Sri Lanka: Abductee recovered dead in EPDP office premises in Batticaloa
Sri Lanka: Abductee recovered dead in EPDP office premises in Batticaloa: “A shop owner, who was abducted by the paramilitary EPDP group in Chengkaladi in Ea’raavoor police division on June 19, was found dead and his body was recovered Thursday in the backyard of the EPDP office, which is guarded by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) of the Kommaathu’rai camp. The location was discovered following the information revealed by the EPDP personnel to the TMVP paramilitary operatives in a ‘Police interrogation’, according to informed sources. An EPDP person, Kaliyappan Gunaseelan, who was abducted by the TMVP, after Sureshkumar’s disappearance, was recovered dead near a pond in Vaazhaichcheanai on 27 June.”
(Via TamilNet.)
Iran becomes top donor for Sri Lanka
Iran becomes top donor for Sri Lanka: “Source: Government of Sri Lanka”
(Via ReliefWeb: Sri Lanka.)
Sri Lanka: Massacre grave unearthed in Batticaloa
Sri Lanka: Massacre grave unearthed in Batticaloa: “A mass grave, containing skeletons bearing gunshot wounds, has been discovered Wednesday morning at Paalameenmeadu, 6 km north of Batticaloa city, near a Tsunami resettlement. The grave was found after the IDPs, who were engaged in digging wells near their camp, unearthed body parts in one of the wells last week. At least 32 pieces of skeletons have been recovered with cloths since 9:30 a.m., when Judge B. Ramakannan from Batticaloa visited the massacre site with Judicial Medical Officer (JMO) M.M.A. Rahman and the Police. The site, located 1.5 km from a Sri Lankan military post, manned by police and later by the Sri Lankan Special Task Force (STF) and the Sri Lanka Army (SLA).”
(Via TamilNet.)
Tide turning?
Tide turning?
July 15, 2008 at 5:30 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Human Security, Peace and Conflict | by groundviews
Gajaman Nona
Ryszard Kapucinski is no armchair observer. As foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, he witnessed 27 coups and was sentenced to death four times in his lifetime. In his book on the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, Shah of Shahs, he notes that: “despotic authority attaches great importance to being considered strong and much less to being admired for its wisdom”. Kapucinski observed that almost every revolution against despotism is followed by an excess of hubris and urge for total control. “This continuous display of power is necessary, because, at root, any dictatorship appeals to the lowest instincts of the governed: fear, aggressiveness, bootlicking. Terror most effectively excites such instincts, and fear of strength is the wellspring of terror”.
Sri Lanka is no stranger to terror. Artists, writers and academics have explored the period of ‘bheeshanaya‘ in the late 80s and the collective amnesia of those who had to live through those terrible times. Jagath Ravindra, an abstract painter, writes: “I lived through the horrors of the bheeshanaya as a University student activist hiding from paramilitary death-squads. Over the last decade all my painting has been consumed by an inner struggle…to deal with the socio-political aftermath of this terrible atrocity”. Ravindra’s painting evokes haunting nightmares, silent forms in stasis. The work summons midnight panics, the empty eyes of the security forces “just following orders”, the heavy boot soiling the family stairs.
We need to be jolted from the acceptance of terror. Was I shocked when an earlier contributor to Groundviews informed us that Odel, that jolly air-conditioned space of consumer retreat, was once a torture chamber? The frightening thing is that I wasn’t. What is shocking is that there is no plaque or memorial yet for those torture victims. Yesterday’s pain is masked by today’s consumer escapism. And let’s face it, we need a refuge.
Last Friday a 12 year old child was killed by unidentified gunmen. The child’s mistake was to travel on a bus in a country at war where violence becomes normal, quotidian.
Cultivating fear does not bring the children back. However you dress up war it is still ugly. Jagath Ravindra has not let the memory of terror excite him to fear, instead he challenges us: to a real struggle that lies in “searching for goodness, be it within oneself or within society, amidst all the distractions, the challenges, and destruction”.
Leaders have always used war to distract. Think Thatcher and the Falklands, think Iraq. In 2003 the Blair government tried to use shock and awe to seduce us with moral imperatives for war. I don’t think civilians in downtown Baghdad were impressed. Of course glorifying war works for awhile. But political spin wears thin when people can hardly afford to eat and the horizon of the promised land keeps fading out of view. Oh look, just over there…we are almost there.
If you challenge people to stop dreaming they might do just that. They might remember that large numbers of children are malnourished in the North and East; that inflation is skyrocketing and that sooner or later young people who don’t want to fight their leaders’ wars will want jobs. If you want people to be prosaic they will. They will want properly surfaced roads to get to work and trains to travel in that don’t herd them like cattle. They want to live in a country where children can pass their O Levels because there are schools with teachers in them. A friend recently told me that the pass rate for O levels has dropped to just 50% of entrants as pupils don’t always have safe schools or proper conditions to study in. The world outside can be dark, fearsome so don’t lets make it any more so.
There is a logic to accepting the idea of just wars. In his classic critique of Communist ideology Czeslaw Milosz explores how totalitarianism offered a solution, “a chance to redeem the absurdity of existence” (Milosz, 1980). The first level may be ideological acceptance, this breeding of ‘captive minds’ is reflected in the film The Lives of Others set in East Germany. The second level to totalitarianism is the way individuals start to act in the public sphere. The individual may reject the ideology of the regime and yet because of the culture of fear start acting as an apologist in public. On a social level this outlook translates itself into a political culture of obedience, loyalty and acceptance of the regime′s power. In this world a hand lingering on a book or a casual smile becomes laden with an excess of meaning.
Browsing my cousin’s rather heavy book collection I found a great little book called The Perfect Crime. True, it’s by a rather wordy French theorist called Baudrillard, but don’t let that stop you from what’s a rather good read. Back in 1995, as the world edged to seeming more fearsome he noted:
”The great philosophical question used to be “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Today, the real question is: “Why is there nothing rather than something”.
If that’s all too abstract for you think back to that great faux pas by Bush when a journalist asked him: “Is the tide turning in Iraq?” and Bush stumbles back “I think – tide turning – see, as I remember -I was kind of raised in the desert, but tides kind of – it’s easy to see a tide turn – did I say those words?”(White House, 14 June 2006).
So hey, previous columnist who doesn’t even seem to have a nom de plume, you’ve thrown down a gauntlet, let’s see you deliver. Do you want us to dream nothing or want something……or have you forgotten your script?
Tide turning?
Tide turning?: “Gajaman Nona
Ryszard Kapucinski is no armchair observer. As foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, he witnessed 27 coups and was sentenced to death four times in his lifetime. In his book on the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, Shah of Shahs, he notes that: ‘despotic authority attaches great importance to …”
(Via groundviews.)
Sri Lanka: British Foreign Minister to meet Pillayan – reports
Sri Lanka: British Foreign Minister to meet Pillayan – reports: “Britains Foreign Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown, is to meet Pillayan (Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan), Chief Minister of the Eastern Province and leader of the Army-backed paramilitary group, the TMVP, Sri Lankan press reports said. Lord Malloch-Brown is on a four day visit to Sri Lanka this week, The Island newspaper said.”
(Via TamilNet.)
Tamil Assistant Registrar of Kelaniya University reported missing
Sri Lanka: Tamil Assistant Registrar of Kelaniya University reported missing: “The Assistant Registrar of the Kelaniya University, R.Rajeswaran, has been reported missing since July 4. He left for work on that Friday morning but failed to return home, according to a complaint lodged with the Wattala Police by his wife Vasanthini, a teacher at Puthukkulam Maha Vidiyalayam in Vavuniyaa.”
(Via TamilNet.)
Sri Lanka: Rehabilitated ex-LTTE cadres reunite with families
Sri Lanka: Rehabilitated ex-LTTE cadres reunite with families: “Source: Government of Sri Lanka”
(Via ReliefWeb: Sri Lanka.)
