has united the Sri Lankan people. The fact that he has effectively killed off civic society, media and any form of dissent or opposition does not matter. The fact that he along with his family is corrupt, and that Rajapaksa-ization has spread to all areas of the country is irrelevant. People want him, and people do get him.

Gracchus from the movie Gladiator utters these words about the new Emperor: “I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they’ll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they’ll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it’s the sand of the coliseum. He’ll bring them death – and they will love him for it” – Rajapaksa has done the same, the people love him for it.

An article on groundviews broke down the famed Milk Rice (note: Kiribath is milk rice, and Kavum is rice cake), and did the math on how many people it could have fed. This is the lame argument that goes “don’t leave food on your plate, do you know that African kids are starving” – it doesn’t make sense. Gets hits, and make people who read it go “Yes, no?”, but that’s it. Yes, that’s wastage of Government money, but there are bigger things that the media can uncover.

Rajapaksa was elected through a democratic process. Even though a lot of people have alleged fraud, nobody has been able to prove it. He will serve for another six years. In the process, he will drag the country lower and lower, all the while the administration as a whole will be shoving the dick of control into the throat of the Sri Lankan democracy, choking it to death in an auto-asphyxiated orgasm.

But let’s not give Rajapaksa more momentum by making lame arguments and baseless propaganda and lies. We all, including the ardent followers of Rajapaksa, know that his administration is the worst to hit Sri Lanka. Civil liberties have been curtailed to unprecedented extents and corruption has become rampant. The rule of law and respect for constitutional rights have been discarded like a used condom.

Let’s make sane, rational arguments. Nobody likes a sore loser. I still dislike Rajapaksa and his clan of brothers the same way I disliked him last year, and the year before. But I’m trying to keep my arguments clean. In the past, I probably didn’t. That’s part of growing up.

Oct
31

A few weeks back I was in a place called Marina Beach in Chennai. The place is a popular attraction among the locals. Hidden in plain sight though, is a small group of people who have a story to tell. When I was walking by one day taking pictures, a woman called me over. Not knowing the language, I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. I recorded a few photographs with my camera, and then later on went with a friend who can speak Tamil to hear their story. The following is what they told me.

CHENNAI: The heat at Marina Beach in Chennai can get so high, that goats try and find shade to shield themselves from the sun that beats down on them. Along the stretch of roads past the roadside eateries and the fish-vendors, there is a small group of tents, if they can be called so.

The tents are made of used gunny bags and plastic sheets kept up by poles and scavenged iron bars. Inside one, a woman makes dosa for a meal. In another, a girl, no more than ten years old, is putting an infant to sleep.

The families have been living here more than seven years.

“We used to live in houses which we rented out, just over those shops”, one of the women point to a series of buildings a few hundred meters away.

“But then the landlords wanted the houses and we didn’t have anywhere to go, so we came here.”

The 20 or so “tents” house 50 families. Since a large number of tents attract the attention of the authorities, the residents here say that they remove tents now and then to try and be inconspicuous; this will buy them some more time to stay at the beach.

“There was a tent where you are standing,” Rajbhan Rekha points to a spot on the ground. “We took it off because the police are asking us to move, and if they are lesser tents, then they don’t force us so much.”

Two months ago however, the police wanted to move them out.

“Police came and started beating us with sticks and tried to chase us away. We told them that we have nowhere to go, and if they chase us from here we’ll kill ourselves,” says Dhanasekera Dhanalakshmi. The police withdrew threatening to come back with more personnel, but never did. Things have been calm so far.

Most of the women here are either widows, or their husbands have left them.

“We send our children to school,” says Rekha. But as a result of the dirty living conditions, children often fall sick.

“The doctors tell us things to do, but all we can make sure we do is to boil the water that we use” she says. Shopkeepers nearby allow the dwellers to boil water.

According to Dhanalakshmi, the boxing-day Tsunami of 2004 washed away all they had. “All the tents were washed away”, she says.

Another pitches in, pointing at a girl no more than ten years old, “She was an infant then, and she almost got washed away. I fished her out of the water.”

Dhanalakshmi and Rekha sometimes manage to find daily work.

“We go on daily work sometimes to wash clothes or to cook. The shopkeepers help us find work,” Rekha says. They are however reluctant to go away from where they are.

“Who is going to protect our houses when we are not here? We are scared to go out, because the Police might come and break down our tents, and nobody would be able to stop them” says Dhanalakshmi.

The dwellers say that life on the roadside has more risks than the casual oberserver sees. “Sometimes in the middle of the night, drunk men come and sleep alongside us” she says. “Once a man came to my grand-daughter, who had only attained puberty a short while before, and started fondling her.”

Dhanalakshmi says that protesting to these advances are futile.

“When we try to chase them away, they tell us that we are staying here illegally and we have no right to protest them coming” she adds, and says that the entire group – men, women and children – now resort to sleeping on the beach for safety.

“All we need is a house which we can lock” she says. “That way I can protect my grand-daughter.”

Oct
16

A topic which I wrote about a few years back on one of my old blogs, was the subject of child monks. Sri Lanka has a proud history of children being ordained as monks, in the form of Samaneras. I personally believe that this leads to children losing their childhood, as the life of the obedient Samanera includes that of studies, meditation, more studies, alms, chants, studies, meditation and being at the receiving end of the occasional thigh-sex.

The current pro-nationalistic Government had planned to ordain 2600 children as monks in celebration of the 2600-year anniversary of the birth of the Buddha, which falls next May. And for the first time, activists are standing up.

Founder head of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) and much-respected activist Prof. Harendra de Silva told the BBC that he “strongly condemn(s) this crime against our children,” adding that the government should improve the country’s economy rather than “allowing the children to be abused”.

And he was not alone. Dr. Hiranthi Wijemanne, who took office as the head of NCPA also chipped in. The entire BBC article can be read here, and it’s a good read.

Yes, Sri Lanka has a proud culture of sustaining Buddhism, just like some African cultures have a proud history of cutting a woman’s labia off. Growing smart and progressing as a culture, means understanding that people’s rights are fundamental. If D.M. Jayarathna and the President want to spend taxpayer money to (adding to the other numerous ways of wasting taxpayer money) promote Buddhism in a country where there are other religious minorities, then that is one blank cheque that should be torn apart.

Sep
15

France yesterday outlawed the wearing of the full veil for women in France. Apparently whilst the law does not even say the word “Muslim”, it’s designed in such a way to target out the Muslim women who do cover their heads. The reasons cited are many, including protection of culture and tradition (French ones, obviously) and national security. Plus there was the woman who was arrested while driving. The charge was that the veil restricted her vision, which I think is a bit of a retarded one, considering SWAT teams wear pretty much the same gear. If the argument was that if she ran over someone, the Police would not be able to identify her, or something of the sort, that would have made sense.

France is making a big mistake with the veil ban. In a country where the motto is “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity“, France is acting like a bunch of frat boys. And if one takes the numbers into consideration, it gets worse. The population of France is over 65 million, and the number of estimated women who cover their heads? 1900. No, not 19,000, but a less than two thousand women. Read the rest of this entry »

Sep
07

The proposed constitutional amendments, now given the go-ahead by the Supreme Court, will go on for debate and vote in Parliament tomorrow (Wednesday, 8 September). By the looks of it, it would pass, which would allow President Rajapaksa to stand for re-election once his next term is over. Read the rest of this entry »

Sep
01

For those who want to have a look at the proposed amendments to the Constitution, a copy in PDF can be found here.

Sep
01

Mahinda Rajapaksa has managed to secure more than 2/3 from the 225-member Parliament. This means he can practically bring in any legislation that he wants (I assume providing it doesn’t clash with the constitution) and get it passed. As Indi pointed out here, it’s partially due to Ranil Wickremasinghe being a weak opposition leader.

But the other side of the argument is that Rajapaksa’s popularity which allows him to do this. In a way, he’s like the cool kid in class who also happens to be the class bully. Because he’s cool, kids flock around him, but he still manages to bully them the way he wants. I’m not saying that Rajapaksa is a bully, but I’m just saying. Read the rest of this entry »

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