tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-174392572024-03-06T22:48:44.377-08:00AachcharyaAachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-82267571497505797892011-05-16T01:20:00.000-07:002011-05-20T14:30:34.498-07:00On Palestine & Sri Lanka: the Politics of Aid & Development - Some Reflections and Notes for Future Research<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkbj5M0bybRV-WNgFbGZ62oiGjw8M1M90FbZf96SLEZF-R3J3gmsMDwkcPTFKEHQ3H7DAxnt36C8ZXx8jrOB9oROnuLZJ3_ZUoUgsyZl4R30roRgHeGcO0WPLYuCEgSKlRUtCiLg/s1600/th21_israel_col_eps_636075f.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkbj5M0bybRV-WNgFbGZ62oiGjw8M1M90FbZf96SLEZF-R3J3gmsMDwkcPTFKEHQ3H7DAxnt36C8ZXx8jrOB9oROnuLZJ3_ZUoUgsyZl4R30roRgHeGcO0WPLYuCEgSKlRUtCiLg/s320/th21_israel_col_eps_636075f.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608913841287781058" border="0" /></a>(Graphic Courtesy: <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2032802.ece">The Hindu</a>, May 20 2011)<br /><br />Dr Sara Roy of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University is an eminent scholar on Palestine. Her profile can be viewed here at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Roy">wikipedia</a>. In this <a href="http://fora.tv/2008/10/14/Sara_Roy_Beyond_Occupation#fullprogram">speech delivered in 2008 </a>she talks about the politics of donor activities in Palestine which ignored Gaza and supported West Bank with the intention of dissecting, splitting and diluting the Palestinian movement for independent statehood (Fast forward to the 38th minute of the video for this part of her speech). She talks about how Western donors engaged with the <span style="font-style: italic;">status quo</span> in a manner whereby donor support by design and effect supported/support Israeli Occupation. She points to how the earlier notion of occupation as bad for peace is being replaced with 'normalising' occupation. Also see her response to a question on Hamas <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReH3D1lrB0Y&feature=relmfu">here</a>.<br /><br />There are definite parallels to Sri Lanka. Scholars like <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2058432">Patrick Peebles</a> have commented on how the dry zone colonisation programme had an impact on the ethnic conflict. Serene Tennakoon has commented on how the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/ae.1988.15.2.02a00060/abstract">rituals of big developmental project</a> was important to the kind of post colonial nation building project that was being experimented by the Sinhala elite. Amita Sashtri in 1990 wrote an <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2058433">important article</a> that dealt with the material basis for the movement for Tamil separatism. Sunil Bastian has extensively written about the politics of land reform. His recent article for <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=politics+of+land+reform+and+land+settlement+in+sri+lanka&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=Sunil+bastian+politics+of+land+reform&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=aa2a5230fe2f7258">Panos Sri Lanka</a> provides for a good overview.<br /><br />More recently in 2009 the International Crisis Group in a <a href="http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-asia/sri-lanka/159-sri-lankas-eastern-province-land-development-conflict.aspx">report </a>(couched in a language that seeks to make the point without discomforting donors) points to the need for conflict-sensitivity and to ensure local participation in planning and implementing developmental projects in post-war Eastern Province.<br /><br />In a lecture that i delivered at the invitation of the Jaffna Science Association at the Faculty of Science of the University of Jaffna on the 13th of July 2010 titled 'Environment and the Law in the Contest of Post War Development', I drew attention to the ADB Funded Dry Zone Water Supply Programme and how it related to the Maavilaru Anicut Controversy of 2006 that triggered the final war. I also drew attention to how quick fix, rapid, mega style development and associated political imagery is being used by the GOSL (with explicit or inadvertent support from donors) in post-war Sri Lanka to undermine the political project for sharing of state power. In that speech I drew attention to the following projects being currently funded by the ADB: 1) ADB's Dry Zone Water Supply and Sanitation Project - its sub project in Vavuniya - which involved the construction of dams requiring 700 acres of land (including the acquisition of 96 acres of private land belonging to Tamils), 2) The Iranaimadukulam Project of bringing ground water to 300,000 residents in Jaffna peninsula which i claimed would have a 'Cauvery dispute effect' in relations between the people of Killinochchi and Jaffna thus dissecting the Tamil community in the North and weakening the focus on the need for a political solution. (Consider parallels to what Sara Roy says about dissection of the Palestinian community) I also drew attention to the Extra Ordinary Gazette Notification 1617/32-2009 which detailed plans to build Mankulam as an urban centre and eventually the capital of the Northern Province. The Urban Development Authority disclosed plans to settle 100,000 people by 2010 in Mankulam and estimating the population to triple to 300,000 people by 2030. I questioned 1) whether this was being planned with the objective of further effecting demographic changes in Tamil majority areas with the focus now including the Northern Province and 2) the intelligibility of the water supply project to Jaffna from Iranaimadukkulam (in the Killinochchi District) given the water scarcity in Mankulam (also located in Killi). I also raised issues relating to the Lime stone quarrying taking place in Jaffna which in fact is a major contributor to ground water salination<span style="text-decoration: underline;">, </span><a href="http://sundaytimes.lk/100509/News/nws_18.html">being carried with support from the Ministry of Defence. </a>I proposed that rain water harvesting would be the best response to the ground water problem in Jaffna and requested at that meeting for University academics from the relevant departments (Community Medicine, Geography, Law, Economics et al) to come together to study this issue scientifically. So far nothing has come out. I hope to research further on this on my own later this year.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-47089140980459172272011-01-30T02:05:00.000-08:002011-01-30T02:21:53.739-08:00On why the Tamils (& the Minorities) Have No Space in the English Print Media in Sri LankaWe have known this all along. But if someone was looking for post-war evidence of it, they should read today's <a href="http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110130/Editorial.html">Sunday Times Editorial</a>. If anyone thought a section of the English media in Sri Lanka leaves some space for 'liberal', 'progressive' politics, think again. Note that the tone of the editorial is critical of the Govt. But note how even in being critical of the Govt they cant help but spat the communal venom.<br /><br />The editorial:<br /><br />1) spats venom on the TNA ("MPs of the TNA, most living in Colombo preaching the gospel of hate and communalism from their local pulpits seem assailed by convenient amnesia");<br /><br />2) says that the GOSL is right in being wary of devolving powers to the North and East ("If the Government in Colombo is wary of devolving political power to the North, and quite rightly so, then there is a bigger onus on its part not to choose to ignore the happenings where its writ is now back in force")<br /><br />3) justifies the High Security Zones ("it is far too early to dismantle the large scale and widely spread military garrisons in these areas");<br /><br />4) has a utilitarian advise to the Govt on dealing with paramilitary forces ("No doubt, these political elements did yeoman service in helping the Security Forces neutralize the LTTE during the latter years of the 'war', but their determination to enforce an iron grip on the populace and run their writ on the politics of the area has all the hallmarks of backfiring on the Government.")<br /><br />5) and plays on the Sinhala polity's fear psychosis that India/TamilNadu has an expansionist agenda in the North and East. ("The Government had better beware. Into the vacuum of inaction comes increased Indian presence. The opening of a consulate was the first step. The Sri Lankan Government must treat the North as part and parcel of this country before someone else considers it as an extension of Tamil Nadu".)Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-47736877221912415532011-01-04T03:49:00.000-08:002011-01-04T04:09:07.560-08:00Building internal capacity for autonomyWatched two past episodes of Hard Talk regarding challenges faced by sub-state actors in making the case for a separate state (in the case of Martin McGuiness - the case for a unified Ireland) in the current climate of financial crisis- the primary question being whether small states can cope up on their own when they are faced with a crisis of similar scale and sorts.<br /><br />Interview with Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland<br />http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wk7w5<br /><br />Interview with Marin McGuiness - Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland<br />http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wmjh9<br /><br />Alex Salmond cant fail to impress. An economist, he was very much in control of the subject of Stepehen Sackur's questions and argues persuasively why being an independent country might have helped Scottish economy face the crisis better. Our minority leaders - and those within the TNA would do well by watching this interview - I don't know anyone within the Tamil political circles who has a good understanding of the economics of the North and East and the country in general, and articulate the need for more fiscal autonomy for the provinces. We need to develop better capacities to make the scientific case for autonomy.<br /><br />The interesting part of the the McGuniess interview is the section where Stephen Sackur asks McGuniness whether he now feels trapped and cooped by the Birtish state into the devolution agreement with dissident Republicans getting more and more angry with Sinn Fein. The culture of politics is different here in the UK - McGuiness's point about political evolution might not make sense in our context - but there are lessons for Tamils as the Sri Lankan Government tries to co-opt our political formations into something very inadequate - PCs and the 13th Amendment.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-90436376646793973532011-01-01T03:41:00.000-08:002011-01-01T04:03:07.314-08:00The 'Sui Generis' Nature of KosovoRead this on Prof William Schabas's <a href="http://humanrightsdoctorate.blogspot.com/2010/12/dick-marty-corroborates-carla-del.html">blog</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Dick Marty, the member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe who exposed the secret US detention centres and the rendition flights, confirms the charges of Carla Del Ponte that forces associated with the Kosovo Liberation Army took Serb prisoners into Albania where they were murdered for their organs, which were subsequently trafficked through organized crime networks".</blockquote><br />The Political Leader of KLA is now the Prime Minister of Kosovo. Something that was and is repeated by western diplomats in Sri Lanka is how it was impossible to side with the LTTE because it was highly illiberal. Clearly the KLA seemed to be worse. So supporting a secessionist movement really comes down to nothing but pure and simple geo-political calculations. Hence the US promoting Kosovo's independence as a 'sui generis' case. All this talk about earned sovereignty doesnt really help make sense of why Kosovo and why not Tamils in Sri Lanka.<br /><br />Staying on the Kosovo topic this recent opinion piece in the Guardian restates the realist school on the politics of state recognition:<br /><br /><p></p><blockquote><p>Notwithstanding that states encompassing between 80% and 90% of the world's population (by my rough calculations) recognise the state of Palestine, while states encompassing only between 10% and 20% of the world's population recognise the Republic of Kosovo, the western media (and much of the non-western media as well) act as though Kosovo's independence were an accomplished fact while Palestine's independence is only an aspiration that can never be realised without Israeli-American consent; and much of international public opinion (including, apparently, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah) has – at least until recently – permitted itself to be brainwashed into thinking and acting accordingly.</p><p>As in most aspects of international relations, it is not the nature of the act (or crime) that matters but, rather, who is doing it to whom. Palestine was conquered, and is still occupied 43 years later, by the military forces of Israel. What most of the world (including the UN and even five EU member states) still regards as the Serbian province of Kosovo was conquered and is still occupied, 11 years later, by the military forces of Nato; the American flag is flown there at least as widely as the Kosovo flag and the capital, Pristina, boasts a Bill Clinton Boulevard and a larger-than-life-size statue of the former American president.</p></blockquote><br />Note: I am back to blogging after a 8 month absence. One of the new year resolutions is to blog more regularly.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-71067135392533633632010-04-09T20:43:00.000-07:002010-04-09T20:49:45.868-07:00General Elections 2010: If ACTC had not split could TNA have secured a 6th seat in Jaffna?<p class="MsoNormal">It is widely speculated that UPFA (EPDP) might not have got their 3<sup>rd</sup> seat in the Jaffna electoral district and TNA could have got their 6<sup>th</sup> seat if the votes received by the Tamil Congress had gone for the TNA. Lets us scientifically test this claim: </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">------------------------------<wbr>---------------------------</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The present configuration for seat allocation in the Jaffna Electoral district has been worked out as follows: </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Total number of relevant votes </p> <p class="MsoNormal">(Votes of all parties receiving more than 5% of the votes) = <span> </span>125,365</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Resulting number” (Number of votes needed to secure one seat) = 125, 365 / 8 = 15,670</p> <p class="MsoNormal">(calculated for 8 seats; one seat bonus going for the TNA)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hence in the first round of seat allocation</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">TNA – 65, 119 / 15, 670 = 4 seats and a remainder of 2439 votes + 1 bones seat</p> <p class="MsoNormal">UPFA – 47,622/15, 670 = 3 seats and a remainder of 612 votes</p> <p class="MsoNormal">UNP – 12,624/15,670 = 0 seats and a remainder of 12,624 votes </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">7 seats allocated one seat yet to be allocated. So in the second round of allocation the 8<sup>th</sup> seat goes to UNP for having highest number of remainder votes. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">------------------------------<wbr>------------------------------<wbr>--</p> <p class="MsoNormal">If the ACTC (TNPF) had not split and the 6,362 votes it received had gone to the TNA the seat allocation would have been as follows: </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Total number of relevant votes </p> <p class="MsoNormal">(Votes of all parties receiving more than 5% of the votes) = <span> </span>131, 727</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Resulting number” (Number of votes needed to secure one seat) = 131, 727 / 8 = 16,465</p> <p class="MsoNormal">(calculated for 8 seats; one seat bonus going for the TNA)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hence in the first round of seat allocation</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">TNA – 71,481 / 16, 465 = 4 seats and a remainder of 5,621 votes + 1 bonus seat<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">UPFA – 47,622/16, 465 = 2 seats and a remainder of 14,692 votes</p> <p class="MsoNormal">UNP – 12,624/16,465 = 0 seats and a remainder of 12, 624 votes</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Only 6 seats allocated in the first round. 7<sup>th</sup> seat allocated to UPFA having highest number of remainder votes, which means they gain their 3<sup>rd</sup> seat. 8<sup>th</sup> seat allocated to UNP for having second highest number of remainder votes. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">HENCE THE CONGRESS VOTES ADDED TO TNA (if the split had not happened) DOES NOT MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE FINAL SEAT ALLOCATION. UPFA would have got their 3<sup>rd</sup> seat irrespective. <span><br /></span></p>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-68834098653540736482010-02-13T18:03:00.000-08:002010-02-13T18:14:25.813-08:00The loud and clear message from the voter turnout and the voters in the North and East<p><em>Note: This piece appeared on <a href="http://www.groundviews.org/2010/01/29/the-loud-and-clear-message-from-the-voter-turnout-and-the-voters-in-the-north-and-east/">Groundviews </a>on the 29th of January, two days after the election results and (to my surprise and discomfort) was republished by Mangala Samaraweera on his <a href="http://mangalasamaraweera.com/2010/02/01/the-loud-and-clear-message-from-the-voter-turnout-and-the-voters-in-the-north-and-east/">website</a> on the 1st of Feb 2010. </em></p><p>I wrote on the 30<sup>th</sup> of December in <a href="http://www.groundviews.org/2009/12/30/exploring-the-myth-that-the-tamil-vote-will-be-the-decider-at-the-presidential-elections/">a post to </a><em><a href="http://www.groundviews.org/2009/12/30/exploring-the-myth-that-the-tamil-vote-will-be-the-decider-at-the-presidential-elections/">Groundviews</a></em> (and republished in the <em>Daily Mirror</em>) that the assertion that the Tamil people would be deciders in the Presidential election would be a myth. There was nothing brilliant or extraordinary about what I said at that time, but it was contrary to public perception that was prevalent all over the country and in international media circles. What I suggested was that for the Tamil people to be deciders two conditions have to be fulfilled. I wrote:</p> <blockquote><p>“For the Tamils to be the deciders in the election (like they could have been in the last) they have to vote as a whole, to one candidate and the Sinhala votes to both candidates should be almost equal.”</p></blockquote> <p>A lot of people thought it would be close in the South. I feared a good lead for Mahinda Rajapaksha in the rural south. I told my friends that a 600,000-800,000 lead in the South by Mahinda cannot be offset by SF by the margins that he receives in Minority areas. I never expected a 1.8 million lead for him in the South. Some of it might have been rigged. We just don’t know and we will never know. But one thing is clear the rural south did come out strongly for him.</p> <p><strong>My vote</strong></p> <p>I voted in the Nallur electorate in the Jaffna electoral district and I did vote for General Sarath Fonseka. My early impression was that both candidates did not deserve my vote but I soon altered my stance. For me taking a decision to spoil the vote meant not believing in the system. The system is indeed fundamentally flawed but then if we can’t change things democratically, the only alternative is for change to be attempted violently. Most in this country are tired of losing lives and I am definitely one of them. So the option of not believing in the system was not open to me. It was just inconsequential. I also thought that it is not right to approach this elections standing from an ivory tower of personal conscience and die hard political philosophy and principle. Politics, including the act of voting, is about taking tough decisions. I did not have the energy for another MR presidency. I was convinced that a vote for anyone else but SF would in effect indirectly contribute to a MR Presidency. The unknown devil at least I thought would provide an opportunity to try something differently. If the SF presidency even by a fraction or a chance might have increased the collective opportunity of life over death of the Tamil community I thought it was my duty to vote for him. And hence I voted for Sarath Fonseka, despite his flaws, despite the vaguness <em>vis a vis </em>his position on the problems of the minorities, despite his anti-minority pronouncements in the past, despite his role in the war. I voted for him because it was the only strong way of showing my protest to the incumbent and because I believed in the political forces supporting him. It was an uncomfortable decision to take but I had no other option.</p> <p><strong>The voter turnout in Jaffna</strong></p> <p>Many have expressed concern about the ‘poor turnout’ in Jaffna. Some die hard SF supporters were annoyed with the turnout. Some Pro-LTTE and Anti- LTTE Tamil Diaspora sites who opposed TNA’s decision to support SF have called the low voter turnout a boycott. Some know-it-all types in the Diaspora have said that the Jaffna people are not interested in a democracy. Nothing can be more insulting.</p> <p>The following are some reasons for the ‘low voter turnout’, in my opinion:</p> <ol><li>40% of registered voters are not in Jaffna. The 600,000 registered voters includes those migrated. Many Tamils in Colombo who moved from Jaffna have their vote in Jaffna – they are not registered in Colombo.</li><li>Killinochchi low voting (Killinochchi is part of the Jaffna electoral district. Only 7% voting was recorded mainly because of the poor state of facilities provided for the IDPs to vote),</li><li>Bomb scare in TNA strongholds on the day of the elections (example Nallur, Manipay),</li><li>Internal displacement within Jaffna (From the Islands to the mainland. From Chavahacheri (Thenmarachchi) to Jaffna and other places). People possibly were not willing to travel 10-12 kilometers to vote.</li><li>80,000 people displaced by the High Security Zones (23,000 live in welfare centers and the rest with family and friends or have migrated).</li></ol> <p>The Chavahacheri, Udupiddy, Manipay, Vadukoddai, Thenmarachchi electorates in Jaffna recorded 30% voter turn out. This must be 60% of the actual residents. The Jaffna and Nallur electorates polled around 20%. The Jaffna peninsula average voter turnout should be in the high twenties and this must be at least 50% of the actual residents. If there had been no High Security Zones, internal displacement within Jaffna and proper voter registration this might have gone upto at least 60%. The 2010 turn out is the highest voter turn out ever in Jaffna in a Presidential election. The figures from the last election are:</p> <p>2005 – 7.868 (1%) (Note: LTTE enforced a boycott)</p> <p>1994 – 17,716 (2.97%) (Note: Jaffna was under LTTE control at this time)</p> <p>1999 – 117,549 (19.18%) (Note: Killinochchi polled less than 4% – Was under LTTE control).</p> <p>In 2010, 185,132 votes were polled with an average of 25%.</p> <p>A comparison with the general election also shows us that this turn out is quite decent: In the 2004 General Elections Jaffna polled 300,000 votes (47%) the highest recorded in more than 20 years in election history. (I attended the only TNA rally in Jaffna on the 23<sup>rd</sup> of January in Sangilyan Thoppu, Nallur where R. Sampanthan of the TNA said that last time the margin for MR was less than 200,000 and the vote that TNA had received in the 2004 General Elections was 620,000. I thought at that time that comparing the turn out at General Elections was not good analysis). In the 2001 election around 200,000 votes were polled (30%). In 2000 around 130,000 votes were polled averaging at just over 20%. It must be remembered that in both 2001 and 2004 General Elections the TNA had the backing of the LTTE.</p> <p><strong>The voter turnout in the rest of the North and East</strong></p> <p>Batticaloa has polled a remarkably consistent 64% as in the last three presidential elections. Vavuniya polled 43% this time and voted in the 40s in 2005 and 1999. Trincomalee polled 65% and had polled in the 60s in the past three elections as well. Voter turn out in Mannar was 35%. It has been consistently in the 30s. In 2005 the turn out was 30%. None of these districts were affected by LTTE’s enforced boycott in 2005. Mullaitivu has recorded less than 4% in the past having been under LTTE control and this time recorded a 14%.</p> <p><strong>What is the message from the voter turn out in the North?</strong></p> <p>The message is that there are very serious issues to be addressed prime among them being the resettlement of IDPs. This includes both the Vanni IDPs and the Old IDPs. Demilitarisation is also key to a higher voter turn out.</p> <p><strong>What is the message from the people of the North and East at this election?</strong></p> <p>The ‘liberated’ have clearly registered their protest against their ‘liberator’. The vote in Killinochchi and Mullaitivu amongst all difficulties and however small were clearly against the President. All over the North and East this has vibrated. The Jaffna vote clearly rejects Mahinda Rajapaksha’s Chechnyan style local leader Douglas Devananda. I don’t know how Dayan Jayatilleke is going to still call him the Jaffna people’s choice. EPDP won only Kayts in the 10 electorates in the Jaffna peninsula that even by a 600 vote margin. Even in Jaffna and Nallur which make up by and large the Jaffna Municpal Council (which he supposedly won) he lost receiving only 27% and 21% of the votes. It is loud and clear from Jaffna that he is not wanted; his style of politics is not desired. (But he might do well in the general elections under an MR presidency. Patronage politics will help him for another six years). The East has similarly spoken very clearly rejecting MR’s Chechnyan style local leader V. Muralidharan alias Karuna Amman. Pillayan should be silently happy with the vote. Two years of centrally controlled pseudo-provincial council rule has been rejected by the people. (Here again the TNA might struggle at the General elections under a MR Presidency).</p> <p>The vote shows a clearly divided country: 65% of the minorities (Tamils, Muslims, Up Country Tamils) preferring one candidate and more than 60% of the majority community preferring another. I do not know what else we need to show that we are far from being a united country. But the President does not seem like he wants to reflect on this message. To journalists who met him soon after the elections he has repeated the same story: “the IDPs are happy in the camps”. We are likely to see more of the same.</p> <p><strong> </strong></p> <p><strong> </strong></p> <p><strong>The way forward </strong></p> <p>I am afraid that the result might be taken negatively by the minorities and the opposition parties, that even if they come together that they cannot make an impact. But the minority parties should take the positive message – the possibility that this election gave/has given of collectively envisaging an agenda. The opposition parties have to resolve and work together to break the common sense philosophy in Sri Lanka that being in the opposition is useless. If our democratic culture is to be rejuvenated we need opposition parties to believe that an opposition can do credible work. Concrete action based on a concrete agenda that mobilizes the people has to be worked out. The minority parties have to show their communities that it is possible to serve them sitting in the opposition. A strong coalition between the TNA-SLMC-DPF is immediately possible. That should be a starter for a broader coalition of progressive forces. This Government is sure to continue to wage a war on the opposition with new force. It has to be resisted and fought back democratically. For that we need opposition leaders who believe in themselves.</p>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-22404799416832971582010-01-05T17:41:00.000-08:002010-01-05T17:56:03.669-08:00The Tamil Vote will be the Decider: A Myth<p><span style="font-style: italic;">This piece written for and posted on </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.groundviews.org/2009/12/30/exploring-the-myth-that-the-tamil-vote-will-be-the-decider-at-the-presidential-elections/">Groundviews</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> on 30 December was reproduced by the </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=72182">DailyMirror</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> on 31 December </span><br /></p><p>Two Tamil Dailies Thinakkural and Uthayan (Jaffna) carried yesterday (28 December) a headline report of retired Supreme Court Justice C.V. Wigneswaran’s opinion on whom the Tamils should vote for at Presidential elections. (Justice C. V Wigneswaran is a highly respected member of the Tamil intelligentsia and while on the Supreme Court was known to be extremely independent and forthright in his views. He was named by TNA as their nominee for membership in the Constitutional Council)</p> <p>Though the report is filed in a manner as if though the newspapers contacted Justice Wigneswaran to get his response regarding rumours that some sections of the diaspora had contacted him about contesting at the presidential elections, the two reports are verbatim similar which probably means that Justice Wigneswaran himself wrote and sent the interview to be published to both these newspapers, on his own volition or possibly responding to a request from the TNA leadership.</p> <p>In the interview he has said that certain individuals’ self centric actions (probably referring to Shivajilingam, Srikantha) have led to confusion among the Tamils. The following are translated excerpts from the ‘interview’:</p> <p>“There is no point in voting for a Tamil candidate. Even if all Tamils vote for him we will achieve nothing. It is one of the two mainstream candidates who will win the elections. It will be the same if we boycott the elections. This will only display the desperate state of our politics or that we haven’t come to realise our democratic rights. So far Tamils have either voted for a Tamil candidate or boycotted presidential elections. This was to display the distinctiveness of the Tamil people’s politics. But now after the armed struggle has fallen silent this trend has to change. We have to be strategic. We have to see what we can get out of these two mainstream candidates. I am happy that the TNA is doing this. The TNA engaging in discussions with both candidates is productive. Tamil people should listen to the TNA leadership on this issue. The 22 parliamentarians speaking in different voices is no good. The TNA leadership should let the Tamil<br />people know of their decision soon. One thing is for sure if we vote for a Tamil candidate or boycott the election it would either mean alienating our democratic rights or supporting someone else [probably meaning voting for Shivajilingam being voting for MR]”.</p> <p>He also refers in the interview to how the Upcountry Tamil leadership and the Muslims have used the ballot effectively in the past. Tamils have no option now but to take up this weapon he says. He also says that if the Tamils stand united we can decide which way the majority goes in the parliament at the next general election. He concludes: “Our differences will aid them. Our unity will aid us”</p> <p>The Jaffna Uthayan which has for now long supported a vote for SF has written an editorial overjoyed with Wigneswaran’s public stance on the issue and have insisted other community leaders also come out publicly with a similar stance.</p> <p>The All Ceylon Tamil Congress met in Jaffna yesterday to decide on whom to support and on Kajendrakumar Ponnambalam’s insistence they have voted on a resolution to boycott the elections. Former MP Vinyagamoorthy who is the President of the ACTC is not happy with the decision (he wants to use the vote to de-seat MR) but has gone with the resolution not wanting to challenge Ponnambalam. 4 MPs attached to the TNA are supposedly favouring a boycott – Kajendrakumar, Pathmini Sithamaparanathan, Solaman Cyril, and Kajendran, all being Jaffna MPs. They all are in Jaffna these days. They met with the Jaffna Bishop yesterday.</p> <p>Earlier Shivajilingam also claimed support from seven TNA MPs for a Tamil candidate. One is not sure how many of these TNA MPs will support Shivajilingam as the Tamil candidate though. MP Shivashkthi Ananthan has come out accusing Shivajilingam of receiving money from Mahinda Rajapaksha to contest the elections.</p> <p>I suspect that the TNA leadership (R. Sampanthan, Mavai Senathirajah, Suresh Premachandran and Selvam Adaikalanathan) might come out and ask the Tamil people to vote for “regime change” without naming Sarath Fonseka. In short the call will be for Tamils to cast a silent vote in favour of SF. One will have to wait and see how many Tamils feel like voting. I suspect that the voting numbers in the North will be small – small that they will not be able to influence the national vote significantly. The way Eastern Tamils vote is also very unclear. Pillayan is unlikely to come out strongly for MR or to inspire people to vote for SF. Karuna’s influence (unless he stuffs ballot boxes) is also not clear. For the Tamils to be the deciders in the election (like they could have been in the last) they have to vote as a whole to one candidate and the Sinhala votes to both candidates should be almost equal. I doubt whether the challenger to the incumbent can muster that many Sinhala votes to equal the incumbent’s or that the Tamils will vote significantly to one candidate despite their being a disguised call from the TNA to vote for Sarath Fonseka.</p> <p>And finally what can a vote for SF achieve at all for the Tamil people? Tamil people’s ‘active engagement in national politics’- what will it lead to? Will SF devolve powers, dismantle the High Security Zones, repeal the PTA, revoke Emergency, resettle IDPs in places of their choice? Has he promised any of these? Or has MR promised any of these concretely? (Dayan Jayatilleka might say all of these are stupid/unintelligent demands. For him there is only one thing that will be intelligent for the Tamil people to do: Vote for MR.). Both candidates know well that making concrete promises on any of these will mean betraying the Sinhala nation. The TNA knows very well that none of them would even promise any of these or might just pay lip service to some of them. Hence my prediction that they will call for a silent vote.</p> <p>Justice Wigneswaran is deeply anxious and nervous in his call for unity. It is going to be very difficult to bring TNA under one umbrella again. And that’s why, like the state of Muslims politics today, Tamils can never be King or Queen makers. The days of Ashroff and Thondaman are gone. And unless there is a change in the way South does politics even if you are a King maker, the Tamils will be disappointed once again as they were when their King maker Chelvanayagam was disappointed when the B-C and D-C pact were dishonoured.</p>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-90070169404265509842009-12-19T08:55:00.000-08:002009-12-19T09:02:18.390-08:00Judging Public Intellectuals: Dayan and SivaramBeyond Borders, as part of a discussion series aimed at connecting youth activists with key opinion and decision makers, organised a discussion with Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka on 8 October 2009. Around 25 young people interested in politics participated in the discussion. Negligible Minoritist, SP and i who were present shared our reflections on <a href="http://www.groundviews.org/2009/10/31/interrogating-a-public-intellectual-noted-bloggers-and-youth-activists-engage-dr-dayan-jayatilleka/">Groundviews. </a>My piece is reproduced here with two comments that were specific to my piece.<br /><br />It is impossible not to be swayed by Dayan’s display of intellect. The way he answered questions was exemplary, being able to quote from very ‘high theory’ and then engage with us the very next minute in some very good ‘common sense’ but vivid and sharp analysis, replete with anecdotes, a quality I must say, is in the dying in our intellectual tradition.<br /><br />I asked Dayan a very lengthy question with primarily two limbs 1) the role of public intellectuals and the choices that they make regarding direct, mainstream political engagement 2) his prescription for Tamil politics (I asked him rhetorically: what would he say if he after twenty years is invited to lecture at the Jaffna University). I shall reflect only on the first one here and save the second for sometime later.<br /><br />Dayan<br /><br />Dayan explained his alignment with Rajapaksa and earlier with Premadasa as justified because he thought the greater evil of the LTTE and JVP had to be wiped out. He argued that the Sri Lankan state offered always a ‘minimum democratic space’ which these two actors never were able to provide and for the oppressive politics that LTTE and JVP practiced they just had to go was his argument. He compared his engagement with the GoSL as something close to Kethesh Loganathan’s decision to join the Peace Secretariat. He was careful to point out, as he has done in the past (see for example his interview with the Groundviews editor given shortly before his departure from Geneva) that he did not defend what he thought he could not associate with – some of the atrocities committed by this regime, like for example the Trinco five killings. He maintains that there was no willful targeting of civilians during the final war (which I am not sure) and that to have defended Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council was right because the resolutions brought by the West was not about things like the Trinco five but about war crimes which Dayan wants to believe did not happen. (This question of how to be ‘anti-imperialist’ and at the same time ‘anti-statist’ in a third world country is a pretty fascinating debate. Can you be unhappy about the West for its double standards and still agree with the content of their accusations of what they say are wrong with Sri Lanka? I think you can.) He told us that this was not him disassociating with the Rajapaksha regime and in an abstract sense said part of the decision to engage and take sides is also the readiness to take the moral guilt that comes with association. I am not sure however what moral guilt that Dayan is prepared to share with this regime. At this point I asked him about the process of disassociating as justifying any engagement including the Late Dharmeratnam Sivaram’s (Taraki’s) engagement with the LTTE. Could not then Sivaram argue that he never sided with the LTTE on all what was bad about them but only aligned with them because he believed in the importance of the struggle and chose to ignore the mistakes of the LTTE?<br /><br />Sivaram is quoted by Mark Whittaker his biographer as having said:<br /><br /> “Let history judge.. to all these people I ask do you sell off your mother because your brother has cut off your arm? Because your brother is a scoundrel? So are we just going to say that the LTTE is a static thing, that it is fascist and that it killed a lot of people. Yes it killed a lot of people… I don’t care a f*** being called an LTTE apologist.. Because I am fighting another war – my war. .. This problem has nothing to do with the LTTE. It started long before there was a LTTE in the 1950s, when Prabaharan was a f***ing kid…If the LTTE was not there we would all be f**ed. At the end of the day that is why the Tamils do not want the LTTE gone. Because we know what the Sri Lankan state has done… So you have to make practical choices – that this is your own man, was a brother once, so you try to reform him. And it is not just him who is the problem”<br /><br /> (See Mark P Whitaker, ‘Learning Politics from Sivaram: The life and death of a Revolutionary Tamil Journalist in Sri Lanka’, Pluto Press, London (2007), pp. 216-7)<br /><br />Dayan at the discussion referred to an article in which he was quoted, written by Philip Gourevitch for the New Yorker,<br /><br /> “Rather than blaming the dead journalist for failing to denounce the crimes of his side, Jayatilleka said, the Sinhalese should ask themselves what offenses they have chosen to ignore. He posed as “the final question” of his friend’s life a conundrum that belongs equally to every side in every ethnic-nationalist conflict on earth: “Had we been Tamil, are we sure we would not have been Sivarams?”<br /><br /> (available <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/01/050801fa_fact1?currentPage=all">here</a>)<br /><br />I am very happy that Dayan acknowledges this difficulty – that choices of engagement by public intellectuals are not divorced from considerations like ethnicity. But I think Dayan argued (if I understood him properly) despite all of this that Sivaram’s choice of supporting the LTTE was a wrong one.<br /><br />I understand that the choice of side for political engagement that one makes can never be satisfactory. While I don’t blame people for non engagement for the reason that they do not want to be associated with any sort of guilt, I respect people who make the decision to do so and get their hands dirty. This paragraph from Edward Said which is from a speech that he delivered n the subject of public intellectuals says so much about the difficulty of taking sides:<br /><br /> “..Just as history is never over or complete it is also the case that some dialectical oppositions are not reconcilable, not transcendable, not really capable of being folded into a sort of higher, undoubtedly nobler synthesis. The example closest to home for me is the struggle over Palestine which, I have always believed, cannot really be simply resolved by a technical and ultimately janitorial re-arrangement of geography allowing dispossessed Palestinians the right (such as it is) to live in about 20% of their land that would be encircled and totally dependent on Israel. Nor on the other hand would it be morally acceptable to demand that Israelis should retreat from the whole of former Palestine, now Israel, becoming refugees like Palestinians all over again. No matter how I have searched for a resolution to this impasse, I cannot find one for this is not a facile case of right versus right. It cannot be right ever to deprive an entire people of their land and heritage. But the Jews too are what I have called a community of suffering and brought with them a heritage of great tragedy. But unlike Zeev Sternhell, I cannot agree that the conquest of Palestine was a necessary conquest. The notion offends the sense of real Palestinian pain, in its own way also tragic.”<br /><br /> Edward Said, “Public role of Writers and Intellectuals’, Alfred Deakin Memorial Lecture, 19 May 2001 available at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/deakin/stories/s299210.htm<br /><br />Given this complexity that Said so vividly explains how does one then pick and choose a side? I think we need people who will not pick sides and will make contributions that will help us see politics beyond what the different sides show us. I also think it is important that there are people who choose one or the other side and work towards transforming it. But the emphasis is engagement and the picking of one side should help transform the other side. Did Dayan and Sivaram do this is the question? How much of criticism did Sivaram make of the LTTE at least internally? Is Dayan with the demise of the LTTE now prepared to take on this Government for all what it is wrong about it, at least in the post war scenario?<br /><br />Dayan Jayatilleka said: It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t say something about Aacharya’s post which is the most philosophically probing. For those who are interested, I have dealt with some of these issues in my treatment of the Sartre-Camus debate on commitment and violence, and my attempt at a resolution or synthesis, in my “Fidel” book.<br /><br />Suren Raghvan said:<br /><p>It is a positive sign that even under some NGO arrangement the space is created for direct (honest?) discussions on how we as different nations and schools could move forward. Let this be a beginning of a long and fruitful endeavor. The kinds of stimulation that average university lecture(r)s have failed to do in SL to investigate the current political anthropology.</p> <p>Having read the questions and the comments, I believe Acharya is spot on in his politically transcendent analysis. </p> <p>Having associated and worked with Siva (Anna) in his last days, on an important project to connect him to the noted Sinhala intellectuals for a wider dialogue , I could vouch that he was involved in the internal as well as the external dialectical on the LTTE and the State of SL. I am sure Prof. Sumanasiri Liyange, Prof Desmond Mallikarachchi, Prof Jagatha Weerasinghe and many other academics and some members of the (thinking)JVP and (former ) X Kandayama, will testify that Siva was a defender of the State while willingly challenging its post-independent surrender to the world order , largely led by the Sinhala elites. Those who were associated with this project will remember his analytical defense of Lanka even against the Indian Imperialism into the very late hours of every night that we met with. In this sense he was more Bhoomiputhra than the ones claiming to be. And that is the reason that the majority of the Sinhala youth gathered in these discussions, who were originally hostile even to have him as a speaker, agreed to continue the discussion with Siva, till he was assassinated.</p> <p>I agree with Achraya, one has to take sides as much one can avoid sides. But that decision should be governed by the judgment one makes on the outcome S/he intend to bring however marginal it may appear.</p> <p> Since we have talked of him, I wonder whether Dr Jayathilake with his international and local connections help to narrow the search of the killers at least for the friendship (he had) with Sivaram? Because Siva Anna in the manner he lived and died was a true internationalist beyond lecturers or writing thesis on the same.<br /></p>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com164tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-15173173375647899182009-08-28T00:18:00.001-07:002009-08-28T00:32:00.894-07:00The need for an independent Attorney General's DepartmentToday's New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/us/politics/28intel.html?_r=1&hp">reports:</a><br /><br /><blockquote>"Despite the C.I.A. pressure and the stated desire of the White House not to dwell on the past, Mr. Holder (the US Attorney general) went ahead with an investigation that will determine whether agents broke the law in their brutal interrogations (during the Bush era)"</blockquote>Here is Obama saying no to looking back into the past and the CIA saying please dont. But still the US AG is pushing for investigations. This would be unthinkable in Sri Lanka. I have seen the AG's department fellows vigorously defend the political programme of the GOSL in front of both judicial forums (Journalist Tissanayagam's Trial in the Colombo High Court , Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu's IDPs case in the Supreme Court) and in international political forums (like the UN Human Rights Council). Same goes with the AG absolutely surrendering his independence in advising the government on bills that might be constitutionally incompatible. The AG basically nods for everything.<br /><br />The Ag's department should be acting in the public's interest and they are paid by the public. But they act as the Government's lawyers. They have absolutely no integrity. The AG has been appointed by the President whereas he should have been by the Constitutional Council which remains unconstituted by the President for more than four years now.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-43637305424716338572009-08-10T18:36:00.000-07:002009-08-10T18:44:36.564-07:00Analysis of how the Jaffna people voted in the Municipal Council Elections<div class="gmail_quote">(I wrote this first as an email to colleagues and friends. Groundviews published it yesterday night <a href="http://www.groundviews.org/2009/08/10/analysis-of-how-jaffna-voted-and-why-the-epdp-feels-defeated-in-sri-lankas-first-post-war-elections/">here</a>. I reproduce it here on my blog)<br /><br />It appears to me that the TNA and TULF might have got more of the Tamil votes than EPDP in Jaffna.<br /><br />Out of 13 seats for the UPFA, 4 have gone to Muslims candidates. 9 are from EPDP.<br /><br />A Northern Displaced Muslim friend of mine says that 3000 votes were cast by the displaced Muslims living in Puttalam (If anyone has a better/accurate number i am willing to correct myself on this). Moulavi Sufiyan of Independent Group 1 himself polled around 1100 votes. The rest went to UPFA.<br /><br />Total number of votes polled by UPFA is 10,000. If you subtract the Muslim votes from the 10,000 only about 8000 votes have gone to the EPDP from Jaffna Tamil residents. (i substract only 2000 since about 1000 have gone to the Moulavi) TNA has then got almost the equivalent number of votes that EPDP polled- 8000 - from Jaffna Tamil residents. Add to this TULF's votes that's 9000 votes. More than actually what EPDP received. This also reduces the number of Jaffna MC Tamil residents who have actually voted from 20,000 to around 17,000.<br /><br />Remedius, TNA's Mayoral Candidate has topped the preferential votes (4,233 votes). That is 1000 votes more than the second on the preferential list (an EPDP candidate). UPFA's Mayoral Candidate Theyvendran didnt get enough preferential votes to be elected.<br /><br />It is also no secret that most of the 3000 resettled from the Jaffna IDP camps on the 5th of August were from Kurunagar. A key constituency for the EPDP. This link is from EPDP's Official site: <a href="http://epdpnews.com/news.php?id=4130&ln=tamil" target="_blank">http://epdpnews.com/news.php?<wbr>id=4130&ln=tamil</a><br /><br />No wonder Douglas Devananda has told Daily Mirror that he is disappointed with the results. He has told the local newspapers that it was a loss in Jaffna and a heavy one in Vavuniya.<br /><span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);"><br /></span></div>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-47450173390458245912009-07-25T10:36:00.000-07:002009-07-25T10:56:05.321-07:00The Chechen model of Conflict Resolution for Sri LankaThe soon to come back home UN Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to Geneva, Dayan Jayatilleke has repeatedly wrote about the Chechen (Chechnya) model (yes he loves Russia) for conflict resolution in Sri Lanka:<br /><br />In a recent <a href="http://blacklightarrow.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/out-in-the-wilderness-dayan-jayatilleka-on-pleading-the-13th-being-a-hippy-and-getting-sacked-by-boggles/">interview</a> with David Blacker Dayan noted:<br /><br /> <blockquote>I have long advocated the Chechen solution — an all-out, combined arms war to destroy the terrorist militia, followed by the implementation of some form of autonomy and self-governance for the area and stabilization through the rule of an elected local ally. Our military victory has to be politically conserved and socially stabilised. That’s what my advocacy of the 13th amendment is about.</blockquote><br />Earlier this year he <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.island.lk/2009/01/24/features4.html">wrote</a>:<br /><br /> <blockquote>Do we attempt to imitate the Israelis and practice a policy of occupation, settlements and discrimination, triggering endless cycles of conflict, or do we follow the no less tough-minded but much smarter Russian leaders, who having had to smash the Chechen terrorist insurgency with untrammeled force, have since ensured a high degree of stability by devolving power to their Chechen ally the tough young Ramzan Kadyrov, and transferring enough economic autonomy to guarantee a surge of prosperity in Grozhny? </blockquote><br />I excerpt this paragraph from the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/russiaandtheformersovietunion/chechnya/index.html">Times topic introduction to the Chechen issue </a>from the New York Times:<br /><br /> <blockquote>Vladimir Putin anointed Ramzan A. Kadyrov as the region's president; his father had held the post before being killed by rebels in 2004. Mr. Kadyrov crushed the rebel movement. He has strong support in Moscow, where he is praised for quelling the insurgency, rebuilding areas devastated by the war and rejuvenating the local economy. But he has also been the focus of widespread accusations of human rights violations.<br /><br /> Mr. Kadyrov has sought increased autonomy for Chechnya. That goal may be helped by the official end to Russian counterinsurgency operations, announced in April 2009, a move of at least symbolic value to Mr. Kadyrov.<br /><br /> The announcement also underscored his success in establishing a stability that has, among other things, allowed rebuilding to begin in the obliterated capital city of Grozny. But critics charge that the peace has been achieved through campaigns of unsparing brutality that have included widespread human rights violations.<br /><br /><br /> The announcement did not mention troop withdrawals, though Russian officials said they would now have more legal leeway to scale down the number of federal military and security forces. While the violence in Chechnya has declined, however, the insurgents have not been completely routed, and it seems likely that many troops and security forces will remain there for some time.</blockquote><br /><br />I will leave it to my readers to draw the parallels to how GOSL is positioning its local allies in the East and now in the North. It does look like the Chechen solution is taking shape except that President Rajapaksha is trying to do it without giving away anything, not even as basic as the 13th amendment. So Dayan who presses for it is sent home. Now at least Dayan should come out and say that he was wrong to have expected from this regime anything like even the 13th amendment and hence that his support for the regime right from the beginning was wrong. He won't.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-70366151065688922952009-05-02T22:15:00.000-07:002009-05-03T00:32:50.284-07:00'Aid'ing and AbettingThere are whole load of spontaneous citizen initiatives that have propped up to respond to the IDP needs in the camps in Vavuniya.<br /><br />Now i must at the outset say that such initiatives are good and probably needed but all i am saying is lets not forget the larger issues that need to be addressed and the politics of aid. It is acknowledged that those involved might be doing it without being aware of the politics and/or not caring is there is politics behind it. It is also not the intention of this blogger to ask for a halt in the aid effort. I would be a demon if i do suggest that. My intention is purely to raise some questions so that our response can be better.<br /><br />One of our prominent bloggers who is involved heavily in the aid effort thinks that killing 50,000 people to get rid of the LTTE is ok. (See earlier <a href="http://guruchetra.blogspot.com/2009/05/killing-for-promise-of-democracy-in.html">post</a> on this blog). Now thats not an indictment on all those involved. But i cant help thinking that this is a further indication that humanitarian concerns cant be divorced from politics and if the politics of these people are not good then there is no point.<br /><br />Why do i say there is no point? The value of citizen initiatives is that they are symbolic. They provide for an opportunity for people to people connection and confidence building. Their usefulness as actually providing relief to people is secondary. Why, because the big humanitarian agencies are doing their best and the citizen initaitives will never be able to match their capacity. Of course these initiatives can help bridge the gaps and loop holes. But that also i am doubtful because these initaitives do not have the access to information etc to do this. Now, this people to people connection is that happening? Are people meeting these IDPs and are they able to talk to them? I dont think so.<br /><br />The worse part of all of this is for example the JHU types who are going on padhayatras to collect rations. Add the state media initaitives to this. Their intention is to support the claim made by the government that 'these are our people. we know our responsibility to protect. these are our bretheren'. Now thats bull shit. I wont be able to believe anyone who says that the govt cares for the tamil people. Of course there might be individual army personnel who show care for the IDPs (the inherent huamneness) but thats no reflection of what the govt's attitude is. They are bombing the NFZs, hospitals etc. So these JHU and state media types are out there collecting rations as part of a govt image building exercise. I say dont support them.<br /><br />Now to the question of what can we do at this moment - my appeal to all those genuine aid collectors and people concenred for IDPs. The problem in the camps seems administration and distribution of relief. Suresh Premachandran MP (TNA) in an interview with BBC Tamil Service says that the GA Trinco (an army fellow) and the military establishment are the ones involved in running the camps. The Tamil GAs of Killi and Mullaitivu are sidelined. 20 people have died since coming to the camps. Two children died of stampede during a dry ration distribution. Now these are the concerns that people worried about IDPs should raise. Sunday Times reports that Walter Kalin the UN Special Representative for Human Rights for the IDPs has given the Govt certian conditions that they need to adhere to for UN support for the camps run by the Govt. Back in October 2008 the UNHCR issued an aide memoire stipulating the basic minimums that need to be satisfied for their engagement in running the camps. Most important of these is freedom of movement. These camps are internment camps. We should urge that these will be lifted. Issues relating to space (because the govt doesnt want to open more camps), visit by relatives etc all of these are issues that we need to raise.<br /><br />One further question that everyone has been meek on is as to whether the money that the Govt is getting specifically for spending for IDPs being properly used for the purpose? There is very little information available regarding this.<br /><br />Unfortunately for this sort of activism there is very little interest. And the govt is happy that we collect the anchor packets. They will be worried if we talk about the other humanitarian issues.<br /><br />By not raising these issues arent we guilty of abetting with the Govt? One of my friends involved in the effort said if we riase these issues then we wont be given an opportunity to help out in the aid effort. This prominent blogger has been talking about 'cooperating'with the govt and the military establishment to get this done. But i ask the question then whats the point? I dont think we can keep these issues for later.<br /><br />A small note on our experiences during the Tsunami. Even during the Tsunami we saw this out pouring of humaneness: Helping out irrespective of who has been affected. A lot of commentators wrote that this humaneness should be used as the base that opens the window of opportunity for conflict resolution. That was not to be. PTOMs was crash landed by our CJ and the JVP. The Ache example didn't work here. The social capital that one was able to generate during the Tsunami could not be transformed into productive political capital.The people of this country elected MR. And we keep voting for him at all elections. We have allowed the war on terror to be a war on the minorities. So what is the use of this bubble humaneness?<br /><br />Oh then once somebody told me dont be such a cynic. When we help atleast we help one child get a cup of milk or some buscuits. Isnt that a good enough reason. Of course it is (though you might be duplicating). Lets not get satisfied with that. How do we make sure that that child will never ever have to be in a position where he or she will have to rely on our aid?<br /><br />I do not want to be mistaken for having a generalised suspicion on the genuiness of people involved in the aid effort. I am only asking for introspection and care for detail.<br /><br />PS: <span style="font-style: italic;">I stand corrected by a friend who is very involved in monitoring IDP related humanitarian issues and HR stuff in general that the relevance of the citizens initiative in the immediate phase of the relief (especially after the arrival of more thank a lakh people on April 20) has been crucial and life saving (in the light of aid agencies and the govt not being able to cope with the immediacy of the situation. They were under prepared). I reiterate however my call on the need for wider activism.</span>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-66859475393299068792009-05-02T19:58:00.000-07:002009-05-02T22:08:37.227-07:00Killing for the promise of democracy in the aftermath<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE-zdDoCSqNPQVyw7srYYGzegZ1OuryrXBhXYdDV3Zro2nCQzM2d7V87kYQV_1FanEQBbg5XaDXU6cvxXgwywXDltBUMCK5ZYiRhfPA12fcqSBgf5L2nVC7DusrdH68d9y1xLhow/s1600-h/Reuters+Stringer+children+IDPs.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 190px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE-zdDoCSqNPQVyw7srYYGzegZ1OuryrXBhXYdDV3Zro2nCQzM2d7V87kYQV_1FanEQBbg5XaDXU6cvxXgwywXDltBUMCK5ZYiRhfPA12fcqSBgf5L2nVC7DusrdH68d9y1xLhow/s320/Reuters+Stringer+children+IDPs.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331459549584926722" border="0" /></a><br />Sanjana has posted <a href="http://www.groundviews.org/2009/05/03/would-killing-50000-civilians-to-finish-off-the-ltte-bring-peace/">here</a> on Groundviews a poll asking whether it will be acceptable to kill the civilians if along with it you can get rid of the LTTE. He was triggered by a comment made by one of Sri Lanka's most prominent bloggers who in an email conversation with him had said:<br /><br /><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><em></em></strong><blockquote><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><em>“I would accept 50,000 dead to finish the LTTE. That’s what it comes down to. And I would, to end that war.”</em></strong></blockquote><br /><br />I had noted this blogger slipping to nationalist ego (now worse this is extremism and i wont mind calling it racism as well). I said on my twitter deck on the 1st of May: <span class="status-body"><span class="entry-content">"one of our prominent bloggers formerly very critical of the govt has now got caught up with the nationalist ego. very sad".</span></span><br /><br />The question that Sanjana poses is as follows:<br /><br />Would killing 50,000 civilians to finish off the LTTE bring peace?<br /><br />and the voting options:<br /><br /><span id="pds-answer1588005">Yes, if this is what it takes.</span><br /><span id="pds-answer1588005"><label for="PDI_answer8096162">No, this is just wrong.<br /></label></span><span id="pds-answer1588005">Maybe, if there are guarantees of a post-war political process on power-sharing.<br /><br />One commenter on Groundviews was disgusted:<br /><br /></span><blockquote>"Much as admire what you have accomplished with Groundviews this poll does it a disservice; I am very disappointed. It is just stoking extremism based on heresay, surely not what you intend to foster with Groundviews. How can the numbers or the sources you quote be verified or the implication that it is the aim of the government?"</blockquote><br /><span id="pds-answer1588005"><br />Sanjana had a good response:<br /><br /></span><p></p><blockquote><p>"This post intends to interrogate extremism. The numbers in the quote are really peripheral to the argument, which exists today, that to finish off the LTTE, collateral damage is not just unavoidable, it is even a prerequisite. What do you feel about that?</p> <p>"If you cared to read them, and I suspect you’ve not, *both* stories referenced above are unverified, yet the immediate reaction of both you and another before you is to believe the one against the LTTE and question, nay, vehemently deny the one against the Government. I find that an telling reaction."</p></blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><p>I responded:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>"Most of the commenting on this post so far wishes to be in denial of the extremism/racism that is there in this country - largely probably because they are uncomfortable with this rise in racist/extremist instincts in our society and/or because they think this cant be . I know who Sanjana is talking about and i was one of the first to note this prominent blogger slip away to nationalist ego. This prominent blogger was a very good critic of the Government and politics in general and it is very shocking for me to find people like this blogger slip away. The change in the mindset of this blogger is indicative of two things that have been part of the moderate southern polity’s psyche (sorry for this random group formulation) especially in the Mahinda Rajapaksha era: 1) That what the govt is doing is acceptable or tolerable given that the other side (the LTTE) is a larger evil 2) (1) is acceptable because of the very huge democratic potential that will be opened after the defeat of the greater evil the LTTE. These are the reasons, i suspect, for our prominent blogger to be happy to see 50,000 people die if it will wipe off the LTTE as well. </p> <p>I contest both and i comment on some of these questions in a comment/s i wrote to Rohni Hensman’s post on the same here at kafila.org: </p> <p><a href="http://kafila.org/2009/04/07/who-is-responsible-for-the-slaughter-of-civilians-in-the-vanni-by-rohini-hensman/" rel="nofollow">http://kafila.org/2009/04/07/who-is-responsible-for-the-slaughter-of-civilians-in-the-vanni-by-rohini-hensman/</a></p> <p>Niran Anketell, Ahilan Kadirgamar, Nirmala Rajasingham and Ragavan’s comments to Rohini’s post are valuable reading.</p> <p>I am with Sanjana on posing this question. Ya it shocks but its the kind of question that our society has stooped low to even consider".</p></blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><br /><span id="pds-answer1588005"><br /></span>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-17714639095205616752009-04-14T06:06:00.000-07:002009-04-15T06:26:58.073-07:00To be able to call for a Ceasefire<p>I posted this on kafila. org in reponse to an <a href="http://kafila.org/2009/04/07/who-is-responsible-for-the-slaughter-of-civilians-in-the-vanni-by-rohini-hensman/">article</a> by Rohini Hensman.<br /></p><p></p><blockquote>Rohini Hensaman: “One of the demands, for example, has been for a ceasefire and peace talks with the LTTE. But Rajan Hoole and K.Sritharan of the award-winning University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) report that Sri Lankan Tamils are wary of any peace talks that will give oxygen to the LTTE.”</blockquote><p></p> <p>Just to clarify should there then be no ceasefire? Even if one is to agree with Hensman that the destruction of the LTTE is in the interest of peace in Sri Lanka - at what cost? Is it that we can sacrifice a few thousand lives because it is in the long term interest of achieving peace? More on this later but to remain on the question of a ceasefire let’s look at Hensman’s alternative: </p> <p></p><blockquote>“Stop shelling safe areas and civilian targets within LTTE-controlled territory; this only results in propaganda gains for the LTTE.”</blockquote><p></p> <p>For any even layman observer of the history of the war in Sri Lanka or for that matter any civil war it is an obvious fact that you cannot do this. Distinguishing civilian targets from rebel targets is impossible especially now in the No fire Zone which is heavily congested. So how do we save the people? If the LTTE will never release the people what should be the option? Still go ahead and finish off the LTTE (and in the process a few thousand people) because its good for peace? </p> <p>Is it possible at all to argue for a ceasefire without being then associated with the LTTE? The fear of such association should it prevent us from calling for a ceasefire? I am not sure of how one handles the LTTE. It is not easy. But their destruction at any cost is not an option for me. </p> <p>The other point that Tamil alternative political commentators have to consider is, if we agree that both the warring parties are equally brutal in the execution of their military agenda and that both parties’ political agendas are absolutist how can one party winning over the other in a war desirable? She’s definitely worried about the war crimes that the Govt is committing but minus that is the war acceptable then?</p><p style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Added 15 April 2009</p><p>Nirmala Rajasingham Responded:<br /></p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><blockquote><p>“Is it possible at all to argue for a ceasefire without being then associated with the LTTE? The fear of such association should it prevent us from calling for a ceasefire? I am not sure of how one handles the LTTE. It is not easy. But their destruction at any cost is not an option for me.” Aacharya</p> <p>Could Aacharya explain why the destruction of the LTTE is not an option for him? Is it because in the course of the government prosecuting a continued war against the LTTE to destroy it, it would end up killing many civilians? Or is it for other reasons? Why is the continued existence of the LTTE desirable? </p> <p>I think the key is in Acharya’s own question:<br /> “If the LTTE will never release the people what should be the option?” </p> <p>That is the problem. Let us look at a couple of scenarios: </p> <p>1. If a temporary ceasefire for humanitarian reasons is announced the LTTE will not let the civilians go. That is what is happening now. The 100,000 people are their only chance of survival. The civilians are the forward defence lines , unarmed and totally exposed. We note that more people escape during hostilities than during the pauses, because when there is active fighting going on the LTTE finds it difficult to prevent the people from fleeing. This is the macabre irony of the situation. </p> <p>2. If there is a ceasefire and the LTTE is asked to come for talks they will still not let the civilians go out, as they need to hold territory and people under their control, to be able to go for talks to legitimate their claims. This bank of people is necessary for the LTTE as labour, as reproductive resources to provide man/woman power. They need to rebuild their fortifications and earth bunds; rebuild their army, and get fresh recruits. If they let go of these 100,000 civilians where will they go? Even during the Norwegian peace process when they controlled a large area of land and had a very advantageous ceasefire agreement civilians in the Vanni were in an open prison, having to get passes to go out for even funerals, urgent medical treatment; family members were held as guarantors till they returned. If there is a new ceasefire a desperate LTTE will be even worse than it was before the war. </p> <p>The government is opposed to the ceasefire as it believes that its military gains could be undone if the LTTE is given a respite. I am opposed to it for different reasons – as any ceasefire in which the LTTE is allowed to dictate terms, it would not be in the interests of the trapped civilians as it would want to hold them. </p> <p>These 100,000 people will never be released by the LTTE, ceasefire or no ceasefire. For the LTTE the civilians do not count for anything except as a resource. A blanket ceasefire solution is only helpful if we want to rescue the LTTE from its current defeat. If we want to save the civilians we have to think of something else. </p> <p>The government wants to press on with the war and destroy the LTTE militarily. but that will in the current circumstances result in massive civilian killings. The government cannot pursue this option. Any military objective of the government should be subordinate to that of civilian safety. </p> <p>Because of what has happened the LTTE has lost all credibility and legitimacy. Its sole strength lay in it being a mighty fighting force and now it has lost even that. All those who desire peace but with democracy, must emphatically state that there is no room for an organisation like the LTTE. All those who want to secure the future of these trapped civilians and the Tamil people should publicly denounce the LTTE, regardless of their views about the State. A powerful message should be sent to the SL government and the international community by Tamils that they are willing to ditch the LTTE but want the civilians to be saved. We have to make it clear that we understand that the military survival of the LTTE is irreconcilable with the objective of saving the civilians but that no military action should be taken to jeopardize civilian safety. There were reports in the press that the international community was to negotiate a deal in which the LTTE leadership could be offered a way out of its presumed political responsibilities to lead the Tamil people. If the LTTE meets the conditions then that could be one solution for the moment to save the civilians. There could be offers of amnesty for the cadres. This could save civilian lives more than any other option. </p> <p>I am opposed to any talks with the LTTE before it is willing to renounce the armed struggle,, without giving up the demand of secession and while holding onto the notion of sole representation. All of this is a must in the interests of the Vanni civilians. These are conditions essential to ensure the security of the Tamil people, much abused by the LTTE apart from the broader interests of democracy. What is unfortunate is that I do not believe that the LTTE is capable of acceding to these demands. Even if it agrees to these demands it then has to let go of the civilians as a good faith measure first. </p> <p>As for the correctness of the war, many of us from the Tamil dissenting community opposed the war when it first began and have consistently done so, including Hensman, if I remember correctly. This is a war of LTTE’s own choosing. It walked out of the Norwegian backed peace process barely a year after it began in a pique for not having been invited to the international donor conference. It refused to discuss substantive issues. It had a most advantageous ceasefire agreement through which it wreaked its revenge on Tamil dissent and ran its writ across the whole country through murder and assassination. In 2005 itself it began its attacks on the SL Army which was then confined to the barracks. These unprovoked attacks intent on teasing the SL Army to a war was capitalised on by Mahinda when he was elected and he mobilised the Sinhala Buddhist constituency behind him and went to war with the LTTE but then used that as an excuse to wage war on the Tamil people as well. The war that was courted by the LTTE has become its nemesis. This is a military contest between two extreme nationalist armies, and the vagaries of military success of either party is immaterial to us except in terms of their impact on the peoples of Sri Lanka.</p> <p>The bottom line here is that one has to be clear about where the future of the Tamil people lies – in cohabitation with other communities within a united Sri Lanka or in a tryst with death in the company of the LTTE. We have to develop a clear perspective on the fact that the LTTE’s continued presence and survival is inimical to civilian safety in the short term and the future of the Tamils in the long term. If we are for the former option then we can begin anew , to build a democratic struggle to challenge the Sri Lankan majoritarian state and its Sinhala Buddhist nationalist backers. We need to join forces with the other minority communities and with progressives in the South in a common effort to challenge the Sri Lankan State for peace democratisation and demilitarisation. We can begin to do this without having to watch over our shoulders that we will get shot at from behind by the LTTE. Tamil progressives and the Tamil people have to opt out of the exclusivist Tamil mindset that the LTTE has trapped us in.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>And I responded:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>Nirmala, my stances have been that 1) I say ceasefire because it will stop people being killed. 2) I do not comment on the desirability of annihilating the LTTE in any of my comments but what i did ask why it would be better to have one devil annihilate the other.</p> <p>Nirmala my question is then are we prepared to make an ‘instrumentalist’ use of the State - A majoritarian state that is at the root of all these problems- to finish off the LTTE because the latter is bad.</p> <p>And then after the LTTE is done what is the the way forward?: Build a grand coalition with other minorities and the South? Yes this is important. But what would be the incentive for the other minority communities to join hands with the SL Tamil community? Cooperating with the Majoritarian state is how the leadership of the Muslim Community and the Up Country Tamils seem to think is the best operandi for them to achieve their goals. And who in the SL Tamil community is going to stand up to build this coalition? What does the experience of the formation of TULF where Thondaman and Ashraff were on board tell us about the scope for a grand coalition? Given that we see no indications that the majoritarian state is not going to let go its coercive tactics wont such an initiative be crushed in its budding stage? Nirmala makes it sound so simple. And i am confident that she knows that it is not simple.</p> <p>The discrediting of the armed struggle is painful. The fact that it was not conceived properly; that it was monopolised and delinked from the people; it lacked politics in it - should not discredit it as a response. It was the only response and the only plausible response that the Tamil people have and had. If not for armed struggle what are the other options? Go back to Parliamentary coalition politics? Or for a grass root movement? How is such a movement going to succeed within a heavily militarised society? Haven’t movements like this been crushed in the past by both violent actors. None of these suggestions are novel. (I am aware of Ahilan and Raghavan’s similar view points on this and the post on Lines to this effect. I am hoping to write regarding this on my blog in the near future)</p> <p>Finally then, while Nirmala is good at pointing out how the LTTE will not release people under any circumstance, she does not offer then what the option that will save the people would be.</p> <p>So my question remains for the sake of finishing off the LTTE are we then not to call for a ceasefire?</p> <p>As for my stance on the long term question i think the Tamil community is doomed. (i am very much typing this from within inside the country with family still in Jaffna). The South will not offer anything, they will deal with the Tamils’ political demands minimalistically. Will crush all dissenters and assimilation will continue.</p> <p>The LTTE has no doubt contributed to where the Tamils stand right now but the only option (if there is an option at all) is to see how the armed struggle can be brought back to its basics. This can only happen either 1) by starting all over again or 2) the LTTE changing course. Of course i am tired of deaths and hence even i am not happy with my suggestion and that’s why i say that there is nothing much to hope for. You can call me a defeatist.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Niran Anketell also commented:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>Nirmala Rajasingham’s argument that a ceasefire at this stage would be inimical to the interests of the civilians within the safe zone is perplexing, bewildering, and if she is to be understood to mean what she says, downright facetious. She argues that the LTTE will not allow people to come out, and thus the destruction of the LTTE is desirable. This is patent nonsense. Yes, the LTTE cannot be expected, brutal and cynical as they are to allow the civilians to come out, even during a ceasefire. But doesn’t she realise that a ceasefire will bring the number of daily dead from 70 to 0. Is this not a sufficient incentive to stop the fighting? The killings will not stop until the guns are silenced, and the guns will not be silenced unless there is a ceasefire. Pure and simple. No ceasefire = more killings, and yet she deigns to suggest that no ceasefire = better for the civilians, at a time when all the world is calling for a ceasefire from the UN to the EU to the White House. </p> <p>To be fair she seems to suggest that, (even if she doesn’t, it remains a popular view), that a ceasefire will only delay the inevitable. The war will resume again, and the LTTE will use the civilians as shields again. Again, this is possible, but isn’t it less inevitable than the certain prospect of increasing civilian deaths! Are we as certain that of 70 people being killed per day after the presumed resumption of the war after the presumed breakdown of the presumed ceaefire, as we are certain that in the next few days hundreds of civilians will lose their lives, and hundreds more will be injured?</p> <p>But perhaps I am not going to the root cause driving Rajasingham to her opposition of a ceasfire, that seems to me to be a sure way of saving lives in the now. And that root cause is her political agenda, the one that undergirds her opposition to the ceasefire, although such opposition is facetiously framed as one that is civilian friendly. But what is this political position. </p> <p>She articulates it best </p> <p>“I am opposed to any talks with the LTTE before it is willing to renounce the armed struggle, without giving up the demand of secession and while holding onto the notion of sole representation”, she announces. </p> <p>Ok, that is what it is isn’t it. There is a logic here. The temporary ceasefire is opposed because it will inevitably break down. But is it not her position that a temporary ceasefire MUST and SHOULD break down, because a permanent ceasefire and peacetalks with the LTTE should not take place. So she doesn’t want unconditional peacetalks, and because she doesn’t and is aware that the LTTE will not meet her, and incidentally Rajapaskshe and JHU’s conditions, she sees no need for a brief interlude to the fighting she anticipates will happen anyway. This is not an unpopular view. The Southern polities clearest thinkers share this view. It is deeply thought out, and it stems from a political position that views unconditional talks with the LTTE as repulsive. This is unfortunate, that Nirmala Rajasingham can consider the lives of the civilians as a worthwhile sacrifice to the utilitarian political objectives she is committed to. It is also sheer hypocrisy, because that is what she, rightly , accuses the LTTE of doing.</p></blockquote><p></p><p></p>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-88867369586869721572009-04-14T03:57:00.001-07:002009-04-14T04:21:44.051-07:00The ICRC evacuation programmeThe ICRC has posted an <a href="http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/sri-lanka-interview-310309">interview</a> with its Surgeon on the 31st of Marchon its website where some details about the nature and modus operandi of its evacuation programme from Putumattalan (in the 'No Fire Zone') are revealed. Here are excerpts and questions:<br /><b></b><blockquote><b>Given the large numbers of sick and wounded people in Putumattalan at the moment, how are patients selected for medical evacuation?</b></blockquote><blockquote>Because of the limited space available on the ferry chartered by the ICRC, there is no way to avoid selecting patients based on need. Patients are selected for evacuation on the advice of medical professionals who work in Putumattalan. Every evacuation is carried out with the agreement of the local authorities. The ICRC is not involved in the selection process. After patients board our ferry and arrive in Trincomalee or, as has been the case in recent days, in Pulmoddai, health facilities take over from the ICRC. They set priorities for treatment based on the degree of medical emergency.<br /></blockquote><br />The 'selection process' is possibly handled by the Deputy Director of Regional Health Services. Does the LTTE have an influence over this? How does the SL Navy treat this issue? Its known that once the initial treatment is given most of these people are transferred to the Vavuniya camps. Note how the interviewee says that in recent days people are taken to Pulmoddai. This is where the Indian Doctors are working from. What is special about what they are doing? Why Pulmoddai? Why cant they work in the Trinco Hospital and help boost the capacity there?<br /><br />The Putumattalan Health authorities dont even seem to have things like basic surgical cotton etc:<br /><br /><blockquote>Many patients need to have a limb amputated because of a shrapnel injury. We also treat injuries to other parts of the body, sometimes to remove shrapnel. I have seen many patients with heavily infected wounds, sometimes in the area where the amputation is required. Infections set in rapidly when a wound is not treated with antibiotics or a dressing cannot be changed. On some patients arriving here, strips of sarong or tee-shirts have been used instead of dressings. Pieces of wood are often used as splinters to immobilize a fracture and spare the person a lot of pain.</blockquote><br />Also see further <a href="http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/sri-lanka-interview-260209">here</a>.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com104tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-1913152941081299332009-03-02T08:01:00.001-08:002009-03-02T08:51:34.400-08:00'Moral Relativists' of our timeSee Kumar's post on Groundviews <a href="http://www.groundviews.org/2009/03/02/calling-a-spade-a-spade-michael-roberts%E2%80%99-moral-relativism/">here</a>.<br /><br /><blockquote>A moral relativist is one who hastens to compromise with iniquity and injustice on the pretext of laying “<em>foundations in ground realities</em>“. <p>When simple folk do it we call them apologists, when the well schooled bring their scholarship to bear for these unbecoming ends, it is moral relativism.</p><p><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p>A lot of people have joined this wagon. Kumar identifies Dr Michael Roberts as one of them. Dayan Jayatilleke is another. Rajiva Wijesinghe is a third. I wont be as kind as Kumar. These are truly apologists. Why give a special status just because of their 'master-serving' scholorship?</p><p>Wijepala on Groundviews responding to a <a href="http://www.groundviews.org/2009/02/10/dilemmas-at-wars-end-thoughts-on-hard-realities/">comment</a> by Kumar on the same subject in a different post does ask this significant question:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote>Why is it that the people who complain about being tarred as LTTE apologists for criticizing Mahinda, are the same people who label others as Mahinda apologists for pointing out Western shortcomings and hypocrisy?</blockquote><p></p><p>and Kumar's response:<br /></p><p></p><blockquote>Wijepala's comment is well taken. Yes pointing out the things Michael has, is reasonable. But overall the article to me seems to seriously lack balance; this is intellectually troubling in an intensely politicalised time like the present.</blockquote><p></p><p>My problem is indeed fundamentally with the 'exposure of the Western hypocrisy' that Roberts seeks to make in his post. Its a cheap one used by a cheap Sinhala Chauvinist. In simple terms it goes like this: "you all bombed indiscriminately earlier. now dont shout when we do it". How can this be 'well- schooled scholarship'?<br /></p><p></p>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-73693488747267529742009-01-15T18:20:00.000-08:002009-01-15T18:27:02.543-08:00"Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished"<p>I find this <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/16/gaza-aerial-bombing-david-miliband">piece</a> from Simon Jenkins in the Guardian written in the context of the aerial bombardment of Gaza very very relevant to Sri Lanka's war in the North as well.<br /></p><p></p><p></p><blockquote><p>The tragedy in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gaza">Gaza</a> surely marks the time when the world declares air-launched bombs and long-distance shells to be illegal under the 1983 Geneva convention. They should be on a par with chemical munitions, white phosphorous, cluster bombs and delayed-action land mines. They pose a threat to non-combatants that should be intolerable even in the miserable context of war.</p><p>I can accept Israeli claims that they are not intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza - or the United Nations base set on fire yesterday. But the failure of their chosen armaments had the same effect. The civilian death toll is now put at 673, mostly women and children. </p><p>It is barely conceivable that the most accurate weapon of war, an infantryman, would deliberately enter a house and massacre unarmed women and children as they have their dinner. As a result, mercifully few do. When such cold-blooded murder is committed, from the 1968 My Lai killings in Vietnam to those now coming to light in Iraq, we are appalled, and inquiries, trials and disciplinary procedures follow. </p><p>Those killing from the air need have no sight of the carnage they unleash. They are placed at both a geographical and a moral distance, with a licence allowed no soldier on the ground. Whether they are dispatching free-fall bombs or GPS-guided missiles, tank shells or predator drones, Hamas's Qassam rockets or improvised explosive devices, they know they often miss their targets, but they launder any carnage as "collateral damage" and leave politicians to handle the backlash. The soldier shrugs and walks away, with no obligation to humanity beyond the occasional apology and a reference to the other side being just as bad. </p><p>If gas, landmines, chemical weapons and cluster munitions are now banned - a ban broadly obeyed by most civilised armies - why not aerial bombardment? Instead, bombing is becoming ever more prevalent. It precedes any operation, as a sort of overture, and eagerly takes part in each tactical twist. Counter-insurgency war, in Iraq and Afghanistan, has seen western armies take heavy casualties. But such is the political aversion to them that Israeli, American and British ground forces operate under strict "force protection" rules to minimise losses. </p><p>This has led to the reckless use of stand-off munitions, as regularly reported by embedded correspondents. Rather than employ infantry to clear an apparently hostile settlement, commanders call in air strikes and pound it to rubble. The Israelis have responded to the Hamas bombardment of their towns with a far heavier bombardment of Gaza. Both endanger civilians to a degree that cannot be other than criminal. That human shield tactics may be involved is no excuse: the law does not permit the killing of innocents in the hope of reaching the guilty.</p></blockquote><p></p><p><br />Also <a href="http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/15141">see</a> Jayantha Dhanapala: (I wonder whether he has the guts to see the same thing to the SL Govt)</p><p></p><blockquote>the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza indicates once more that there is no such a thing as a clean, technological and aseptic warfare where civilians are spared and only combatants (soldiers or insurgents) are hit.</blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><p></p>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-60572961221270731972009-01-09T19:45:00.000-08:002009-01-09T20:12:55.574-08:00The connection between the celebration and the mourning<span class="style2"><span class="style3"><span class="style4"><a href="http://www.lankadissent.com/">Lankadissent</a> run under the auspicies of the Sri Lanka Freedom party (Mahajana Wing) - Mangala Samaraweera's party - and edited by Senior Journalist Kusal Perera (good friend of murdered Journalist Dharmaratnem Sivaram-'Taraki') has decided to call it a day after Lasantha's killing.<br /><br />They have issued a statement in this regard. Hats off to Kusal Perera for this part of the statement<br /><br /><blockquote>"Many who thought they as the media have a right to freedom of expression, they have a right to information, that the people also have the same right and that it is a fundamental right in a modern civilised society, have been told very bluntly and at times most brutally, that it isn't so in this land of the compassionate, democratic republic, run by a "patriotic" regime.<br /> <br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Tamil media in the North were the first to have been told this bluntly and ruthlessly while the Colombo media did not want those dissenting voices in the North, heard elsewhere. They had to learn that lesson, first hand</span>."</blockquote></span></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="style2"><span class="style3"><span class="style4">XXXX</span></span></span><br /></div><span class="style2"><span class="style3"><span class="style4"><br />My friend <a href="http://dinidudealwis.com/?p=652">Dinidu </a>has got it spot on:<br /><br /></span></span></span><blockquote>"If you tell me that four guys on four unmarked bikes, wearing all black, can kill a man in broad daylight and vanish, or twenty people can come to an office, blow it up, and then disappear without anybody knowing, <strong>yet</strong> I can’t stand on the road for my bus for longer than five minutes without one of your uniform clad brainwashed cronies coming and asking me who I am, what I’m doing there, and when I plan on buggering off, then there is something seriously wrong in what you say."</blockquote><div style="text-align: center;">XXXX<br /></div><br />This capturing of land business if it is done in the name of providing humanitarian relief to the Tamil people why would you celebrate that? Why celebrate as if though you have annexed land to your territory or as if though you have conquered the Tamil people? The celebration has a direct link to providing courage to those parties who now think they can do anything they want. I was so dismayed with the fire crackers yesterday. Would it not have been right for the President if we has so much of feeling for the death of Lasantha to say lets not 'celebrate' this time, unless of course he saw that the incident on the 8th is also a reason for celebration.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-88110226445138952562008-12-25T21:30:00.000-08:002008-12-25T22:10:46.393-08:00The myth that holding elections are inherently good and 'godly'<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ0VsnJt92ZH8XjB7ZMIUc8sIek5y5GpzT_JWKmhj2TXNCjcR812TBJfIYaVSF42V2Sify7wQlefX0cyuSb6cjwsvN2SnF-5mxse4fTYe3uNIinyhx1htcch1qLEQXbm_4-JH4fw/s1600-h/india-kashmir-elections-2008-11-26-3-19-4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 208px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ0VsnJt92ZH8XjB7ZMIUc8sIek5y5GpzT_JWKmhj2TXNCjcR812TBJfIYaVSF42V2Sify7wQlefX0cyuSb6cjwsvN2SnF-5mxse4fTYe3uNIinyhx1htcch1qLEQXbm_4-JH4fw/s320/india-kashmir-elections-2008-11-26-3-19-4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283977066098369650" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Kashmiri Muslim protesters shout pro-freedom and anti-election slogans outside a polling station in Barsoo, some 28 kilometers (17 miles) north of Srinagar, India, Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008. Government soldiers opened fire on hundreds of stone-throwing Muslims protesting against elections in Indian Kashmir on Saturday, killing two people and seriously wounding another, police said. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)</span></span><br /><br />To hold elections is a noble thing. To oppose the holding of elections is undemocratic. This is what we are used to hearing. This is what we were told when the Eastern Provincial Council Elections were held. The same thing is being said in Kashmir with the recent Legislative assembly polls there. The Hindu today has an editorial titled <a href="http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/26/stories/2008122655510800.htm">'Democracy triumphs'</a> praising the inherent goodness of elections:<br /><br /><blockquote>In the event, the people of J&K have left no doubt that they see in India’s democracy, however imperfect, the best means to address the multiple problems they face. From the outset, this newspaper has editorially argued that free and fair elections would do more to defuse the crisis than the regrettable practice of seeking backdoor deals with forces claiming to represent the State’s people... India’s exemplary Election Commission, Governor N.N. Vohra, National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, the State government’s officials and, above all, the people of Jammu and Kashmir deserve unreserved applause for enabling democracy to triumph amidst the most difficult circumstances imaginable. </blockquote><br /><br />The turn out was surprisingly very high: On the first count, voter turnout in the 87 Assembly constituencies rose dramatically from 43 per cent in 2002 to around 62 per cent — slightly higher than the national average, which hovers around 60 per cent. Without dispute, the most heartening signal came from the Kashmir Valley, where voter turnout was 55 per cent compared with 29.5 per cent in 2002. Even in Srinagar, the heartland of J&K’s Islamist-led secessionist movement, voter turnout quadrupled from a pathetic 5.06 per cent in 2002 to 21 per cent in 2008.<br /><br />This has according to the Indian express has shocked the moderate secessionists to reconsider their options. See article <a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/after-geelani-mirwaiz-admits-we-got-it-wrong/403008/">here</a>.<br /><br />Here comes the other side of the story. An <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122930169820005503.html#">article</a> on the Wall Street Journal reports as follows:<br /><br /><blockquote>But many voters who lined up at the polls Saturday in south Kashmir, for example, also turned out at anti-Indian protest marches weeks earlier. In the town of Tral, 20-year-old student Manzur Ahmad said that he was voting for an incumbent candidate because, in recent years, the lawmaker had managed to curb the harassment of local youths by government forces. "We vote because this makes our lives easier - but this doesn't mean we don't want freedom," he said.</blockquote><br />So much for the Hindu editorial claiming that the turn out was an acceptance of Indian democracy. Further the article reports,<br /><blockquote><br />In the village of Samboora, residents said that Indian Army troops went from house to house on Saturday morning, rounding up families and taking them to a polling station. As a reporter drove into the village Saturday afternoon, an army vehicle with several soldiers stopped by the walled compound of Ghulam Mohammad, pulling the 59-year-old retiree onto the road. Seeing a foreign reporter, the soldiers jumped into their vehicle and quickly drove off. "They asked me why I'm not voting, and I said that's because I don't like any of the candidates," Mr. Mohammad said moments later. "They said, if I don't vote, I'll be sorry later."<br /><br /></blockquote>I am grateful to <a href="http://kafila.org/2008/12/17/a-cruel-joke-called-elections-in-kashmir/">Kafila</a> for pointing me to this piece.<br /><br />I argued in earlier posts (<a href="http://guruchetra.blogspot.com/2008/02/local-government-elections-in-eastern.html">here</a> and <a href="http://guruchetra.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-interpretation-of-eastern-provincial.html">here</a>) that the Eastern Local government and provincial council elections cannot be considered 'good' on their own and that the turn out at the Eastern provincial council elections (despite the enormous ballot stuffing) cannot be considered an acceptance of TMVP's or Mahinda's scheme. People vote for a multitude of reasons. The Kashmir example i hope illustrates this more clearly.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-6728066465166516442008-12-22T07:48:00.000-08:002008-12-22T08:11:04.815-08:00'Majoritarianism wins with the acquiescence of the Minorities' ?<p>The following extract is from Prof Jayadeva Uyangoda's October article to the EPW (Economic and Political Weekly) dated 25 October 2008. A full version of the article is available from tamilnation <a href="http://tamilnation.org/tamileelam/fundamentalism/081025uyangoda.htm" mce_href="http://tamilnation.org/tamileelam/fundamentalism/081025uyangoda.htm">here.</a></p> <blockquote><p>"I believed for quite some time that ethnic majoritarianism is a political condition that the political leaders of the majority community impose by means of coercion on the ethnic minorities. It accords an unequal, at best second class, status to the minorities. Minorities do not accept majoritarianism and they resist it. That is why ethnic conflicts flare up.<i> Observing how the Tamil and Muslim political parties in Sri Lanka have come to accept the second class and unequal status with great pleasure, I changed, realising that my understanding of majoritarianism was an incomplete one. </i></p> <p><i> I now know that ethnic majoritarianism is not necessarily coercive. It has a strong element of consent of the minorities, or at least their political leaders. Majoritarianism is completed when the political representatives of the minorities accept, with happiness and even in intense competition with each other, the condition of inequality. They do so in exchange of other benefits which are usually couched in the respectable language of “development assistance to our community”. </i></p> <p>That is what the 25 years of civil war has done to the minority rights project in Sri Lanka."</p></blockquote> <p>The part italicised is my own emphasis from the original. It is a very short article and the excerpt above comes at the tail end of the article.</p> <p>I am unable to agree with the professor's analysis (which is not detailed possibly because he was constrained by space) and hence my disagreement with his 'new conclusion' about majoritarianism. Prof Uyangoda's reference to the minorities accepting a second class status is possibly a conclusion resulting from his analysis of Karuna's, Douglas's and possibly Thondaman's politics.</p> <p>I do not think the minority ever willingly gives into majoritarianism. I do not think that they give it up with 'great pleasure'. The fact that the minorities 'give up' is essentially related and directly linked to coercive majoritarianism. The Prof seems to tag this 'giving up' as unconnected with coercive majoritarianism. Its a victory of one over the other, where the victorious picks the new leaders of the minority. I would say Thondaman, Karuna and Douglas are all examples of this. The fact that these political parties have given up does not mean that the entire community has given up. These political parties have 'given up' because they were unable to survive in their attempts to resist coercive majoritarianism. The petty agendas of these political parties and their leaders cannot be taken as a give up by a minority. I can understand a war weary population seeking out developmental assistance - an assistance which is reliant on the resources the majority has almost exclusive control over. Hence destruction, starvation and hunger is a tool of coercive majoritarianism. War wearediness can also result because of the leaders of the minority struggle lacking startegic political vision as in the case of LTTE. The dillema of minority politics in Sri Lanka is not because it has given it up with 'great pleasure' as Prof Uyangoda calls it. It is because 1) coercive majoritarianism having been able to cleverly stick to the fundamentals of majoritarian democracy (having periodic elections) has succeeded or appears to have succeeded in winning over minority politics both by the use of tools associated with majoritarian democracy (again elections and numbers) and through the use of arms and 2) because minority politics lacks imagination and flexibility.</p>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com98tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-84891620183640660342008-12-02T03:30:00.000-08:002008-12-02T03:48:18.660-08:00India: Secular politics feeding Muslim Fundamentalism?There is an interesting debate going in the media around the world regarding the source and question of Islamic Fundmentalism in India. This is from an <a href="http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/02/stories/2008120255120900.htm">opinion piece</a> that appears in the Hindu today:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Muslim fundamentalism has also been helped by India’s “secular” political establishment which, barring the Left, has not only made no effort to develop a progressive Muslim leadership but actively prevented it from taking root. Instead, it has relied on a class of Muslim “leaders” whose own political interest lies in keeping the community backward-looking.<br /><br />By mobilising Muslims around issues that have nothing to do with their daily lives they have landed the community in a situation where it finds itself a target of Hindu fundamentalists, on the one hand, and susceptible to faith-based militant Islamist elements on the other<br />While the Congress is the chief culprit in this respect, it is not alone in propping up self-serving Muslim leaders.<br /><br />The fact is that it is hard to name any progressive Muslim leader in any of the secular parties. Over the years, the only change that has been noticed is that instead of “mullahs” with long beards we now have suave English-speaking Muslim leaders to match the “modern” face of Hindutva. Their language and worldview, however, remain unashamedly sectarian".<br /></blockquote>I see a very valid point in the analysis. It is a difficult point to articulate given that those articulating may be accused of playing into the hands of Hindutva's 'appeasing the minorities' argument. The piece actually exempts the Left parties from this but I remember reading a chapter from <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/anthropology/fac-bios/chatterjee/faculty.html">Partha Chattergee</a>'s "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Governed-Reflections-Hastings-Lectures/dp/0231130635">Politics of the Governed</a>" where he argues using a case study relating to the issue of modernising Madarassa education in Left governed West Bengal that the Left parties may also be accused of the same. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabana_Azmi">Shabana Azmi</a> (the acclaimed actress and social activist) makes a similar point in a TV interview available <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reJODmMUBws">here</a> on youtube.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-73607874246292942712008-11-30T06:05:00.000-08:002008-11-30T06:12:01.423-08:00Reflecting on the Mumbai attacks<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMAnsu2bGs27znvLAFKTUVTvH0W8Jb2J7kKQUw1Z8F99oQCgiUM5uI5El9F5PIEKH_FIIhXQLCwuonyf0B_cwXoyPHGhwXPOhL3eeqTDNeEUe37Sp11O0_CD0hTPUPxgP3Ov4SFg/s1600-h/01mumbai.600"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274452382418115890" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 342px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 214px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMAnsu2bGs27znvLAFKTUVTvH0W8Jb2J7kKQUw1Z8F99oQCgiUM5uI5El9F5PIEKH_FIIhXQLCwuonyf0B_cwXoyPHGhwXPOhL3eeqTDNeEUe37Sp11O0_CD0hTPUPxgP3Ov4SFg/s320/01mumbai.600" border="0" /></a><br /><div align="left">When a disaster (natural or man made) takes place there is a period of uncertainty that follows – a period of confusion where people are at a loss in terms of how they should respond to the disaster at an individual level and in a collective sense; at a personal level and as a political society. The period provides for what is described as a clean slate during which new things can be written and the ideological masters who wait for the window of opportunity to arrive, seek to write hastily on the clean slate. This is the theme of the book that I bought recently when I was in Madrid, titled ‘The Shock Doctrine’ by Naomi Klein. (I have a habit of buying some book whenever I am abroad - my idea of collecting souvenirs)<br /><br />xxxxxxxx<br /><br />I have moved to a new place and one of the negatives of the new place is that my new landlady unlike my old one doesn’t have cable TV. I terribly miss my NDTV. I don’t mind NDTV though it’s no different from your typical News Channel (where sometimes or rather most of the time entertainment/cricket news is bigger than the politics). But it is definitely better than our own News First. Be that as it may, I was at my former landlady’s place yesterday and was watching NDTV’s ‘Big Fight” (a Saturday political talk show kind of) which was last night an extended show for two hours dedicated to discussing the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. The show was titled: “Fight against terror: How can we win?” Vikram who moderates the show is a fairly decent anchor. Yesterday when I got there around 7.30 half way into the show I saw Vikram almost being hysterical. He was asking why enough money is not being spent on providing the proper ammunition and armory for the police and India’s National Security Guard and he was demanding for a proper research and statistics on how much the Government spends on defence. Shekar Gupta, the editor in chief of Indian Express, whom I have followed and found to be a respectable journalist was sane enough to calm him down and say that there is enough and more money being spent and that the real question was where the money was going. There was a strategic studies expert from the centre for policy research who was making the point that urban guerilla warfare was on its rise and that the Indian police force wasn’t trained and equipped enough to handle it. There was an academic attached to a hindutva think tank saying that there is a clean slate that has been created by the disaster for the future and that we should start writing on it. Vikram suggested what he would write first: call for a non partisan support for more training, equipment for the police and the army. At this stage BJP’s Arun Shourie (one of BJP’s very pro-RSS idealogues) was introduced and Vikarm asked whether he would agree with him. Shourie asked Vikram how dare he asks him that question when the media was the one that was running down the police. He was referring to NDTV and other media coverage and Vikram’s own big fight programme on the fake police encounters in Delhi and elsewhere recently. Vikram almost agreed with him and didn’t have much of a response. The fear had gripped Vikram so much that he probably started suspecting the need for scrutiny over law enforcement agencies and Shourie had the sway. NDTV continued to play scenes from the funerals of the police officers who had died fighting the terrorists at Mumbai Taj hotel. At 8 in the news room Vikram had a candle lighted in front of him and his correspondents from different parts on India were seen joining him. The height of emotion that NDTV sought to display quite dramatically was a bit too much for me, I left. This morning reading the Sunday Times I was disgusted to read in the “Obituary/Appreciation” page of the paper a reader from Banadaragama suggesting that we should build a temple for the soldiers who have died in what he called ‘defending our 2500 year old civilization’. The patriotism reflected at my faculty gates at university with a banner carrying the Sri Lankan flag crossed with a Buddhist flag along with photographs of Army soldiers and the Bodhi pooja held at the University all make me wonder what kind of a society we are. Why not a Bodhi pooja for all people who have died in the war so far – the innocent civilians – would that be unpatriotic? And what kind of a war is this? Between two civilizations? What was the Buddhist flag doing on the banner? The president is being iconised by the state media to an extent where it won’t be surprising if there are calls to build a temple for him.<br /><br />xxxxx<br /><br />I am quite confident that because of the enormity and diversity of the politics of that country, in the long run saner minds will prevail in India. But for a Muslim in India it’s going to be tougher to be not doubted as being ‘anti-National’. The fall out of the Mumbai attacks which follow the one in Bangalore and Delhi ones will show the Congress Government as week in the face of terror. BJP brought in the draconic Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) as a response primarily to the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament. The Congress government repealed the act. (I think now there is a law called the National Security Act) The attacks have largely targeted the urban middle class in the past (the Mumbai attacks possibly stand out) which is increasingly now moving towards the BJP. Ashish Nandy India’s topmost political scientist shows us how all religious extremism and riots have occurred and center themselves in the urban areas and not in the rural areas. People like the BJP Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi (the one who is responsible for the 2002 riots against Muslims in the state) who are seen to be good for business and tough with terror will benefit. But because of the fact that BJP will never be able to form a Government of its own they will never be able to pursue their agenda at a level they would like to and hence my opening statement in this paragraph.<br /></div><br /><div align="left">xxxxxxxx</div><br /><div align="left"><br />Of course our Government is quite happy with the Mumbai attacks. Its simple message to India: “You fight your war on terror and we will fight ours. Please take care of your business and don’t interfere in ours. Hope the attacks will shut Tamil Nadu’s voice. Deepest sympathies. Good Luck”.<br /><br />As Bush prepares to leave office and to get back to shooting ducks at his Texas Ranch his writing on the clean slate after 9/11, of the war on terror, that brands all ‘sorts’ of terrorist projects together and fight them all will continue to devastate us world over for a long period of time, as preparations are underway for the Obama presidency. </div>Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-75079189147264584672008-11-15T01:09:00.000-08:002008-11-15T01:28:14.615-08:00Co-Artists of the President rally for more warSri Lankan, (sorry i would rather call them) Sinhala artists held a demonstration on Thursday to show what the <a href="http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=32198">Daily Mirror</a> decided to call their 'disapproval' of the take of the Tamil Nadu Cinema 'Kollywood' artists regarding the persuction of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Here are some hilarious comments from some of our artists<br /><br />Malini Fonseka- <span id="lblNewsBody"> “I wish they will visit Sri Lanka and see the truth for themselves; that Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims all live together in tolerant and peaceful communities.”- Oh really??!! Which country is this Malini? Sri Lanka?</span><br /><br /><span id="lblNewsBody">Geetha Kumarasinghe</span>-<span id="lblNewsBody">"All Sri Lankans, regardless of race or religion, will stand as one united force, against inequality, and support our troops</span>"<span id="lblNewsBody"></span> - Whose troops Geetha? We know that you want to destory the Tigers only. We are prepared to take the burden that we will have to be inconvenienced in this pursuit. Get displaced; homes razed to the ground and even get killed. Thats ok. These are our troops. We will welcome them with open hands when they come to liberate us. Brilliant.<br /><br />Perfect state of denial.<br /><br />I have had the chance to listen to some of the speeches made at the different rallies that Tamil Nadu Cinema personalities have had so far. I do concede that they have enagaged in a bit of exaggeration here and there. But there were saner voices like that of Director Cheran's speech at the Rameswaram rally. But none of their statements or speeches were as widely sweeping in effect as some of the statements quoted above from our lovely artists from Sri Lanka. Of course the lovely president himself was their former colleague.<br /><br />Groundviews has an article on the same subject <a href="http://www.groundviews.org/">here</a>.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-8722546812083499922008-11-06T14:53:00.000-08:002008-11-06T15:02:16.381-08:00Rajiva Wijesinghe's personal blogFinally somebody decided to give Rajiva Wijesinghe some proper <a href="http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=31506">whacking</a>. The best line for me was this one: <span id="lblNewsBody">"The Sri Lankan government should know that in this country (UK) we use the very long held principle of 'innocent until proven guilty'.<br /><br /></span>He uses the SCOPP website like his personal blog. His daily work involves searching the interent and if there is anyone writing in English who has said anything even lightly suggestive of bringing the government to direpute he would have a lengthy response. Quite jobless. Understandbly - the Govt is waging a war. Its a secretariat that defends the govts war effort. Of course Rajiva will have a strong rebuttal - the war is for peace. Good.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17439257.post-36241830195560138322008-10-11T18:29:00.000-07:002008-10-11T18:43:13.575-07:00War and Peace: Learning from Einstein<span style="font-style: italic;">"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"</span> - Albert Einstein.<br /><br />The Government and the LTTE will agree with Einstein on the subject of negotiating for peace. Both sides would say we have tried it out with them enough and hence trying it again would be insanity.<br /><br />The Government and the LTTE will disagree with Einstein however respectively on the subject of waging war for peace and waging war to create a separate state. Both sides will keep trying out the war strategy. For them this cant be insanity. How can it be? You will be considered unpatriotic on both sides if you say it.<br /><br />Hence, Einstein you are not very helpful. I am sorry, I am frustrated.Aachcharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10014981144377466804noreply@blogger.com1