(An edited version of this interview appeared in the Indian Express North American. Sujeet Rajan interviewed me for the weekly. This came out about a month ago, but only today I was suitably lazy to do this job)

You write candidly of love and love-making; leaving windows open to the bedroom sometimes. If it is autobiographical, how difficult is it to tabulate emotions of love and love-making through poetry?

I am not sure it is always the bedroom window I leave open, for love, after all, happens everywhere. And again, I am going to keep the suspense and not own up or disown the possibility of my poems being autobiographical! I think poetry is best equipped to enclose some emotions and exhibit others, because writing of love/ love-making in prose would simply call for too many excruciating details, and in the most cautious of cases, it would require a great deal of aesthetic and choreography to get the damn scene right. And only rarely can such elaborate construction capture spontaneity, which is what love is all about.

From an artistic medium, what is best to express love: the written word, the spoken word, brush on the canvas, silence? Why?

I have done everything but paint. And well, you have left out something which I see as central to love: movement. As in dance, as in theater, and also as in all of language.

3. Is anything taboo for you to write about?

No. Except of course if someone asked me to write a poem of praise, that tends to make me nasty.

5. You were displaced from home, from Chennai, for more than three months, having been invited to a writing residence program in Iowa. What has been the experience like?

I loved the time I spent in Iowa, and I also got to travel widely across the USA. The best part of the program was getting to meet these fabulous writers from other countries. The next best was the University library and the second-hand bookstores. My novel is about the Kilvenmani massacre, and surprisingly I completed most of the research while I was here, in a foreign nation. And lastly, I did write like crazy. I wrote the 50-odd poems that go into my second collection of poetry (Six Hours of Chastity).

6. How has the West influenced your writing during these last three months?

Nothing radical happened. And the subtle changes, if any, will have to be picked out by scholars or theorists, and even in that case, one never knows how accurate it is! I am always in a state of flux, so I do believe that coming here, and being footloose and fancy-free, would have changed me in some ways, and which would change the poetry in a sense.

7. If you were to write a poem based on the experience of your last three months, what would you write about?

I am too involved with the experience to verbalize it right away. There will be a diary at some point, and trust me, there will be love poems too.

8. You are an intrinsic part of the Dalit movement; an indelible, vociferous voice for the underprivileged in India. How do you reconcile yourself to a situation where you yourself live in a metropolitan city which is removed from the caste predicament for the most part, and now are in a developed world which has only academic interest in the problem?

I don’t think the Dalit movement is a rural movement, or that untouchability/ casteism does not exist in cities. The migration to the city does erase some identities even as it allows the scope for anonymity, but the Dalit remains a Dalit for the most part. The metropolitan cities are better suited for the Dalit movement’s growth and establishment because they allow for the Dalits to carry out democratic/ public agitations/ demonstrations without fear of a backlash, of being targetted and done-to-death and crushed by oppressor castes whose violent diktat operates much more freely in the villages. Coming to the second part of your question, yes, the developed world only has a superficial interest in these issues, which is quite disappointing. However, the struggle against caste should be waged only by those who have suffered because of it, and it should be supported by those who don’t believe in discrimination. I guess here the curiousity of the West could help since it actually brings things to the world’s attention. There’s another way of looking at it: the militant and political Dalit struggle (or even literature) has hardly been effectively theorized, or documented, so the academic interest emanating from this is certainly beneficial.

9. You write, commiserate with Tamils in Sri Lanka; is it emotional baggage for you now that crisis in Sri Lanka is no longer in the news with the Tamil Tigers gone?

The Sri Lanka crisis is now in the news in a way in which it has never been before. The US State Department’s report of what happened earlier this year in the war zone in which tens of thousands of Tamils were mercilessly bombed to death by the SL Govt., the Tamil Diaspora re-mandating their right to a homeland in the North-east, people all over the world being concerned about the three hundred thousand Tamils caught in concentration camps, Sri Lanka being the second-most unsafe country for journalists all over the world–these are issues of prime importance, irrespective of whether the media in the US, or India decides to highlight it or not. I take up a cause because I am involved with it, or I empathize for it, and not on the basis of the amount of media spotlight that it accrues. I guess the Tamil issue will always be an emotional baggage until we receive the right to a life of safety and security and self-determination. I trust that now is the time for humanitarian people all over the world to actually support the Tamil cause because things have never been worse.

10. Race, religion and caste come to play the most when elections are around the corner. In that respect the United States might not be much different from India. Emancipation apart, what needs to be done in India to remove barriers for equalization?

Yes, what you describe is the typical vote-bank scenario. I believe that equalization can come about only when the oppressors also decide that it is time for them to change, it is time for them to mend their ways. There is a possibility that such a change can come about through self-directed/ self-initiated efforts, but there are not enough pointers from history which lets us reinforce this belief. Those who seek to maintain the status quo, those who work against equalization and democratization, are known to change only when their own power is questioned and challenged. So, much of the responsibility for bringing about change lies in the hands of the oppressed people, since they have to continue their resilient struggle against oppression. If they resist the subjugation successfully, and if they manage to break out of it, then equalization will come about. It can never be beyond reach. What needs to be done in India is to encourage the freedom of the press, to bring out more stories of victimization and resistance to light, and to empower women without resorting to any cultural dogma. Anyone can observe that all systems of oppression ideally go hand-in-hand, so none of us can be free until all of us are free. For instance, I would like the feminist movement in India to really take up the ideology of annihilating the caste system not just because it is discriminatory and inhuman, but also because it is based on the control of a women’s sexuality (in order to keep the caste pedigree pure).

11. Do you agree with the quota system for the backward classes in government and educational institutions in India?

It is not for anyone to agree/disagree with the quota system, what people need to concentrate on is to ensure that all sections of society achieve real growth, and that no one is left behind and marginalized. I think the decision to extend the quota system for the backward classes (here i make a distinction from the Dalits) was taken because of their abysmal presence in both state-run educational and employment enterprises. We have to become a more tolerance and more inclusive society, and affirmative action is just one way of getting there.

12. Kamala Das backed your poetry; wrote a foreword to your debut collection of poems. Why does that mean so much to you? What do you like most about her poetry?

What Kamala Das said about my poetry meant so much to me because she is a woman who calls a spade a spade, she’s forthright and outspoken and doesn’t say things that she doesn’t mean. So, when such an authentic and genuine (not to mention accomplished and fiery) poet like her encourages your work, you just gain confidence in yourself, and you channel more efforts towards writing more, representing people more. I love her poetry, because she broke the barriers against Indian woman writing on troublesome/ taboo topics; at the core of everything, she was truth-seeking. Personally, I also adore her flamboyance, her fire.

13. How do you reconcile poetry with reality? Does imagination triumph?

My poetry is rooted in my reality: the reality of the Dalits fighting against caste-atrocities and violence of the oppressive forces who want to subjugate them, the reality of women who still have to fight to assert their equality and their rights, the reality of Tamils who have to express themselves in spite of the worst kind of threat to the freedom of expression, who have to struggle against systematic genocide in their own homeland. My poetry is a product of all my multiple, coexisting realities–right now, I don’t think I outsource my poetry to imagination.

MICHAEL ROBERTS on the EELAM STRUGGLE, TAMIL TIGERS & THEIR COMMEMORATION of MAAVEERAR (Great Heroes)

In response to a request from two friends I post a list of my academic writings on this subject for the benefit of those with the capacity to access such resources and the patience to read long essays.

Photo kindly provided by Ravindiran Vaitheespara of Canada.

Bodies that Fight On

This icon was built in 2004 and commemorates the Tigers who fell in recapturing the Kilinochchi locality from the Sri Lankan army a few years previously. The title is my invention and is intended to capture the sense of empowerment and defiance embodied by its signs, notably the black power symbol with gun. Note however that, in a fusion of ‘tradition’ with modernity, this icon is encircled by the karthigapoo or glory lily (the LTTE’s emblematic flower) in the manner of a Hindu rite of ārati. Vaitheespara remarked that it conveyed the idea of a ‘resurrection,’ a perceptive reading that is supported by one of the themes – that of renewal and regeneration — coursing thorough LTTE poetry studied by Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam (South Asia 2005).

Tuyilam Illam or “Resting Place” at Kopay late in November 2004. Photo by Michael Roberts, late Nov. 2009.

• “Saivite Symbolism, Sacrifice and Tamil Tiger Rites,” Social Analysis 2005, 49: 67-93.
• “Pragmatic Action & Enchanted Worlds: A Black Tiger Rite of Commemoration,” Social Analysis 2006a, 50: 73-102.
• “The Tamil Movement for Eelam,” E-Bulletin of the International Sociological Association No. 4, July 2006, pp. 12-24.
• “Suicide Missions as Witnessing: Expansions, Contrasts,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2007b, 30:  857-88.
• “Blunders in Tigerland: Pape’s Muddles on ‘Suicide Bombers’ in Sri Lanka,” Online publication within series known as Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics (HPSACP), 2007c, ISSN: 1617-5069.
• “Tamil Tigers: Sacrificial Symbolism and ‘Dead Body Politics’,” Anthropology Today, June 2008, 24/3: 22-23.
• “Killing Rajiv Gandhi: Dhanu’s Metamorphosis in Death?” South Asian History and Culture 2010, 1/1: 25-41, due next month.

ALSO in association with Arthur Saniotis: “Empowering the Body and Noble Death” as editors of symposium in Social Analysis, Spring 2006 50: 7-24, which has articles by Douglas Farrer, Marie Lecomte-Tilouine, Michael Roberts and Jacob Copeman.

Photo by Michael Roberts, late Nov. 2009.

Female Māvīrar surrounded by Tropes of Abundance,at VVT Shed, November 2004

The corpulent and healthy lady is not only arrayed in traditional gear but bears a pot, thereby symbolising generative overflowing. Moreover, this picture is complemented by vessels bearing goods, a setting appropriate to the sea-faring little town of Velvittaturai. Sanjay Srivastava has informed me that the image of a woman with pot was widely deployed in India during the era of socialist state planning to “represent the ideology of plenitude through the planning process;” and that this image has always been common in Indian calendar art where it is “associated with ideas of a fecund nation state and the fertile woman” (email note, 30 March 2008).

Photo by Michael Roberts

Palatial Settings for Māvīrar, Tirunelvely, November 2004

From 1989 the LTTE began commemorating their fallen on 27 November each year, in what they refer to as Māvīrar Nāl, or “Great Heroes’ Day”. This event grew increasingly more elaborate. Temporary sheds at different sites displayed photographs of the dead fighters. The frontage, drapery and posts marking the segments within each shed together evoked a milieu reminiscent of a Hindu kōvil (temple). Chapter 4 within this book provides descriptions of the atmosphere in the week leading to this event in 2004, but can hardly capture the multi-sensual effects of this massive exercise.

This image is from within the shed at Jaffna University Campus, Tirunelvely, in November 2004. This type of backdrop was not an isolated case. While this painting reminds one of a chateau in Europe, other backdrops at the sheds in Velvittaturai and Tirunelvely resembled a Swiss chalet and an urban European palace. From the ideal houses depicted in architectural pattern books available at market level in Tamilnādu, it would appear that the colonial bungalow has been indigenized into contemporary bourgeois aspirations within Tamil culture. It is significant that these attractive familial settings are now deployed to soften the grief of kinfolk of the māvīrar. Whether the attractive setting conveys a suggestion of idyllic afterlife for the māvīrar is an issue that requires careful investigation. That is, one needs to investigate whether the images evoke the idea of swarnalōham, or heavenly place, that figures in Tamil culture as an abode of the deities and/or a warrior’s heaven.

Courtesy of TamilNet

Lt. Col. Bork’s “Nadukal” worshipped by LTTE official, 5 July 2003

“LTTE’s Vavuniya Political head Mr. S. Elilan is seen garlanding Black Tiger Lt. Col. Bork’s “Nadukal” at the Eachchankulam Maveerar Thuyilum Illam. Lt. Col. Bork (Mapanapillai Arasaratnam of Arumuhathan Puthukulam Vavuniya) was killed on 23.11.1990 when he helped destroy the entrance to strategic Mankulam SLA camp.”

ADDENDUM:

I have been informed that the tuyiallm illam at Kopay, Vadamaratchy and Kodigamam in the Jaffna Peninsula were crushed into the ground at some point this year. Since this happened at both Kopay and Vadamarachy in late 1995 or os, it follows that all the tuyilam illam have been bulldozed this time round as well. I will be composing anindictment in the next few days.

MICHAEL ROBERTS

PRUDENT TWO-POINT PROGRAM FOR PRAGMATIC TAMIL POLITICS

by Dayan Jayatilleka

Courtesy of www.transcurrents.com,  where it appeared first on 13 Dec. 2009 and continues to excite comments. It is repeated here because it is as cogent as pertinent and serves as a means of reflection.

“For their part, Tamil leaders have not yet made anticipated conciliatory gestures that might ease government concerns and foster a genuine dialogue”- Sri Lanka: Re-charting US Strategy after the War, US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Dec 7, 2009

Sri Lanka is a work in progress, a jigsaw puzzle that we have never been able to complete because the pieces haven’t been fitted together correctly.

The Sinhalese and Tamil ‘pieces’ of the jigsaw want places bigger than the spaces available that would permit the whole to fit together. Both the Sinhalese and Tamils overestimate themselves and underestimate the other. The Sinhalese overestimate their local preponderance while underestimating their external vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of the jigsaw puzzle as a whole. The Tamils overestimate their external spread while underestimating their domestic weakness.

The War and the postwar elections have dramatically emphasized certain basic realities which however have been imperfectly absorbed and reflected upon by both Sinhalese and Tamils. There are four outcomes or facts that should impress themselves upon the Tamil psyche.

Firstly the utter military defeat of Prabhakaran and the Tigers, who were thought invincible by the Tamil community.

Secondly, the ability of the Sri Lankan state/the Sinhalese/the South, to impose a defeat on the Tigers without a political package as prerequisite, parallel or postscript.

Thirdly, the inability or unwillingness of the international community/world opinion – Western and regional—to either halt the military offensive and drive the Sri Lankan state either to the negotiating table or a devolution package.

Fourthly, the disappearance of the pacifist neoliberal candidate (Wickremesinghe) and the emergence instead of a bipartisan consensus of sorts, with two Sinhala nationalist candidates, the one populist and the other militarist, neither of whom will compromise on secession, terrorism, and the unitary state.

The Tamil politicians and intellectuals, here and in the Diaspora didn’t get it at all. They neither foresaw the decimation of the Tigers by the Sri Lankan armed forces (relatively swiftly in this last war, I might add) nor the opening up of democratic space that would inevitably follow. I say ‘inevitably’ because that was what I told the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams in early 2007, in the presence of President Rajapakse, several Cabinet Ministers, senior officials and Church personalities including Bishop Duleep de Chickera. I gave a brief run down on the war as satisfying the major criteria of Just War theory (which was of course originally just war theology – Leo Strauss’s pet aversion, “political theology” at its best). While un-contradicted by the clergymen (Sinhala, Tamil and British) in the room, I was posed a question by Dr Williams for whom I had great respect because of his formidable intellect and his high profile opposition to the invasion of Iraq. His own work on Just War had made him focus on a just outcome, so did I think that this war would lead to one and if so why?

I replied the Archbishop saying that in the wake of the military defeat of the LTTE by the armed forces of the state, the inevitable reopening of electoral space and the re-enfranchisement of the Tamil voter, would, in the context of a highly competitive Presidential and parliamentary elections and proportional representation, give the Tamil people the leverage to re-insert their issues and demands at the very centre of Lankan politics. I recall saying, only half jokingly, that “President Rajapakse and his rival, whoever it may be, at the presidential elections will trip over each other to woo the Tamil voter”, as would the two major parties, because the administration that issues from a parliamentary election would be coalitional in character. In a postwar peacetime election, neither of the presidential candidates could get 50.1% nor could the major parties (under proportional representation) prevail on the basis of Sinhala Buddhist votes alone. These prognoses have been validated by events.

For their part, the Sinhalese must learn a lesson from the ironic spectacle of both Mahinda Rajapakse and Sarath Fonseka promising to go beyond the 13th amendment, to implement 13 Plus or even 13 Double Plus, mere months after the former was in effect talking “13 minus” and the latter was decrying the attempt to implement the 13th amendment in any form on the grounds that his boys didn’t give their lives for devolution! Even the EPDP which was willing to settle for the 13th amendment is now seeking to go beyond it. This turn of events is particularly amusing to me, since I was denounced by the Sinhala chauvinists for advocating the immediate postwar implementation of the 13th amendment from a position of strength, and possibly lost my job also because of that factor. The same Sinhala chauvinists, now divided, are gathered around two candidates, both of whom are pledging to go beyond the 13th amendment, something I never advocated.

So while the Tamils must learn from their military defeat that there are certain things that are unfeasible given the huge Sinhala preponderance on the island which the Sinhalese when roused will not hesitate to deploy to the full, the Sinhalese must learn from the political bargaining power of the Tamils even after their chosen or self appointed vanguard was decimated, that the ethnic Other will just not go away and cannot be cowed or reduced in significance beyond a point.

This is the ideal moment then for both sides to arrive at a realistic compromise. But will they? The Sinhalese presidential candidates have, at least at the level of rhetoric, come some way – and in practical terms the IDP situation has verifiably improved. However, one cannot say the same of the dominant tendency within Tamil politics, represented by the TNA. It may be said that they are no longer asking for a separate state but that’s a joke: separatism has no chance on the ground and the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s latest report shows that there are no serious takers in Washington DC either, for anything that is not squarely within a united Sri Lanka. Even so, neither the pro-Tiger elements in the Diaspora nor the TNA have repealed the Vadukkodai Resolution which called for the setting up of a separate sovereign independent state of Tamil Eelam. This is tantamount to the destruction of the Sri Lankan state in its current scale, scope and contours.

Some TNA MPs call for federalism as the basis of negotiations with both Presidential candidates. This is a perfectly legal and legitimate position, but it is lamentably foolish, because there will be no takers, and is yet another example of Tamil nationalist politicians pricing themselves out of the market.

The third example of the obduracy of Tamil nationalism is the demand that the Sri Lankan armed forces withdraw to the pre conflict, i.e. pre July 1983 positions in the North and East. It is one thing to oppose any attempt at Sinhalization and the setting up of military settlements outside of currently held state land. It is also reasonable to seek some significant shrinkage of High Security Zones. However it is absurd to demand a return to the pre-war status quo. After a bitterly fought war, no responsible state can withdraw to pre-war lines, because it is precisely the vulnerability of those pre-war deployments that were amply demonstrated during the war! Though the context is different – one of a foreign war – and the arrangements as they evolved are those of solid alliance, it must be noted that there are US bases on German and Japanese soil. Postwar deployment of the Sri Lankan army must ‘permanently’ prevent any possibility of the repetition of the LTTE’s military maneuvers.

On the one hand there must be no policies or deployments that smack of Occupation, Palestinianisation, or Sinhala Buddhist-isation by settler-colonialism. On the other hand the force posture of the Sri Lankan armed forces in the North and East, must, for the long duration, be one of prevention and preemption of separatist terrorism and irredentism. While there can be partial retrenchment, there can be no principle of pullback to pre-conflict lines.

The real chance for a revived Tamil politics is at the parliamentary election which will fairly swiftly follow the presidential one. The broader the bloc of the Tamil parties or of the Tamil–speaking parties (Tamil and Muslim), the greater the possibility of neutralizing the Sinhala ultranationalists, but only if their negotiating stance with the major Southern formations is a prudent one.

If the Tamil parties price themselves out of the market with their federalist fundamentalism, a tragic situation such as that of 1972 will obtain, where the two major parties sat smugly in a parliament turned Constituent assembly and myopically ignored the demands of the Tamil United Front. Certainly the Sinhalese and Sri Lanka suffered dreadfully from this absence of dialogue but none so horribly and at such colossal comparative cost as did the Tamil community.

What then should be the stance of a pragmatic Tamil politics? Any attempt to go qualitatively beyond the 13th amendment will, even if agreed to by this or that candidate will be shot down at a popular referendum, unless the pathway adopted is that pointed out by Prof Lakshman Marasinghe, in which case the degree of enhancement will have to be suitably modest. Far more prudent is a two point program: (a) insist upon the implementation of the 13th and 17th amendments to the Sri Lankan Constitution within an agreed upon time frame, coupled with (b) an anti-discrimination thrust as concretized in the revival of Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Equal Opportunities Bill of year 2000.

Contrary to the caterwauling of the crackpots, the Zurich conclave of the Tamil parties was on balance positive, because any political conversation is better than none and the more inclusive the better. Best of all though is the tacit political and programmatic convergence of the PLOT, EPDP, EPRLF and EROS in support of the Rajapakse candidacy. This is the bulk of the historic “Eelam Left” as distinct from the federalist/separatist Tamil nationalist trend, the dominant one in Tamil politics, as represented by the TNA. If only this tacit confluence turns into a solid political bloc and adopts a policy of unity and struggle in relation to Mahinda Rajapakse, the ruling coalition may be shunted along Congress lines and Sri Lanka may be nudged along a more pluralist, National-Democratic path.

What then of the TNA? On present form, there is still the danger that the main party of Tamil nationalism will, like the Palestinians, once more demonstrate its propensity never to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. This may be true of the Sinhalese as well, but given the demographics, natural resource endowments and strategic competition (read the US Senate Foreign relations Committee report), they may be able to afford it for a while longer.

The Tamils have to decide whether they wish to be like the Palestinians and keep insisting on first principles, or be like the Catholic minority of Northern Ireland. Irish Republicanism has arrived at a settlement, without the achievement of any of its historic aims and demands: independence from the UK, the unification of the 26 Counties, the removal of British troops and liberation from the British monarchy.

Even those responsible for the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972 have yet to be punished. If after 450 (taking the long view) or 30 years of struggle, and the failure of the British army to eliminate the IRA militarily – in contrast to the decisive Sri Lankan military achievement—the Sinn Fein and the Northern Ireland’s Catholics have settled for devolution and economic prosperity within a unitary state, why shouldn’t Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority? What’s good enough for Gerry Adams and Martin Mac Guinness should surely be good enough for the leaders of the Tamil National Alliance– and as they say in Parliament, if not, why not?

Posted by transCurrents on December 13, 2009 07:51 AM | Permalink transCurrents.com Contact Email: editor@transcurrents.com

3 Comments

The “sinhala chauvanist forces” who sacked Dayan J,are led by Mahinda Rajapakse who is even now his choice for the presidency.
TNA want army rule of the northeast to end.Only then tamils can live without fear of the killings,abductions,armed robberies,rapes and desecration/theft of statues of hindu temples.US armymen in bases in europe do not go into civilan areas unless in civil dress,on leave.Rowan Williams wanted “surgical strikes” to end the war.Brian Seneviratne wrote a good & fitting reply to him.The persecution/repression of tamils with Military Governers in charge,cannot be compared to the travails of palestinians or the irish catholics who do not experiance what is happening in the northeast.
This is feeble attempt to justify the repression of the tamils,even when the LTTE have been militarily crushed.
Tamils must vote for Fonseka – he surely will not be as bad as MR.

Posted by: Thamilan | December 13, 2009 10:19 AM

As suggested by DJ it is high time all Sri Lankans engage with each other to iron out differences and build a strong and prosperous nation. Other countries which have minorities have done so, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore are good examples of what can be achieved. Otherwise we can continue to debate and fight about various princples and theories till the cows come home. Sitting on the fence or doing nothing is not an option.

The main requirement for any ordinary person is Human Rights, Democracy, Rule of Law and Good Governance. All these solutions advocating 13+, Federalism, Unitary State etc are useless unless these conditions met.

Posted by: SriLankan | December 13, 2009 10:48 AM

Dayan,

The debate to unite the Sinhalese and Tamils continues – and, it must continue till we succeed. Fortunately, as matters stand today, the gulf is narrowing with even the usually obstinate JVP mellowing towards reason. But if you think Tamils today are pushed to negotiate from a position of weakness – this will not sell.

They have been pushed to this corner before and they have come out fighting and with greater muscle – because, let’s admit it, reason is on their side. Boy! Am I not trying to preach to the converted? The A of C Dr. Williams is undoubtedly a good man but between the time he arrived and left here he left the Tamils with the impression he lacked the faculties of speech – the bold and fearless variety, if you like.

That Man from Galilee would have been disappointed someone using his name did’nt have it in him. His Grace was as collutionist as his nammadai-aal John Holmes, the man who comes here only to give Clean Certificates to GoSL. Poor Shirley (who greets you in those walls at the Baker Street Tube Station) must be turning in his grave with that Baskerville cur. And, of course, it is elementary knowledge faithful and good aide Watson could be lying not far away.

In your resurrection with the regime you might repeat your counselling not to leave room for further adventure. The climate for this appears to be just right because anything pro-Tamil will sell at those hallowed TT grounds at Colpetty. As for the Tamils it is the loss of one battle but the Struggle – War, is too dirty a word – will continue until sanity prevails on majority minds. Bringing down existing Hindu temples and putting up Buddhist Viharas in the vicinity will not bring the expected unity and peace.

It simply increases the suspicion. It will simply be the breeding ground for a newer and probably more fiercer insurrection – this time with sympathetic foreign countries coming in openly as well – wearily. The TNAs request for the withdrawal of the army from Tamil areas may sound outrageous but remember it was the very sight of army men in the early 1960s that brought in the “Sinhala Occupation Army” description – and that was a high recruiter in a docile race. In limited territory such as Jaffna, surely the Police can take care of matters.

Alert as they will be, may not fail to see “unusual activity” in which case the State can move – if it comes to that. Which is unlikely anyway because the militants and their leaders are all long gone. And that is the Govt speaking. Last week they did it in writing as well – to those Delhi Wallas. Even those Tamil folk who, out of desperation, may have agreed to a military option earlier have lost their apetite for the ayudha porattam.

The call in the Tamil community within and outside in the diaspora is an unequivocal Farewell to Arms (Ayudha kalacharam vendaam – Down with the armed culture) Zurich said it best – if you and I agree who was eventually behind it. Finally, you came out recently with a more feasible option – that you call 2 Regional Councils and I – the 2 nation theory under one country.

ISS

Originally uploaded by Paul Trafford

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6947880.ece

http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2738842.htm

had no idea this inter-faith dialogue forum was on in melbourne or else i would’ve flown there. should start watching abc more!

i didn’t even know there was such a thing as a world parliament for religion…its definitely a better idea than the existence of the eu or even the united nations because it connects every individual with another rather than just leaders of a majority of people in a country who bothered to vote or chosen because someone of a higher authority did their job better than they could ever do…

i certainly think this event should get more exposure, especially within our muslim community, because there are just not enough of us voicing out our more moderate, proper stance towards islam and especially for those persons who only stick to their own kind (which are plenty in any community) -a little awakening to other worldviews, beliefs won’t hurt, only enhances…

its not because you think islam is any lesser and you want to try out all the others but because you’re confident and happy where you are that you don’t mind exploring beyond the knowns to greater appreciate your own beliefs and how the world works…

abc hasn’t put up transcripts to this forum or a video but i hope they do because even though there was a muslim representative there -dr suhair alqurashi, the dude next to her, anthony padovano -a catholic theologian, made more sense, in explaining issues for example of identity when the minaret ban in switzerland issue came up. the way he said it was when you don’t know who you are and along comes a certain group who do, its natural to feel threatened. people weren’t just freaked out over 4 minarets over the whole of switzerland but the idea the shariah might creep in and overrun their system/way of life.

they also touched issues on fundamentalism in all faiths…how why is that only the totalitarians get covered in the media -is made a norm, and those who come together in peace for these inter-faith dialogues are a rarity…and the theologian replied along the lines of if someone had any love for their faith, they wouldn’t go to such extremes, you would want others have what you want for yourself. he gave an analogy -people use religion as a weapon for their ulterior motives…if a husband loved his wife -he would never use his hand on her…if he does hit his wife and use religion to somehow defend his action then there was no marriage to begin with…(a lightbulb moment!)

suhair did mention how stigmatised muslims were after september 11 and that its not fair that everyone should be blamed because of just a few but that was it…there wasn’t anything from her that really got you thinking apart from when she pointed out how its best we sort out our problems in our day and age and impose these on the youth/future generations.

tim costello -head of world vision, christian priest and brother of ex-liberal finance minister peter costello (who i hate), pointed out how australia seems to have this profound fear with people arriving by boats, like another invasion is likely to happen when they touched on the current asylum issue especially with those fleeing tamil sri lankans, yet they don’t have a fear for those who come by planes…(and there are so many who overstay by plane)

i think it was the rabbi or it could be the theologian who quoted how people think the arrival of new people, civilizations would end noble humanitarian values but each one from the greeks to the romans, from the east europeans who had made their way to america to the latinos to the asians -all kept these values in tact and it was tim costello who said because the world has become more inter-connected, inter-twined -the h1n1 and world financial crisis couldn’t prove this more evident, then there should be a global ethics on how to deal with one another, the diversity. i agree!

this event reminded me of my days in notre dame -a private catholic uni that i use to go to. even though there were quite a handful of muslims who attended this uni and i did have to study theology as one of those pre requisites in first year, i really enjoyed the inter-faith discussions i had with my peers, even with my priest lecturers. its true when it says in the quraan how christians are more closer to you than the jews, its because of the love aspect, how much they service others in order to serve God. its so similar to islam. there were times when i forgot they were christians because of this. ahhhh freo!!!

anyways, here’s snippets of what usually goes on in this gathering

CRUDE REASONING, FALSE IMAGES: SRI LANKA’S REFUGEE CAMPS

Michael Roberts

This article was presented under a shortened title in ABC UNLEASHED on 7 November 2009 and is reproduced here with acknowledgement of this privilege. There were 36 COMMENTS entered in response to this article and I myself responded to four.I append a selection of these comments at theend of the article, dividing them into twosegments, those deemed Dinkum Australians and those deemed Migratnt Australians.

For the original set of comments, see http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2736651

Ever since the war in Sri Lanka moved towards a devastating climax early this year the propaganda war hotted up. With many arms all over the world the pro-Tiger elements have easily bested the government of Sri Lanka in this rhetorical game. If one spins lies, it is wise to take up half-truths, and then embellish and mix them with a couple of enormous fabrications. Then repeat these tales ad nauseam. Reiteration is the modus vivendi of sharp advertisement.

Given the emotional turmoil of so many Sri Lankan Tamils in many places, it is not surprising that they absorbed these tales and then purveyed these “truths’ with great fervour. In consequence Australians have accepted some tales as fact.

I focus here on one arena: images that have been circulated about the internment camps for the Tamil refugees — both civilians and tigers in civilian attire – who emerged from the battlefields. They numbered roughly 288,000 in May, with roughly 10,000 identified as Tigers and removed to separate “rehabilitation camps,” though the government suspects that more Tiger personnel are hidden among the remaining IDPs.

Australians value individual autonomy. Imprisoning people is anathema to liberals even if they are ‘enemies within’. No Australian today has taken the reflective step back to their own history and the principles that guided the erection of internment camps for some Italian and German Australians during WW II.

These Australian camps had two rows of barbed wire. Those in Sri Lanka have one row. But media personnel such as Tony Jones and Amanda Hodge insist on referring to the restraints as “razor wire.” This little act of massaging the message is quite significant in its awesome implications.

The weight of condemnation is then expanded exponentially by depicting the IDP camps as “concentration camps” in the novel “Demonising the Victims?” It is compounded by gross errors of fact perpetrated by David Feith in the Sydney Morning Herald where he states categorically that “All international media and non-governmental organisations have been locked out of the camps” and that the camps were marked by a “shortage of food and medical facilities.”

Palitha Kohona recently contradicted the first of these fabrications by indicating that 54 NGOs had access to these camps. When I challenged Rajiva Wijesinha about his recent statement in India (9 October 2009) critical of INGOs, I received a reply where he lauded the work of local NGOs and particularly cited CHA, Sarvodaya, Sewalanka and Caritas; while noting that “ the Catholic one has been a model of quiet commitment.”

As critically, I have a young relative who has worked for an UN organisation both in Kilinochchi and now in the camps. A quick email this week from the depths of one camp said: “Sarvodaya, Seed, Shade all work in the camps and are good.” Many local NGOS, I stress, work in association with foreign ones. There seems to be a touch of the old colonialism however in some Australian comments that demand a foreign hand or voice as authentic source.

Teams associated with the Friend-in-Need Society have fitted 257 artificial limbs on IDPs over the past few months. The tsunami disaster team of medics was diverted to attend to the camps from the outset. There are now 20 primary health-care dispensaries within the camps – reduced from a previous maximum of 27. Specialists visit the camps on rotation. The death rate initially was 5-6 a day, but is now down to 2-to-3 on average. Eighty percent of these deaths have been old people.

There are shops and banks within these IDP camps. The A Level examinations were held for those eligible recently in some camps. All this reads as quite remarkable for a “concentration camp.” As for the barbed wire pictured as “razor wire,” the containment leaked like a sieve. Though a government minister said that only 2111 had escaped, a journalist friend provided a flat contradiction: “about ten to twenty thousand left the camps by ‘buying their way out of the camps with the help of some pro-government Tamil parties, human smugglers and sections of the security forces. Many of these escapees are believed to be LTTE cadre or those with connections with the wealthy sections of the Diaspora.”

There are several black areas in the government’s record, most notably the long history of intimidation of media personnel. Such instances should not be mechanically extended as a blanket characterisation to the IDP camps. Some Australians have displayed incredulous gullibility in this field. In any event there is no excuse for responsible scholars to indulge in the erroneous statements that I have highlighted in this essay.

*************                                          ************************                                      *********************

THOSE DEEMED DINKUM AUSTRALIAN

Veedhur on 18 Nov 2009 10:57:43pm

Lazy reasoning. A good example of selectively arraying facts and quotes to fit ones perception. To quote Rajiva Wijesinghe to buttress the arguement is incredible.
It is not only those who champion individual liberty that oppose the internment camps, but also those who oppose collective punishment.

Don: 18 Nov 2009 7:54:11pm

Sticking to tradition of a good researcher Michael has written from his own experience and info gathered from reliable sources. Good to hear at least occasionally an unbiased version of events. It is sad to realize the so called free journalists here in Australia and elsewhere moving among public only shouting they are wearing emperror’s golden clothes!

Anne : 18 Nov 2009 12:40:13pm

I will never again vote Labour after this sorry mess with the illegal immigrants on the Oceanic Viking. I may as well have voted for the illegal immigrants- they have charge over the Prime Minister.

Maree for Anne: 18 Nov 2009 2:31:55pm

What would youi have had him do Anne? Let’s see – leave them to drown as Plan A? Certainly avoids any problem with survivors. Maybe force them off the ship at gun point as Plan B. Now the problem is Indonesia’s but our relations with Indonesia might have to take a battering, not to mention our reputation as a nation. The there’s Plan C – take them straight back to Sri Lanka and hand them over the the Sri Lankan authorities (no doubt this would also involve forcing everyone off the ship at gun point.) At least they wouldn’t be our guns but the images of women and babies being man-handled off the ship into the clutches of the very people they were trying to escape from might have had some ramifications for Australia’s reputation as a civilised society.
But what the heck, in our cosy white bread lounge rooms what do we care about our reputation not to mention the plight of displaced refugees!

Paul  for Maree: 18 Nov 2009 7:12:16pm

I’m Sorry Maree, but you like lots of other Australians seem to have fallen into the trap of gullibility. These people are not displaced persons, rather the majority of them are ‘economical refugees’ who are simply looking for greener pastures. They seem to have figured out the best way to an Australian visa is to jump a boat and hold a government to hostage, rather than go through the legal channels, where they stand little chance of getting approved.

edgeways : 18 Nov 2009 10:25:10am

Yes, there have been inaccuracies in the media – is there a situation where there are not?

Yes, there has been considerable spin by the LTTE over the years; but hasn’t the Sri Lankan govt. also used spin (and control of access) over the years?

Yes, Australians have sometimes been gullible in accepting some of this spin; I would suggest the gullibility meter has been overworked in a great many more instances than Sri Lanka…

But Michael, without actually saying anything specific, your commentary implies that (1) the LTTE has spun the truth (2) the camps are fine (3) the Sri Lankan govt has always treated Tamils with respect.

What the less careful reader – or the supporter of the Sinhalese govt – takes from this that Tamil criticisms of the Sri Lankan govt and the Tamil aspirations for independence are invalid.

I would suggest that the Tamils have, generally speaking, been discriminated against for decades, and they have legitimate reasons for wanting independence.

Rather than hiding behind inference and side issues, Michael, perhaps you could give us your views on the legitimacy of the Tamil struggle for independence (which is not the same as the legitimacy of the LTTE).

eric for edgeways: 18 Nov 2009 12:12:55pm

edgways, I don’t think one can come away from Michaels article believeing the “camps are fine” or that the “Sri Lankan Gov has always treated the Tamils with respect” to draw that conclusion is a bit silly. We have all seen camps, on the news, as they exist all over the world and none are even nice places.

The Sri Lankan Gov will not have always treated the non Tamils with respect either. But Civil war achieves nothing but death and destruction and further desire for revenge.

Michael Roberts for Edgeways:

Edgeways, I stayed within the theme selected by the Editor and space constraints prevented attention to Tamil grievances. On discrimination and resentment see my comments as hurled back at me by Colin Andersen in http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/taken-in-by-tamil-tall-tales/story-e6frg6zo-1225794053578. Also see my article “The Tamil Movement for Eelam,” E-Bulletin of the International Sociological Association No. 4, July 2006, pp. 12-24 if it is accessible; or relevant segments in Confrontations (Colombo: 2009). Better still read the books by two scholars based in USA, namely, Lakshmanan Sabaratnam (Palgrave, 2001) and Neil de Votta (Stanford Uni Press, 2004). As their names indicate they are not Sinhalese. There is also the work of Nira Wickremasinghe, whose political stance is liberal-moderate.

Azrael : 18 Nov 2009 5:16:06am

Without at all justifying the Tigers’ methods, I think you’ll find that one reason for the double-standard is that we are far more sympathetic towards a group who are fighting for independence over their own land than we are towards people establishing their state at the cost of the local residents.

Yes, we are massive hypocrites in this regard, as our own colonisation did EXACTLY that to the local Aborigines, razor wire and all. But unlike many countries who did similar things, we at least have recognised that what our ancestors did was abomnible, ranging from neligently imposing the policies of the time while turning a blind eye to the harm, to outright intentional persecution.

So we’re no angels. But again, we see that this was wrong, as a cross we have to bear. I think if the Sri Lankan government was to make a similar admission, saying that they recognise that (like Australia with the Aboriginal people) they clumsily and brutally established a state on top of a pre-existing culture. That they used superior firepower to use disproportionate force against people trying to protect their homeland – just like we did.

Take that step of honesty, and you’ll find plenty of people here who recognise that our ancestor’s errors can’t be undone overnight, and that finding a way to undo them at all is an ongoing struggle. You’ll find that we will sympathise with you tremendously, knowing what a heartbreaking time that experience is for a nation.

But we can’t do that while we see you making the same mistakes that we made, that continue to haunt the consciences of those of us who know history and care about its modern injustices.

Maybe take our criticism not as a rejection or a put-down, but as advice between friends. Friends warn each other when they see a friend walk heading down a bad road that their friend has already walked. We’d be a much worse friend if we said nothing. Knowing first hand how much economic, social and moral misery we have suffered from similar policies – how could we not make every effort to warn you of the same.

Goffa : 17 Nov 2009 7:16:19pm

Ah, I just love it when a another voice of reason and truth adds to the weight of evidence we have before us, rather than relying only on those in the media who would promote the sensationalist and one sided stuff that is their stock in trade.
More power to you Mick, and all others like you. Speak out and let us decide for ourselves

Marilyn : 17 Nov 2009 3:51:44pm

Perhaps then we should ignore the US state department report of war crimes, the Human rights watch and Amnesty reports, the vision we saw with our own eyes and listen to this Israeli style shill.

Have the Sinhala been joining in with the Hasbara machine.

Singhalese for Marilyn: 17 Nov 2009 5:09:59pm

Marilyn – Everyone has a right to say a different side of the story. You can’t just shut them up. Anyway it is up to you. My innocent brother was killed by a Tiger suicide bomb. I have got over that and I wish both the ordinary Singhalese and Tamils well and start reaching out to each other as both communities have suffered enough. There are people out there who really don’t care two hoots about 20 millinon people living Sri Lanka. It is so easy to criticise sitting in from of a computer screen thousands of miles away. There are lot of people out there who trying to help the Sinhalese, Tamils and other races come together in Sri Lanka. All the power to them. Anyway wish you well and peace be with you.

TheWarIsOver for Marilyn: 17 Nov 2009 6:40:02pm

Marilyn. The US report is only from such sources. Only alledged and more allegations against the Tamils. The camp the UN visited has improved by all accounts.

It is probbaly more politically driven as is always the case with China backing Sri Lanka and the west taking their eye off the ball in this regrd and being outfoxed by other emerging super powers.

The main point would be the final months of fighting but I am sorry, the Tamils chose to financially fund a terrorist organisation that used dirty tactics. You cannot have one side play by the rules, but not the other. Not once did I hear any real push from Tamil disapora requesting the Tigers play by rules. In fact they kept sending money for them to keep it up, even when it was hurting their own. Never complained, so they lose moral authority in my eyes. I see they brought much upon themselves through their choices.

Some people just love jumping on other people war bandwagons and all it does it create more division, more hate and more death.

The war is over.

Michael Roberts for both Singhalese and Marilyn, late November

Singhalese, thanks man. I especially appreciate your moderate tone of reconciliation at the end. Quite uplifting. For further encouragement, go to www.transcurrents.com and read “Sinhala and Tamil: Let’s get together and reconcile” on 31 May 2009. The initial memo was from MOHAN SEKARAM a Tamil in Sydney but the facilitator was DBS Jeyaraj who needs no introduction to Tamils and to many Sinhalese. The posts generated by this article revealed that the world was not populated by extremists alone. There were 364 posts so….

I encourage Australians too to dip into that material. It will open your eyes and indicate that there is no black and white chasm dividing Sri Lankans of the diaspora – there are quite a few ready to talk and to embrace each other.

Marilyn, please do not rely solely on the pontifications of ‘clerics’ in cloistered offices. Go to www.transcurrents.com for a range of  conflicting descriptions about the camps. Given the diversity of camps and different subjectivities they underline the difficulties we face in reaching conclusive generalisations.

My generalisation was a more simple one because it was a case of negation: to destroy Damien Kingsbury’s characterisation of the IDP camps as “concentration camps.”

For some interpretations of IDP camps, some generalised and others reporting “what I saw,” READ

1 . Veronica Shanti Chelliah, “IDPs in Sri Lanka: An eyewitness report  Exploring the realities,” Daily News, 25 August 2009.

2. Kath Noble, ““A Two-Day Trip to the I.D.P. Camps in Vavuniya and Chettikulam,” ww.transcurrents.org, 30 June 2009.

3. Seneviratne, “the IDP situation in Sri Lanka,” www.groundviews.org, 29 June 2009.

4. Noel Nadesan, “Internally Displaced Persons in sri Lanka, Speechat Murl Room, Canberra,http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2009/11/49937_space.html

5. Lilani Jayatilaka nee Appadurai in Sunday Island 1 nov.2009

Pyce: 18 Nov 2009 7:53:09am

Dirty tactics? Superior military forces always want the fighting to be done in the open because they know they have overwhelming strength. Opponents are forced to either surrender or change their tactics. Unsurprisingly the choice is usually to change tactics.

How is a superior military force using their superior weaponry to destroy a lesser “less dirty”?

We see the same arguments trotted out in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Taliban/Insurgents use of IEDs are decried as “dirty tactics” but the coalition’s use of helicopters shooting off rockets from kilometers away is apparantly clean.

As for the assertion that Sri Lanka played by the rules, wake up and smell the roses.

War is dirty. History shows us that in any conflict all parties commit atrocities (including Australia). That doesn’t make it right but singling out isolated atrocities is not the ideal method to form an opinion on which side is “right”.

THOSE DEEMED MIGRANT AUSSIES

Ram: 2009 : 18 Nov 2009 7:51:39pm

Thank you Mr Roberts for pointing out the misrepresentations that appear in the “Western” press. At times they are out of ignorance, but on most occasions deliberate. The good name of the little island had been tarnished by those who obtained a free education there funded by the common man (Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim among others) with calculated lies spread via the gullible “journalists”.

Fernando : 18 Nov 2009 1:27:23pm

Michael, Thank you very much!!!

Ruban : 18 Nov 2009 12:25:19pm

Every one deserved second chance. If any one watched Channel 4 reports obtained from sinhalese media personal how those young tamil men and women are executed by the srilankan military personal. every day young men and women taken by srilankan forces from the IDP cams and never return. Srilankan government is missing the last opportunity to reconcile with the tamils. International community should force the srilankan government to come with right proposal and implement to the tamils. thats is the only thing will stop the tamils fleeying tamils. Before many agreemnts were signed by tamil politition(Before tamil tigers period) and those never been implemented. If they don’t consider these issues and do something seriously srilanka will be like another IRAQ(Dont forgot the Bush’s Mission accomplished ) and whats happening now. May be one pirabakaran died but the current acts will create thousands of pirabakaran’s. Pirabakaran is creation of the past history. As a tamil i don’t want to see that again. We are peace loving people. and want a peace and bright future for us and our next generations.

Paul for Ruban:: 18 Nov 2009 7:15:28pm

Ruban, the video you mentioned was never proven either way to be factual or fictional.

S V Kasynathan : 18 Nov 2009 1:19:52pm

Crude Reasoning
There is a story that used to be well known in Sri lanka and Michael may also have heard it. It is about five blind men who wanted to know what an elephant was like and felt different parts of the elephant’s body and produced very different descriptions of the animal.

The story is most probably of Jain origin ans illustrates the strong emphasis in their epistemology about the dependence of one’s beliefs and therefore of one’s world on one’s point view, inclination, attitude and even allegiance etc.

A video clip, I chose at random chosen from the many in the net on the IDPs in Sri Lanka, shows barbed wire fences, razor wire strands and rolls of razor wire in different parts of the camp perimeter. Given that writers are very often in some kind of hurry or other, “fenced in with barbed wire”, “…razor wire” or “…. barbed and razor wire” are all possible descriptions. And yes, it depends on your point of view and the aforementioned etc.

What should be one’s point of view to find one strand of barbed wire and men with guns more tolerable or humane than two strands of razor wire?

The video clip I saw is titled “Sri Lankan Tamils detained in so called welfare Camps! Act Now!” and the roll of razor wire can be seen from 4.31 minutes.

cristophles for Kasynathan:  18 Nov 2009 3:42:38pm

Very emotive video. There’s nobody sadder than the loser of a war is there.

Michael Roberts for Kasynathan; late november

Kasy, the still images I have are from items hostile to the govt and were taken in May. I have now looked at the video you refer to and the majority of pictures therein show single rows of barbed wire. There is one series with rolls of barbed wire and one shot of a child behind razor wire with no wider context [surprise, surprise].

Dr Susiri Weerasekera sent this note:

I spoke to Dr Hemantha Herath …The IDP camp barb wire are the everyday type of ‘katu kambi’ wires which we use to cordon our own gardens with. They are double strand, like rope. There is a barbed wire fence round the doctor’s quarters too there.

Hemantha has seen people form one camp cross over to the next camp (while soldiers watched) through the wire cordon so as to buy things from the shop at the next camp.

No rolled wires. No razor wires.

Poeple who leave camps do so by getting transferred to Vavunia Hospital and scooting off … reportedly supported by agents who charge money for the service.

Rolled wires are seen round detention camps for those who were active combatants.

So we have both types and we are both partially correct. It is not an issue of subjectivity so much as ….

Anyway folks you should see that video at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWiMrcdaFuA

Note the last captions: we now know where David Feith got his ‘FACTS’ from, erroneous fabrications.

B. MURALIDHAR REDDY

REVIEW of CONFRONTATIONS in SRI LANKA: SINHALESE, LTTE & OTHERS

Amended and abbreviated version or article in Frontline, Vol. 26, No. 20, 26 Sept 2009

Michael Roberts’s latest book assembles thirteen of his recent academic essays on the cultural and ideological roots of the majority Sinhala and minority Tamil nationalisms in Sri Lanka. It includes a study of the pogrom against the Muslims in 1915 and a remarkably detailed analysis of the projects of Anagārika Dharmapāla (1864-1933), a staunch Sinhala Buddhist who launched a full-throated campaign against British rule and Christian missionaries.

The author‘s preface “Before Pirapāharan, after Pirapāharan” was written after the military decimation of the LTTE early this year, but all the other articles are the product of years of research. This journey, clearly, has been a labour of love. We now have some of the results before us so that they can be subject to critical scrutiny.

Taken as a whole, this book of 450 pages that include 35 striking photographs with mini-essays comes as a breath of fresh air in an atmosphere heavily polluted by hasty accounts penned by fly-by-night journalists and self-appointed Sri Lanka experts on Eelam War IV.

The temporal focus encompasses the last two centuries for the most part, though there are excursions further back. Issues of collective identity, modes of communication and the embodied practices of committed people provide some of the overlapping themes that straddle past and present.

Sinhala consciousness serves as a central theme within the collection, with particular attention to its modern form, namely, the currents of Sinhala nationalism from the British period onwards. The author’s readiness to depict some of these expressions as “chauvinist” provides a clue to his political positioning today.

The book clearly shows that the crisis which Sri Lanka faces today was born well before Prabākaran. The roots of Sinhala claims to hegemony go deep. If the chapter on Dharmapäla’s thinking and the “Marakkala Kolahālaya” in 1915 are not revelatory enough, that on the logic of association and conflations of time which inspired the Kandyan rulers of the 1810s to link the threat posed by the demonic white foreigners with that of the “sädi demalu” (vile & fierce Tamils) of Dutugämunu’s time is illuminating: it highlights the historical depth of sharp differentiation.

Attention to Sinhalese thinking is balanced, albeit unevenly, by some space devoted to Tamil nationalism in modern times. Roberts indicates that the first sustained exposition of Sri Lankan Tamils as a “nation” was presented by the Ceylon Communist Party in 1944. However, the book does not trace the history of this current and jumps to a consideration of specific threads informing the commitment of those who joined the LTTE.

Two essays elaborate on the religio-cultural roots of the martyr cult deployed by the LTTE in the course of the Tamil struggle for self-determination. This takes Roberts on a journey into the southern Indian heritages around the Cankam poetry and bhakti movement. These chapters also dwell upon a whole range of everyday practices of religious devotion oriented towards the negation of the self and the offering of votive gifts to powerful entities/goals. Renewal of self through fusion with a deity, it is argued, is conducive to martyrdom on behalf of one’s people and their cause.

Michael Roberts’s corpus of writings is substantial. They “straddle the fields of politics, history and culture;” while his disciplinary specialities are described as “cultural anthropology and historical sociology” (publisher). Few scholars on Sri Lanka can match his credentials, though his arguments on the ethnic strife in the island nation have been contested and debated by equally erudite personalities. Love him or hate him, Michael Roberts’s works cannot be ignored.

++++++++++++++++++

CONFRONTATIONS in SRI LANKA:

SINHALESE, LTTE & OTHERS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: Landscapes of Debate, Encounter, Review

1.   Language and national identity: the Sinhalese and others over the centuries

2.   Saivite symbolism, sacrifice and Tamil Tiger rites

3. Nomadic intellectuals: Asian stars in Atlanticland

PART II:  Sri Lanka: Analytical Accounts from the 1990s

4.  Marakkala Kolahālaya: Mentalities directing the pogrom of 1915                                                                                                      5.  Nationalism: the past and the present: the case of Sri Lanka                          .

6.  Beyond Anderson: reconstructing and deconstructing Sinhala Nationalist Discourse

7. Filial devotion in Tamil culture and the Tiger cult of martyrdom

8.  For Humanity. For the Sinhalese. Dharmapala as bosat crusader

9.  Nationalisms today and yesterday

10. Himself and Project. A serial autobiography. Our Journey with a Sinhala

zealot, Anagarika Dharmapala

11. Ethnicity after Edward Said: Post-Orientalist failures in comprehending the Kandyan period of Lankan history

12. The collective consciousness of the Sinhalese during the Kandyan era: Manichean demonisation, associational logic

PHOTOGRAPHS: LIST OF CONTENTS

OLD ORDER

1. Anagārika Dharmapāla

2. Piyadāsa Sirisena & W. A. de Silva

3. Middle Class Gentleman at the Orient Club, 1907

4. Mass Agitation: The Temperance Movement

5. Banda at Spinning Wheel

6. D. S. Senanayake addresses Crowd from Podium

HOMAGE

7. Bandaranaike’s Pūjā

8. Homage to the Buddha: Leftist Leaders offer Thanks at the Daladā Māligāva, ‘70

9. A “Holy Trinity”

POPULISM

10. Colvin R. de Silva in Action

11. Walking among the People

12. Wijeweera in Demagogic Mode

CONFRONTATION & VIOLENCE

13. Bandaranaike and Chelvanayakam All Smiles after BC Pact, 1957

14. Bhikkhu berates Bandaranaike, 1957

14b. Bhikkhus and Vimala Wijewardena protest outside Rosmead Place

15. Assaults on Tamils, 1958

16. Buddhist Monk views Portrait of Bandaranaike

17. Wijeweera’s Press Conference

18. Checkpoint at Height of JVP Insurrection, 1971

19. JVP Rally, Town Hall in Colombo, 7 November1977

20. Mob at Borella Junction, 24/25 July 1983

21. Protest against Ambassador Dixit and India, June 1987

22. Rajiv Gandhi, Jayewardene and Others All Smiles, July 1987

TAMIL TIGERS

23. Tamils En Masse at Sudumalai Ammān Kōvil await Pirapāharan’s Peroration, 4 August 1987

24a. Tiger Fighters with Cyanide Vials or Kuppi, late 1980S

24b. Young Tiger Lad with a Pottu in Holy Ash heads for Battlefield, 1980s

25. Female Māvīrar surrounded by Tropes of Abundance at VVT Shed, November

26. Palatial Settings for Māvīrar, Tirunelvely, November 2004

27. Kittu Up, Kittu Down

28. Pongu Thamil Float with Pirapāharan & Pot, Geneva, 2003

29. Fifty Pots for Pirapāharan, 26 November 2004

30. Pirapāharan’s Homage to Miller & Black Tigers, 5 July 2005

31. Tiger Demonstrator invades Cricket Pitch, West Indies, 2007

31b LTTE supporters in Toronto, October 2008

32. Women and Men marshalled for Struggle in the Northern Vanni, 2007                                                                                                                                      

+++             +++             +++             +++

ISBN 9789556650358

Publisher:  Vijitha Yapa Publications

Pages 450

Size 210×145x22mm Weight 800 g.

Price Rs. 1,800.00

The top three images reveal the degree to which the overflowing pot (pongu) was a central symbol at the “Resurgent Tamil” Festival in Geneva circa 2003 or 2004. The final photograph shows Pirapāharan’s fiftieth birthday being marked by fifty pots that symbolically regenerated and energized him and his project of Tamil Eelam.

BEFORE PIRAPĀHARAN, AFTER PIRAPĀHARAN

Michael Roberts in May 2009

My anthology CONFRONTATIONS was being finalized for printing in April-May 2009 when I visited Sri Lanka. The publishers asked me to pen a Preamble to render the book topical. This “Preamble” was drafted then and deployed some of my earlier web writings as part of its arguments. Visitors to this web site will have to make do without ready reference to the chapters in the anthology and also the photographs that are cross-referenced within this introduction.

The LTTE carefully cultivated an image of a “secular state” as one part of its appeal to northern European intellectuals attached to this ideal. Such a façade also served to unify its Saivite ‘trunk’ of support and its Catholic and Protestant branches among the Sri Lankan Tamil peoples. But this unification was via an ‘ecumenical’ umbrella inspired by symbols that drew upon religio-cultural currents in the Tamil universe reaching back into Indian heritages.

The symbols and meaningful practices were heavily informed by Tamil Saivism, but such concepts as vittuTal (seed — pronounced viththudal) that regenerates the earth and arpannippu (dedication) had deep resonances in the world of Asian Christianity (which, in all its forms, is deeply inflected by the religious practices of Indian civilization). Where an idea is embodied in practice, to the point where devotees mark their bodies and even punish themselves in the course of propitiating deities (male or female), then, we must assume that this idea is a powerful force.

I hold that Pirapāharan and his aides did not merely deploy such images in instrumental fashion to motivate Tamil people, but that many of them believed in the efficacy of such images and practices. Pirapāharan is widely known to have been guided by numerology in his battlefield decisions and frontline designs (Karuna in interview with Swati Parishar, latter’s personal communication). Another illustration is the use of the pot symbol, the pongu in Tamil, to crystallize the character of the LTTE during its propaganda drive in Sri Lanka and across the world in 2003-05. In an evocative translation these pageants were depicted as Pongu Thamil, or “Resurgent Tamil” parades.

Pongu (ponku) refers to a ceremonial pot of rice gruel and literally means “boiling over,” “rising,” “emerging.” Raw substances are used in the cooking process and thus, “ponkal cooking is an evocative metonym for reproduction and increase in general and for [festivals] in particular,” while “symbolizing the human capacity to convert death into life-sustaining growth with the help of gods and the ancestors” (Mines, Fierce Gods, 2005: 151-52).  Women break into a chorus of ululation when the pots boil over. This orientation is entirely in keeping with a religion that has cosmogonic myths where “the creative seed is carried in a pot” – itself a symbol of a womb (Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths, 1980: 45-46, 64-65).

At kotai (festivals) in Tamil areas the pongu signals auspiciousness and the abundance of   fruit. So, when a float a Geneva combined a picture of a benevolent Pirapāharan (Plate 28) and another float had a pot replica with milk boiling over, the appeal of such symbolism to Tamils all over the world would have been considerable.

For many Tamils, then, the pot would spell “regeneration.” So it is not surprising that some Tamils in Sri Lanka marked Pirapāharan’s 50^th birthday on 26 November 2004 with fifty pots in the sign 50 (see Image above). But, as we now know, such evocations and supplications of cosmic powers did not save Pirapāharan and the LTTE when they embarked on Eelam War IV around August-November 2006.

Nor did the LTTE’s organisational genius assist them in the face of overwhelming superiority of men and arms marshalled by the Sri Lankan state. The factors leading to the LTTE’s military debacle have already been summarized by several analysts, not least by Rohan Gunaratna (Pathirana 2009) and V. S. Sambandan’s “A Cavalcade of Deadly Blunders” in the Hindu, 19 May 2009. Many more are likely to follow, while M. R. Narayan Swamy already has another book on Pirapāharan in the pipeline for Vijitha Yapa Publications to supplement his An Elusive Mind (Colombo, 2003).

Such analyses will highlight critical blunders in the LTTE’s overall strategy, not least Pirapāharan’s obdurate focus on extracting a separate state by military means. While granting value to the particulars within such evaluations, it would be fair to say that most journalists and not a few academics pay limited attention to the cultural and ideological dimensions of Tiger and Tamil operations. This note of criticism may apply to many readers as well. Some essays in this book are a corrective and serve as frontal challenge to this form of blindness.

What is more, this book also provides analyses of Sinhalese thinking over the centuries (chapters 3 & 6) together with in-depth studies of Sinhala extremists (notably Anagārika Dharmapala) and the mentalities that drove bodies of Sinhala people to terrorise the Moors of the central and south-western parts of the island in the course of a pogrom in 1915 (chapters 9, 11 and 5 respectively). When placed alongside the essays on Tamil nationalism (chapters 10 & 8), the anthology within these covers places two strands of ultra-nationalism in juxtaposition.

Such positioning, carrying, as it does, considerable historical depth, underlines the truism that in Sri Lanka over the last fifty-odd years two bodies of extremists have fed off each other and driven its politics to the calamitous depths we have faced since the 1970s.

Pirapāharan and his fighting command may be dead, but the Sinhalese and Tamil communalists remain vibrant, both within Sri Lanka and abroad among the respective diasporic populations. They still feed off each other: just read the cyber-net wars in such sources as www.transcurrents.com or www.groundviews.org. The violent demise of the LTTE, in fact, has inspired new second and third-generation Tamil migrants to join their rabid parents in agitations that, for all their moral indignation, are marked by chauvinist strains – not least because of the one-sided and outrageously exaggerated presentations of the events that unfolded in Sri Lanka over the first five months of 2009.

Thus, while the LTTE’s conventional fighting machine and old leadership has been ground into the dust, the LTTE remains a force, especially as LTTE International. So that hoary cliché must be resurrected and placed in front of the government: “One can win the War, but lose the Peace.” The triumphant Sri Lankan government, and its peoples, now have to address the human terrain rather than the fields of battle.  As Rohan Gunaratna has stressed recently in a newspaper interview, the only way to prevent a resurgence of the LTTE is to “make Tamils feel that they have the same rights and privileges of Sinhalese and the Muslims.” As so many have indicated, an essential pathway in this direction is constitutional reform with substantial participatory devolution.

But to make people “think and act as Sri Lankans” (Gunaratna) calls for considerable ideological and cultural work, not just development goods of an infra-structural and materialist kind. Towards that end I reiterate here that my chapter on “Language and National Identity: The Sinhalese and Others over the Centuries” (chapter 3) is essential reading for all reformers.

This essay will aid readers to review the implications of President Mahinda Rajapakse’s recent conciliatory parliamentary address on 19^th May 2009. On this occasion the President dismissed the weight attached to various ethnic identities. Instead he emphasised the importance of two categories of being in Sri Lanka: those patriotic (rata ādhara karana aya) and those unpatriotic (rata ādhara nokarana aya) – with the latter phrase being deployed “un-Sri Lankan” (cf. “un-American).

The President’s stirring message was (and continues to be) contradicted by popular depictions of the triumphant war as a re-enactment of the Dutugämunu Elāra episode in Sri Lanka’s history, a trope now for indelible Sinhala-Tamil conflict. The President himself catered to this understanding by garlanding a statue of Dutugämunu a few days later.

As problematically, at the celebration honouring the war heroes on Friday 22^nd May, the President spoke of the jātika kodiya, sinha kodiya (national flag, Sinha flag) in the same breadth. In this critical conceptualization a part of Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese people, is equated with the whole of Lanka. This ideological act of merger was presented in taken-for-granted manner, thus, insidiously and powerfully.

This form of hegemonic incorporation, whether proceeding in benign manner or as brute statement of majoritarian weight, envelopes the whole in the part. That is, the part assumes it is the whole. In order to counteract this tendency, and on the basis of my anthropological researches, I hold that Sri Lanka today has to recognize that its patriotic identity “Sri Lankan” must be built upon a confederative principle that recognizes the existence of several communities as well as three nations within the entity Lanka . The three nations are the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims. The communities are the Malays, Burghers, indigenous Väddās, Colombo Chetties, Borahs, Sindhis, Parsees and Memons.

For this pyramid of loyalties and sentiments to be sustained (chapter 1), it is imperative that the Sinhalese=Sri Lankan equation must be undermined and split asunder (witness the manner in which the English=British equation has disintegrated over the last 40 years). A scheme of constitutional reform directed by goals of appeasement is obviously vital to such a process. But my argument here points to the vital need for ideological work that seeks to undermine the hegemonic swallowing of the Sri Lankan whole by its Sinhalese part (see Roberts 2008 and 2009).

This is not an easy task. Categorical subjectivity is a hard nut to crack. Constitutional fiat cannot transform minds, especially entrenched mindsets. Multiple strategies are required. Political imagination is called for, both from President Rajapakse and his advisors as well as eminent minds attached to this their land. Otherwise the President and his multi-ethnic peoples will find themselves mired in mud and drenched by thunderstorms.

Bibliography

Mines, Diane 2005 Fierce Gods. Inequality, Ritual and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian

Village, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Pathirana, Leel 2009 “Failure to understand the conflict by UN and the West has created a

humanitarian crisis, – Prof. Rohan Gunaratna,” Asian Tribune, 18 April 2009.

Roberts, Michael 2008 “Addressing the Nations of Sri Lanka,” in www.groundviews.org, 27

January 2008.

Roberts, Michael 2009 “Some Pillars for Lanka’s Future,” Frontline, Vol, 26, No. 12, 6-19

June 2009.

Shulman, David 1980 Tamil Temple Myths. Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the South Indian

Saiva Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 November 2009, 03:18 GMT]
Norway is up to appease Colombo as the Tamil Tigers are out of the picture and the only way to do this is abetting Colombo’s discrimination of Tamils in the line of Iran, Burma and China, writes Professor Øivind Fuglerud of the University of Oslo adding that a revealing cue comes from Norway insensitively sponsoring a Buddhist organisation to conduct a music festival on 27th November in Galle, timed to humiliate Tamils on the Heroes’ Day. Norway sat silently like a mouse in the final phase of the war. Now its ‘humanitarian’ aid helps the internment camps of captivity and death. In future Norway’s aid may be integral to Colombo’s military complex cum Buddhist temple infrastructure to dominate Tamil areas, he further says. Not surprisingly, Norway’s leading news agency, NTB, on Monday came out with biased reporting on the first ever democratically elected council of diaspora Tamils.

Tamanna Bhatia who was one of the Tamil heroine in 2008, became number one with three back to back hits. With Kandein Kaadhalai she has proved her self. Kandein Kadhalai is the remake to Bollywood super hit Imtiaz Ali’s  Jab We Met.

In Kollywood she has played the role which was played by Kareena Kapoor in Jab We Met. In many remakes, heroes or heroines simply copies the original version stars action. But Tamanna did in her own style and gave required energy to that role.

Recently Shahrukh Khan saw that movie, and complemented her. King Khan now planning to rope her into his next project. It will be directed by Farhan Akhtar. After Don- The Chase Begins no movie came from Farhan and SRK’s combo.

Vanakam,

A message to all Tamils worldwide and those who stand in solidarity with the Tamil people – an exciting new website is now available at http://thetamileelam.com – you can view much up-to-date information concerning the struggle for self-determination and human rights for Tamils in occupied Tamil Eelam, find out how to light a candle for Hero’s Day (Maaveerar Naal) and link up with other supporters via the Tamil Eelam forum: http://thetamileelam.com/forum – please visit and give this stellar operation your full support! Onward Tamil Eelam!

A Message from US Committee to Support the LTTE

Sonu Sood In Arundhati

Sonu Sood is known as bad boy of Bollywood. This bad boy now rocking Tollywood also. With Telugu movie Athadu only he has gained good craze in Tollywood and Kollywood (Tamil dubbing version of Athadu also a huge hit).

But later he failed to appear in good movies. In 2009 beginning, Sonu Sood has appeared is as Aghora in Anushka Shetty starred Arundhati. It was a horror movie. Sonu Sood has appeared as bad prince, Aghora and as Ghost. In three shades he has given excellent performance. Arundati also became a Block buster in Tamil and Telugu.

Recently he has appeared as Psycho in another Telugu film Puri Jagannadh’s Ek Niranjan. In that character he has lived more than expectations. He has given new definition to villain on Tollywood screen. His action and dialogues raised laughs but he behaves seriously in the entire movie. In this movie he has scored more marks than hero Prabhas and Kangana Ranaut.

(First published in The New Indian Express, 02 August 2009.)

Sam is poor, Sinhalese, and a servant in the Master’s River House. His only best friend is the owners’ dog Brutus. Sam is someone who can never figure out what a problem is, someone who doesn’t know why people cry. He has never learnt anything, not even how to write his name. He is a village idiot who doesn’t know what breasts are, but then, surprisingly, he knows about the Tamil militants.

Employing the first person narrative throughout the text, Sam’s Story succeeds in its attempt to imitate the raw, sparse prose style of Hemingway — the stark simplicity blends with the irreverence and dumbness of the protagonist, and the sudden shifts of action make for an aesthetic reading experience. But the story-telling embeds a clear-cut political agenda and is nowhere as remarkable as the superficially successful prose-style.

Sam’s Story, first published in 2001, painstakingly avoids even a single oblique reference to Tamil suffering on the island. Perhaps, it is left for us to infer that just as the stupid Sam is incapable of looking at reality, even to the minimum extent of noticing that Tamils are being discriminated against, people too refuse to accept that linguistic and racial chauvinism have wrought a climate of hatred on the island.

Most of the novel is a successful study in hate: the narrator prefixes everything about the Tamil language, people or culture with the word “stupid” and goes little beyond depicting Tamil people as those “who threw bombs and killed our soldiers and tried to divide our country”.

After more than 100 pages of a monotonous rant, we are privy to the picture on the other side, of how the Sri Lankan military is also a convoluted place to be. Perhaps, this is one way of striking a balance and attempting neutrality, although the damage is already done; no amount of salvaging can help the text.

The depiction of the brutalities of army life begin when Sam talks of his brother Jaya who’s killed-in-action, and his brother Madiya who deserts the armed forces. From this point forward, the book changes vastly in tone and treatment. Madiya, in his brief stopover at his home (after his desertion, and before going into hiding) explains the poverty draft and the meaninglessness of the war.

Against this backdrop, Jayawardene explores how poor people, bereft of all opportunities, send their children to war; and how they make do without food and medicine whereas a rich man’s dog gets immediate access to the best doctors and a stream of visitors inquiring about its health. He writes of this divided world where the political ‘punishment’ for a Sinhalase man campaigning for the Other Party involves being transferred to teach at a faraway Tamil school.

Sam’s lives his life in a climate of mutual hatred, and he instinctively distrusts the Tamil servants at River House. While Sam tolerates the housekeeper Janet, he resents the cook Leandro, who, with his talk of Eelam, divides the world into easy binaries — the people who are willing to kill (The Army) and the people who were willing to die (The Tigers).

Sam’s suspicion of Tamils extends to everybody: he thinks Velu, a servant in a nearby bungalow is a spy; and he doesn’t appreciate that Master’s son has found himself a Tamil girlfriend. The fatal climax, replete with a truck-bomb driving into a national bank, throws them all apart, and widens the rift to such an extent that any coming together seems fraught with impossibility.

Australian IT – Rudd confident of extension for Oceanic Viking

News.com.au – Stephen Smith plays boatpeople waiting game, rules out force to end standoff

Radio Australia – Australian PM faces mounting political storm over asylum-seekers

ABC – Heat on to end asylum seeker impasse

Wall Street Journal – Surge in Refugees Presents a Problem for Australia

Bloomberg – Australia’s Refugee Policy a ‘Laughing Stock,’ Opposition Says

Bloomberg –  Rudd May Use Force to Remove Sri Lankans From Ship, SMH Reports

ABC Online – Australia and Indonesia to be patient on asylum impasse

AFP – Stand-off refugees can’t choose destination: Australia

A leading terrorism expert says a “small number” of Tamil Tigers are in immigration detention in Indonesia having been intercepted on their way to Australia.

Rohan Gunaratna of the Singapore-based International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research said Australian and Indonesian authorities had been advised a handful of Tamil Tigers had been detained.

“I’m aware of a number of individuals who are currently in (the) control of the Indonesian government but were planning to travel to Australia who have now been identified as belonging to the Tamil Tigers,” Professor Gunaratna told The Australian. “I am unable to disclose (how many) because it is now a matter of investigation.

“But certainly you can ask the Australian authorities because they’re also aware of those investigations.”

Last night spokesmen for Kevin Rudd and Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor declined to discuss the claims, which Professor Gunaratna said were based on “discussions with various governments”.

Senior Indonesian authorities contacted last night were also unaware of the claims.

The news followed admissions by Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations secretary Victor Rajakulendran that ex-combatants would be among those fleeing Sri Lanka by boat.

Yesterday, Dr Rajakulendran said it was important not to demonise all Tamil refugees as a result. Professor Gunaratna said his research suggested a full 60 per cent of Tamil Tigers recruited since 2004 had been recruited forcibly, some at the age of 14.

Earlier, at a meeting of Labor MPs Mr Rudd continued to defend his government’s refugee policy, saying Labor had delivered its promises to the letter and was taking a tough approach to people-smugglers but a human approach to asylum-seekers.

But he warned that the Coalition would continue what he described as “dog whistle politics”.

“It is important that we calmly and factually dissect their arguments,” the Prime Minister told his colleagues.

He said all nations were being confronted with an increase in asylum-seeker traffic.

But the Prime Minister refused to say yesterday whether any of the funding Canberra was considering giving to Jakarta to manage the boats would be provisional on Indonesian authorities treating asylum-seekers according to certain humanitarian standards.

A spokesman for Mr Rudd said it would be inappropriate to comment as the negotiations were under way. Malcolm Turnbull continued to press Mr Rudd on what he knew about the Oceanic Viking and whether he was involved in the decision-making that saw it diverted.

In question time Mr Rudd gave no indication he had involved himself in the operational details and said he would not reveal the detail of diplomatic exchanges with Indonesia.

He also inflamed Coalition passions on the issue, describing the Liberals as “the party of children behind razor wire” and “the party of children overboard” and saying the Howard Government had refused to co-operate with the UN in processing asylum-seekers.

His taunts sparked wild scenes and angry denials, with former immigration minister Philip Ruddock insisting he had worked with the UN and found the Rudd claims offensive.

Earlier, in a meeting of Coalition MPs, Mr Turnbull said he found it difficult to believe Mr Rudd had not closely involved himself in decisions about the Oceanic Viking because he was “the most-controlling and meddlesome Prime Minister we’ve ever had”.

Source: The Australian

Jab We Met is the biggest hit in Shahid Kapoor’s career till date. His on screen chemistry opposite Kareena Kapoor was excellent in that film. Both the lead cast gave lively performance and bagged huge success. Imtiaz Ali has directed this romantic comedy.

Kanden Kadhalai Tamil remake version of this movie is ready for release. Bharat and Tamanna Bhatia paired opposite each other in that film. Already audio became a huge hit in Tamilnadu. Trailers are proving that, it will also becomes a huge hit.

Lets wait and see, how big success the Tamil Jab We Met achieves.

Ram Charan Teja who has delivered all time biggest Magadheera became a new super star in Andhra Pradesh. He is showing the same dedication which we have see in his father Chiranjeevi. In dances and action he proved him self in the first movie only. With Magadheera he has challenged all the young stars.

Now Ram Charan is acting in Orange which will be directed by Bhaskar who is fame of Bommarillu. After Orange, he is planning to act in a Tamil remake. is the movie starring Paiya, Karthi and Tamanna in lead roles. This movie ready for release by the end of the year. Linguswamy is the director.

Still From Paiya

Charan has seen some action sequences in the movie and thrilled. Later he discussed with the director and came to know about the full story. Charan is very excited about the story and decided to act in remake version of Paiya. Linguswamy only directs the Telugu version also. Tamanna will act as heroine.

Rohan Gunaratna has been interviewed and quoted by many Australian sources as a “terrorism expert”. To judge for yourself  his credibility as an “expert source” please refer to the following:

The Age: Analyse This

Gary Hughes, 20 July 2003

Whenever a comment has been needed about al-Qaeda or terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna has been there to supply it. Who is he? Gary Hughes reports.

Whenever a comment has been needed about al-Qaeda or terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna has been there to supply it. Who is he? Gary Hughes reports. Rohan Gunaratna describes as a spiritually defining moment the day in March 2001 when he learned that the Taliban regime in Kabul had ordered the demolition of the ancient, giant statues of Buddha at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.

But it was the destruction six months later of an icon of the modern world – New York’s World Trade Towers – that changed his life in a more practical way, launching a stellar new career as a global authority on international terrorism.Gunaratna was the right person in the right place at the right time.  More

Pacific Journalism Review: The legitimising of terror fears: Research or Psy Ops?

Peter Cronau, 2003

ABC: The Media Report, 11 September 2003,

Armed conflict and military intelligence are staples of the evening news, so “experts” haunt our media. But does the media rely too much on “experts”, and has their presence changed the way ideas are discussed.

Program Transcript

Mick O’Regan: Hello, and welcome to the program.

As we open the newspapers this morning and listen to the radio and TV, it’s all too obvious that the scourge of terrorist violence continues to wreck lives around the world. Writing in The Australian newspaper, the Prime Minister, John Howard, acknowledges the millions of words that have been written about September 11th, and comments that the volumes of analysis cannot disguise the fact that the attacks were ideological statements by fanatics.

To understand these attacks and the people behind them, the media has increasingly relied on expert commentators to unravel the complex, historical, religious and political elements that underpin them.

So today, conscious that September 11th is much more than just a date on the calendar, it’s an international shorthand for remembrance, for war, and for a world view, we’re going to consider how experts are used in the media, by talking to some. More

Scoop: Terrorism Expertise of Rohan Gunaratna Questioned

David Small, 24 August 2004

Rohan Gunaratna will take part in a week-long seminar on terrorism and counter-terrorism organised by the Religious Studies Department at Wellington’s Victoria University.

Gunaratna is a self-styled expert on Islamic groups and terrorism. He is still being described as “the former principle (sic) investigator for the United Nations Terrorism Prevention branch” [Sunday Star-Times. 15 August 2004] although Australian journalists have established that no such post has ever existed.

Martin Bright, the home affairs editor of the Observer and long-time writer on Islamic terrorist groups has described Gunaratna as “the least reliable of the experts on bin Laden”.

Gunaratna’s current project to establish a data base of Asian terrorist groups has been said to blur the line between freedom of academic research and intelligence-gathering for governments. More

Crikey: Richard Farmer’s chunky bits

Richard Farmer, 28 October 2009

Repetition I know but still valuable advice. I am reminded again this morning by the big run given to Rohan Gunaratna in The Australian of how helpful it is to give yourself a grand title if you want to be quoted as an expert on something. In Mr Gunaratna’s case he is “of the Singapore-based International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research” which sounds much better than being a “former student in Finland, claiming to be a recipient of an untraceable Australian-Europe award to study American-Australia diplomatic and security co-operation” as he was described in Crikey earlier this week by the maverick former Aussie diplomat Bruce Haigh.

The good doctor feeds the insatiable appetite of journalists for so-called experts whenever there is a terrorist or security crisis. He keeps bobbing up on all kinds of media — he is clearly an ABC favourite — because the first thing a reporter does when covering a new story is look up the press cuttings or Google references to see who has given a view on a subject before. Thus in The Oz today Rohan Gunaratna, talking as “a leading terrorism expert”, was allowed to authoritatively reveal that a “small number” of Tamil Tigers are in immigration detention in Indonesia having been intercepted on their way to Australia.

What was not disclosed was that the Professor, himself a Sinhalese Sri Lankan, previously was employed by his government. That knowledge might have helped readers understand what was meant by his comment that “I am unable to disclose (how many) because it is now a matter of investigation. But certainly you can ask the Australian authorities because they’re also aware of those investigations.” The comment certainly made him sound like a real insider unable to disclose everything he knows about the murky world of Tamil Tigers.

For an assessment other than Bruce Haigh’s on Prof Gunaratna’s academic abilities you might care to start with a look at some views expressed on the blog site of Michael K Connors of the City University in Hong Kong.

Please click here to subscribe to Crikey and support independant media

Sourcewatch: Rohan Gunaratna

Rohan Gunaratna is a Singapore-based “terrorism expert” at The Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) where is currently an Associate Professor. Previously he was a research assistant at St. Andrews’ University (Scotland)’s Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) where he was listed as an “acknowledged expert on terrorism in South Asia”. He is the “former principal investigator of the UN’s Terrorism Prevention Branch, Gunaratna has been called the world’s top expert on Al Qaeda”. As a Sri Lankan, his area of expertise is in the Tamil Tigers, a militant Tamil separatist group. Of the publications listed at the CSTPV, Gunaratna has authored four – all of which relate specifically to Sri Lanka’s Tamil insurrection. However, since September 11, he has been a prolific commentator on global terrorism and often appearing as a terrorologist pundit. He recently visited Australia, where he made a number of widely reported, ill-substantiated, and unchallenged, claims that there were several “child-killing terrorist groups” operating in Australia, hiding behind community and humanitarian fronts, whilst manipulating the Australian government through powerful lobbying of politicians. More

That was the report from a “friend” on October 20th. Whether Mr. Rajaratnam’s good spirits have held up despite recent events — which have ranged from the collapse of his firm, the Galleon Group, to accusations that he was funding the Tamil Tigers — is less clear; but perhaps Mr. Rajaratnam knew all along that that he had friends out there, and that his friends would rise to his defense. No need to be glum.

Friends of Raj have included, so far, a number of prominent newspaper columnists and professors of law and finance, as well as, it would appear, the entire editorial staff of The Wall Street Journal.

Most are not defending Mr. Rajaratnam himself: nobody, not even his closest friends, have stepped up to declare him innocent or incapable of any wrongdoing. Instead, we are asked to consider that what the Feds call insider trading is really another form of market transparency, or alternatively, that it is, or ought to be, perfectly legal for outsiders to trade on information provided by insiders, even if those insiders betray their fiduciary duties in providing that information.

The latter of these arguments could amount to little more than this: if you tell me a secret, and I act on that information, you may have violated a trust, but I have not. I have only acted in my own self-interest, and what else can you expect me to do? Of course this conveniently overlooks the question how I induced you to tell me the secret, or how I colluded with you in violation of a trust. Any investigation of wrongdoing at Galleon will likely focus on whether there were inducements in Mr. Rajaratnam’s network of informants and contacts, or what form collusion took. After all, we’re not really being asked to believe that these were just friendly exchanges.

Or are we? Mr. Rajaratnam cultivated friends in high places and friends with access to proprietary information, to be sure. And as L. Gordon Crovitz noted in a piece that tries to blur the line between insider and outsider trading:

Information flows these days are increasingly about networks, including information about markets shared by members of various communities. Traders use Web sites to compare notes on companies and use social media like Facebook to share information, looking for an edge. Sophisticated traders such as hedge funds draw on more selected networks such as their investors.

The word “community” is doing a lot of work here it shouldn’t do. And it’s a little hard to imagine an entire hedge fund entrusted to the fortunes of six-degree, social media friendships. The role these informal exchanges played in giving Galleon the “edge” that Mr. Rajaratnam insisted upon is most likely negligible. Instead, it seems fair to assume, Mr. Rajaratnam and his associates depended on what Crovitz calls “more sophisticated” social information networks. (If you like acronyms, call them SINs). How sophisticated, and how social, remains to be seen.

The other argument, the argument about market transparency, is usually attributed to Milton Friedman (but originates, according to Stephen Bainbridge, with Henry Manne). Friedman summed it up when he quipped: “you should want more insider trading, not less. You want to give the people most likely to have knowledge about deficiencies of the company an incentive to make the public aware of that.” The merits of this view aside — and Bainbridge has argued persuasively that its merits are slim — it paints a deliberately naive picture of the markets, with knowledgeable insiders merely lacking some incentive to inform “the public” of a company’s deficiencies.

The public? It’s difficult to say why Friedman should choose this word. No doubt about it, inside information about a company’s shortcomings, or failures, or misdeeds can serve the public, or be a public good; and in a perfect world, or even a better world, there might be real incentives and protections for those who come forward with information about companies that serves the public interest. But in our world, in the real world, who among the public, broadly construed, the publicus, would benefit from this kind of information, or even know how to benefit from it?

It’s a very small percentage of the public, and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It’s a “community,” to use Crovitz’s word. But the trouble is this: this particular community is like a gated enclave, restricted, shut off from the traffic and noise of the public world. Just Mr. Rajaratnam and friends — nobody else; a very small, very closed circle, a social information network, to which only a select few are privy.

There are, no doubt, many such networks of friends and boon companions where the line between inside and outside is blurred: after all, friends don’t let friends stay out in the cold. But these social information networks are still a long way from true transparency and public disclosure, or information that is a public good, even though we have all the technology we need to make information public. What we lack is the political intelligence to do it right, or maybe just the political will to do it at all.

Rupee News

VISAKHAPATNAM: Union home minister P Chidambaram’s assertion that Naxalites are acquiring arms from abroad is only the tip of the iceberg, as central intelligence agencies have found fresh evidence of joint training camps and meetings conducted by the Red guerrillas with Tamil Tigers in the forests of south and central India.

Does it indicate that Maoists are getting logistic support and training from LTTE? Are the Maoists and the Tamil Tigers brothers in arms? If intelligence documents are to be believed, the answer is yes. Sources said the country’s top intelligence wing has acquired some key information about the dangerous alliance between the Maoists and the Tigers.

In fact, the central intelligence top brass has warned the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Orissa on the alleged intrusion of the Tamil Tigers into Indian territorial waters. According to sources, a well-trained 12-member group of Tamil Tigers has recently sneaked into India to join hands with the Maoists. ‘‘They entered north coastal Andhra via Kerala after splitting into three groups, one of which is suspected to have found a safe haven in Vizianagaram area,’’ sources said. This comes close on the heels of an intelligence alert to the coastal states on the East Coast about a possible LTTE cadre intrusion.

But what is bothering the security agencies is the prowess of Tamil Tigers in triggering explosives and suicide bombing. ‘‘Imagine the expertise of Tigers coupled with the Maoists’ jungle warfare. It will be a deadly combination for the security agencies to tackle with,’’ analysts said.

Will the Maoists stand to gain? ‘‘Of course, the Tigers have made sizable gains in guerrilla warfare fighting Lankan forces and they would pass on the expertise to the Maoists,’’ a security analyst said. Security wings suspect that the Maoists could take the help of Tamil Tigers to prepare them to defend the all-out central forces’ attack codenamed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ on Abujmad, their strategic base and stronghold in the Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh. With Chidambaram insisting that the operation is aimed at defeating the top Maoist leadership, sources said the focus is on to nab or kill Andhra Maoist leaders, who constitute 80% of Maoist top brass.

‘‘It will be again Andhra commandoes versus top Maoist leaders in Abujmad as and when the central forces corner the area. So, the chances of Maoists relying on Tigers cannot be ruled out,’’ a source said.

Sources also said the Maoists could take the help of LTTE rebels for training their military wing, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA).

Analysts said LTTE game plan is double-edged. On one hand, it would help the Maoists to take on Indian forces, while on the other it would try to regain the lost ground in Sri Lanka by making South India their new base to fight the Lankan forces in the northern parts of the island nation. VISAKHAPATNAM: Union home minister P Chidambaram’s assertion that Naxalites are acquiring arms from abroad is only the tip of the iceberg, as central intelligence agencies have found fresh evidence of joint training camps and meetings conducted by the Red guerrillas with Tamil Tigers in the forests of south and central India.

Does it indicate that Maoists are getting logistic support and training from LTTE? Are the Maoists and the Tamil Tigers brothers in arms? If intelligence documents are to be believed, the answer is yes. Sources said the country’s top intelligence wing has acquired some key information about the dangerous alliance between the Maoists and the Tigers.

In fact, the central intelligence top brass has warned the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Orissa on the alleged intrusion of the Tamil Tigers into Indian territorial waters. According to sources, a well-trained 12-member group of Tamil Tigers has recently sneaked into India to join hands with the Maoists. ‘‘They entered north coastal Andhra via Kerala after splitting into three groups, one of which is suspected to have found a safe haven in Vizianagaram area,’’ sources said. This comes close on the heels of an intelligence alert to the coastal states on the East Coast about a possible LTTE cadre intrusion.

But what is bothering the security agencies is the prowess of Tamil Tigers in triggering explosives and suicide bombing. ‘‘Imagine the expertise of Tigers coupled with the Maoists’ jungle warfare. It will be a deadly combination for the security agencies to tackle with,’’ analysts said.

Will the Maoists stand to gain? ‘‘Of course, the Tigers have made sizable gains in guerrilla warfare fighting Lankan forces and they would pass on the expertise to the Maoists,’’ a security analyst said. Security wings suspect that the Maoists could take the help of Tamil Tigers to prepare them to defend the all-out central forces’ attack codenamed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ on Abujmad, their strategic base and stronghold in the Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh. With Chidambaram insisting that the operation is aimed at defeating the top Maoist leadership, sources said the focus is on to nab or kill Andhra Maoist leaders, who constitute 80% of Maoist top brass.

‘‘It will be again Andhra commandoes versus top Maoist leaders in Abujmad as and when the central forces corner the area. So, the chances of Maoists relying on Tigers cannot be ruled out,’’ a source said.

Sources also said the Maoists could take the help of LTTE rebels for training their military wing, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA).

Analysts said LTTE game plan is double-edged. On one hand, it would help the Maoists to take on Indian forces, while on the other it would try to regain the lost ground in Sri Lanka by making South India their new base to fight the Lankan forces in the northern parts of the island nation.VISAKHAPATNAM: Union home minister P Chidambaram’s assertion that Naxalites are acquiring arms from abroad is only the tip of the iceberg, as central intelligence agencies have found fresh evidence of joint training camps and meetings conducted by the Red guerrillas with Tamil Tigers in the forests of south and central India.

Does it indicate that Maoists are getting logistic support and training from LTTE? Are the Maoists and the Tamil Tigers brothers in arms? If intelligence documents are to be believed, the answer is yes. Sources said the country’s top intelligence wing has acquired some key information about the dangerous alliance between the Maoists and the Tigers.

In fact, the central intelligence top brass has warned the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Orissa on the alleged intrusion of the Tamil Tigers into Indian territorial waters. According to sources, a well-trained 12-member group of Tamil Tigers has recently sneaked into India to join hands with the Maoists. ‘‘They entered north coastal Andhra via Kerala after splitting into three groups, one of which is suspected to have found a safe haven in Vizianagaram area,’’ sources said. This comes close on the heels of an intelligence alert to the coastal states on the East Coast about a possible LTTE cadre intrusion.

But what is bothering the security agencies is the prowess of Tamil Tigers in triggering explosives and suicide bombing. ‘‘Imagine the expertise of Tigers coupled with the Maoists’ jungle warfare. It will be a deadly combination for the security agencies to tackle with,’’ analysts said.

Will the Maoists stand to gain? ‘‘Of course, the Tigers have made sizable gains in guerrilla warfare fighting Lankan forces and they would pass on the expertise to the Maoists,’’ a security analyst said. Security wings suspect that the Maoists could take the help of Tamil Tigers to prepare them to defend the all-out central forces’ attack codenamed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ on Abujmad, their strategic base and stronghold in the Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh. With Chidambaram insisting that the operation is aimed at defeating the top Maoist leadership, sources said the focus is on to nab or kill Andhra Maoist leaders, who constitute 80% of Maoist top brass.

‘‘It will be again Andhra commandoes versus top Maoist leaders in Abujmad as and when the central forces corner the area. So, the chances of Maoists relying on Tigers cannot be ruled out,’’ a source said.

Sources also said the Maoists could take the help of LTTE rebels for training their military wing, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA).

Analysts said LTTE game plan is double-edged. On one hand, it would help the Maoists to take on Indian forces, while on the other it would try to regain the lost ground in Sri Lanka by making South India their new base to fight the Lankan force. Maoists linking up with Tamil Tigers? Siva G , TNN 26 October 2009, 12:25am ISTes in the northern parts of the island nation.

VISAKHAPATNAM: Union home minister P Chidambaram’s assertion that Naxalites are acquiring arms from abroad is only the tip of the iceberg, as central intelligence agencies have found fresh evidence of joint training camps and meetings conducted by the Red guerrillas with Tamil Tigers in the forests of south and central India.

Does it indicate that Maoists are getting logistic support and training from LTTE? Are the Maoists and the Tamil Tigers brothers in arms? If intelligence documents are to be believed, the answer is yes. Sources said the country’s top intelligence wing has acquired some key information about the dangerous alliance between the Maoists and the Tigers.

In fact, the central intelligence top brass has warned the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Orissa on the alleged intrusion of the Tamil Tigers into Indian territorial waters. According to sources, a well-trained 12-member group of Tamil Tigers has recently sneaked into India to join hands with the Maoists. ‘‘They entered north coastal Andhra via Kerala after splitting into three groups, one of which is suspected to have found a safe haven in Vizianagaram area,’’ sources said. This comes close on the heels of an intelligence alert to the coastal states on the East Coast about a possible LTTE cadre intrusion.

But what is bothering the security agencies is the prowess of Tamil Tigers in triggering explosives and suicide bombing. ‘‘Imagine the expertise of Tigers coupled with the Maoists’ jungle warfare. It will be a deadly combination for the security agencies to tackle with,’’ analysts said.

Will the Maoists stand to gain? ‘‘Of course, the Tigers have made sizable gains in guerrilla warfare fighting Lankan forces and they would pass on the expertise to the Maoists,’’ a security analyst said. Security wings suspect that the Maoists could take the help of Tamil Tigers to prepare them to defend the all-out central forces’ attack codenamed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ on Abujmad, their strategic base and stronghold in the Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh. With Chidambaram insisting that the operation is aimed at defeating the top Maoist leadership, sources said the focus is on to nab or kill Andhra Maoist leaders, who constitute 80% of Maoist top brass.

‘‘It will be again Andhra commandoes versus top Maoist leaders in Abujmad as and when the central forces corner the area. So, the chances of Maoists relying on Tigers cannot be ruled out,’’ a source said.

Sources also said the Maoists could take the help of LTTE rebels for training their military wing, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA).

Analysts said LTTE game plan is double-edged. On one hand, it would help the Maoists to take on Indian forces, while on the other it would try to regain the lost ground in Sri Lanka by making South India their new base to fight the Lankan forces in the northern parts of the island nation. VISAKHAPATNAM: Union home minister P Chidambaram’s assertion that Naxalites are acquiring arms from abroad is only the tip of the iceberg, as central intelligence agencies have found fresh evidence of joint training camps and meetings conducted by the Red guerrillas with Tamil Tigers in the forests of south and central India.

Does it indicate that Maoists are getting logistic support and training from LTTE? Are the Maoists and the Tamil Tigers brothers in arms? If intelligence documents are to be believed, the answer is yes. Sources said the country’s top intelligence wing has acquired some key information about the dangerous alliance between the Maoists and the Tigers.

In fact, the central intelligence top brass has warned the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Orissa on the alleged intrusion of the Tamil Tigers into Indian territorial waters. According to sources, a well-trained 12-member group of Tamil Tigers has recently sneaked into India to join hands with the Maoists. ‘‘They entered north coastal Andhra via Kerala after splitting into three groups, one of which is suspected to have found a safe haven in Vizianagaram area,’’ sources said. This comes close on the heels of an intelligence alert to the coastal states on the East Coast about a possible LTTE cadre intrusion.

But what is bothering the security agencies is the prowess of Tamil Tigers in triggering explosives and suicide bombing. ‘‘Imagine the expertise of Tigers coupled with the Maoists’ jungle warfare. It will be a deadly combination for the security agencies to tackle with,’’ analysts said.

Will the Maoists stand to gain? ‘‘Of course, the Tigers have made sizable gains in guerrilla warfare fighting Lankan forces and they would pass on the expertise to the Maoists,’’ a security analyst said. Security wings suspect that the Maoists could take the help of Tamil Tigers to prepare them to defend the all-out central forces’ attack codenamed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ on Abujmad, their strategic base and stronghold in the Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh. With Chidambaram insisting that the operation is aimed at defeating the top Maoist leadership, sources said the focus is on to nab or kill Andhra Maoist leaders, who constitute 80% of Maoist top brass.

‘‘It will be again Andhra commandoes versus top Maoist leaders in Abujmad as and when the central forces corner the area. So, the chances of Maoists relying on Tigers cannot be ruled out,’’ a source said.

Sources also said the Maoists could take the help of LTTE rebels for training their military wing, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA).

Analysts said LTTE game plan is double-edged. On one hand, it would help the Maoists to take on Indian forces, while on the other it would try to regain the lost ground in Sri Lanka by making South India their new base to fight the Lankan forces in the northern parts of the island nation.VISAKHAPATNAM: Union home minister P Chidambaram’s assertion that Naxalites are acquiring arms from abroad is only the tip of the iceberg, as central intelligence agencies have found fresh evidence of joint training camps and meetings conducted by the Red guerrillas with Tamil Tigers in the forests of south and central India.

Does it indicate that Maoists are getting logistic support and training from LTTE? Are the Maoists and the Tamil Tigers brothers in arms? If intelligence documents are to be believed, the answer is yes. Sources said the country’s top intelligence wing has acquired some key information about the dangerous alliance between the Maoists and the Tigers.

In fact, the central intelligence top brass has warned the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Orissa on the alleged intrusion of the Tamil Tigers into Indian territorial waters. According to sources, a well-trained 12-member group of Tamil Tigers has recently sneaked into India to join hands with the Maoists. ‘‘They entered north coastal Andhra via Kerala after splitting into three groups, one of which is suspected to have found a safe haven in Vizianagaram area,’’ sources said. This comes close on the heels of an intelligence alert to the coastal states on the East Coast about a possible LTTE cadre intrusion.

But what is bothering the security agencies is the prowess of Tamil Tigers in triggering explosives and suicide bombing. ‘‘Imagine the expertise of Tigers coupled with the Maoists’ jungle warfare. It will be a deadly combination for the security agencies to tackle with,’’ analysts said.

Will the Maoists stand to gain? ‘‘Of course, the Tigers have made sizable gains in guerrilla warfare fighting Lankan forces and they would pass on the expertise to the Maoists,’’ a security analyst said. Security wings suspect that the Maoists could take the help of Tamil Tigers to prepare them to defend the all-out central forces’ attack codenamed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ on Abujmad, their strategic base and stronghold in the Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh. With Chidambaram insisting that the operation is aimed at defeating the top Maoist leadership, sources said the focus is on to nab or kill Andhra Maoist leaders, who constitute 80% of Maoist top brass.

‘‘It will be again Andhra commandoes versus top Maoist leaders in Abujmad as and when the central forces corner the area. So, the chances of Maoists relying on Tigers cannot be ruled out,’’ a source said.

Sources also said the Maoists could take the help of LTTE rebels for training their military wing, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA).

Analysts said LTTE game plan is double-edged. On one hand, it would help the Maoists to take on Indian forces, while on the other it would try to regain the lost ground in Sri Lanka by making South India their new base to fight the Lankan force. Maoists linking up with Tamil Tigers? Siva G , TNN 26 October 2009, 12:25am ISTes in the northern parts of the island nation.

UN Calls for War Crimes Investigation in Sri Lanka

Lisa Schlein, 25 October 2009

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is calling for an independent, international investigation of possible war crimes committed during the last few months of the war in Sri Lanka. The UN agency says there should be a full inquiry into what did or did not happen during the final stages of the country’s long-lasting civil war.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says too many questions related to the last stages of the war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels remain unanswered.

UN Human Rights Spokesman Rupert Colville says something like the Gaza Fact-Finding Mission is warranted, given the wide spread concerns about the conduct of the war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels. More

Le Monde diplomatique: Rehabilitating the tigers

Padraig Colman, 22 October 2009

Five months on since the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka is trying to come to terms with its post-war problems. Despite ongoing international concern over the plight of Tamil civilians in government-run camps, there are new signs of reconciliation. These are apparent in the way the authorities are dealing with former LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) rank and file members.

Measures have been taken to rehabilitate some 10,000 LTTE fighters – many of whom were forcibly conscripted by the separatist rebels. On 20 September the Justice and Law Reforms ministry announced a $23m programme called Reintegrating ex-LTTE Cadres into Civilian Life, in association with the International Organisation for Migration. The United States, Japan, Britain and India have promised financial assistance to the programme; Unicef and INGOs will be helping; and many big Sri Lankan companies have offered their support.

International concern

The concern over the situation of Tamil civilians still living in government-run camps for internally displaced people (IDPs), expressed by foreign governments, the UN and international NGOs, is genuine and justified. Some of it has been fuelled by Tamils living in the West, Malaysia and India – mainly in the state of Tamil Nadu where people take a keen interest in the welfare of Sri Lankan Tamils, especially conditions in the IDP camps, and have demanded that the Sri Lankan government speed up the process of releasing the inmates. More

Sky News: Greens urge sanctions against Sri Lanka,

25 October 2009

Greens Leader Bob Brown has urged the federal government to consider sanctions against Sri Lanka amid concerns about the treatment of the nation’s Tamil population.

More than 250,000 people remain in camps in Sri Lanka after being displaced as a result of a long-standing civil war, which came to an end earlier this year.

Australia should be helping to stem the flow of asylum seekers by ramping up pressure on Sri Lankan authorities, Senator Brown said.

‘There should be a lot more pressure on the Sri Lankan authorities to be treating the Tamil populations with a great deal more decency than what we’re seeing at the moment,’ Senator Brown told the Nine Network. More

The Hindu: U.N. human rights chief calls for probe into Sri Lanka conflict

B. Muralidhar Reddy, 25 October 2009

The office of the United Nations human rights chief has said that an inquiry is needed to find out whether war crimes were committed in the final stages of the war between the security forces and the LTTE in Sri Lanka.

The suggestion came two days after the release of the U.S. State Department’s report that detailed alleged war crimes. Colombo rejected the report as “unsubstantiated and devoid of corroborative evidence”.

The BBC quoted a spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay, as saying that the allegations of war crimes were so serious that the fighting in Sri Lanka required an inquiry similar to that recently carried out into the Gaza conflict. More

Hindustan times: UN wants Gaza-style human rights inquiry in Sri Lanka’s last phase of war

Sutirtho Patranobis, October 24, 2009

The United Nations wants an inquiry similar to the one that looked into fighting in Gaza to determine if war crimes were committed in Sri Lanka in the final months of its 26-year war between government troops and the LTTE, which ended in May this year.

“There hasn’t been a full inquiry into what did or did not happen in the last months of the war,” Rupert Colville, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, was quoted by Reuters as having said in Geneva. More

WGNTV.Com: Former Tamil Tiger child soldiers try to reclaim their childhood in postwar Sri Lanka

Krishnan Francis, 24 October 2009

Vinojan’s boyhood ended when Sri Lanka’s civil war reignited.

Fifteen at the time, he says he joined the separatist Tamil Tigers to save his older brother from forcible conscription, and became a reluctant fighter as the rebels fought their last, desperate battles for survival.

Now, having won the war, Sri Lanka is trying to make patriotic citizens out of child soldiers like Vinojan and others who just months ago were fighting against the nation.

———–

Meanwhile, the government is working to ensure they don’t pick up arms again. But it has done little to fulfill its pledge to tackle the Tamils’ long-standing grievances by sharing some power with them.

The ex-fighters’ treatment stands in stark contrast to the plight of nearly 300,000 displaced Tamil civilians who are held in overcrowded government camps in the north. U.N. officials have pressed for their release and aid workers fear coming rains could lead to outbreaks of disease. More

Tamilnet: Sri Lankan Flag to be hoisted in Jaffna Fort

25 October 2009

Son of Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa, Namal Rajapakse, who is presently staying in Jaffna along with the 250 youths he brought from the South will be officially hoisting the Sri Lanka Lion Flag Sunday in Jaffna Fort, sources in Jaffna said. In 1996 when Sri Lanka Army (SLA) occupied Jaffna, the then Deputy Defence Minister, Anurathe Rathwathe had ceremoniously hoisted the Sri Lankan Flag in the esplanade in front of Jaffna Fort. Tamils protested vehemently when Sinhala parties adopted the lion flag as the national flag soon after British left the island. Opposition to the flag, since then, has been part of the Tamil national movement. More

Tamilnet: SLA refuses permission to Jaffna civilians in Vavuniyaa camps to return home

25 October 2009

More than 300 families from Jaffna district, now detained in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vavuniyaa, who had applied to return to their original places are held back as Jaffna SLA high command has refused clearance to them, sources in Vavuniya said. The clearance is denied as they are under suspicion and considered a threat to security, SLA authorities claimed. More

Tamilnet: US rescinds invitation to Fonseka to attend Hawaii event

25 October 2009

The US government has withdrawn the invitation earlier extended to Major General Sarath Fonseka, former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and currently holding the post of Chief of Defence Staff, to attend a farewill event to US Pacific Command (PACOM) Commander Admiral Timothy J.Keating at PACOM headquarters in Hawaii, Colombo’s English weekly, the Sunday Times reported in its political column quoting diplomatic sources. More

Tamilnet: Tamils hold “Will Break the Obstacles!” rally in Berlin

25 October 2009

Tamil Diaspora in Germany gathered Thursday in Berlin to stage a protest march in an effort to draw the attention of the international community to the pathetic plight of Tamils interned in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps. Two youths, representing students in Tamil Nadu, T. Sreenivasa Rao and Iraa. Gnanasekaran, on their journey in Europe to take part in the UN conference on Global Warming Awareness in Denmark on 7 December, took part in the march and rally. They have made it their duty to raise their voices for the interned Tamils, in all the countries they pass through, sources in Berlin said. More

Mainstream: Behind Sri Lankan Bloodbath

24 October 2009

Colombo’s victory over the Tamils shows India’s power is on the wane.

Thousands of non-combatants, according to the United Nations, were killed in the final phase of the Sri Lankan war this year as government forces overran the Tamil Tiger guerrillas. Nearly five months after Colombo’s stunning military triumph, the peace dividend remains elusive, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa setting out—in the name of “eternal vigilance”—to expand by 50 per cent an already-large military. Little effort has been made to reach out to the Tamil minority and begin a process of national reconciliation. More

The Age: Freedom of speech vanishing in Sri Lanka

26 October 2009

FEARS over declining media freedoms in Sri Lanka have intensified after a newspaper editor was held by police and questioned about a report alleging tension between military officials and the Government.

Chandana Srimalwtte, editor of the popular Sinhalese-language newspaper Lanka Irida Sangrahaya, was detained by armed police and questioned for publishing a report detailing tensions between military chief General Sarath Fonseka and the Government.

Srimalwtte was in custody for more than three hours and investigators have made two subsequent visits to his office to question him. More

The Times of India: Tamil scholar hesitant to attend classical Tamil meet

M Gunasekaran, 25 October 2009

A renowned Sri Lankan Tamil scholar chosen to head the main research session in the Tamil Nadu government’s World Classical Tamil

Conference due to be held in June 2010, on Saturday expressed reservations about participating in the meet, as he feels the Tamils in the island nation are not satisfied with chief minister M Karunanidhi’s response to the plight of their community.

Karthigesu Sivathamby, 77, emeritus professor in Jaffna university and secretary general of the International Association of Tamil Research (IATR), told the Times of India over telephone from Colombo that he had written to the Thanjavur Tamil University vice chancellor M Rajendran, who is coordinator for the international event, that Tamils in his country felt that “the chief minister has not responded well enough to the Sri Lankan Tamil crisis, and that Tamils expect a favourable response from him”. More

The Age: Holding on to hope for Sri Lanka’s missing

Matt Wade, 28 October 2009

SAMSUN Nihara’s pain shows in her dark eyes. Her husband and son disappeared more than a year ago.

Her nightmare began last September, when her 24-year-old son, John Reid, vanished. He and his fiancee were returning from a trip to a beach north of Colombo, when the van he was driving was blocked by four armed men on two motorcycles.

They hijacked the van, dropped the woman at a busy Colombo intersection and sped away. Mr Reid has not been seen since.

The family’s crisis deepened a month later, when Ms Nihara’s husband, K. A. Anthony, became the target. Four men burst into the tiny two-room home in central Colombo at 4am and took him away.

”I saw them all,” says Ms Nihara. ”They said they were from the military – one was in uniform.” More

SMH: White vans spread misery

Matt Wade, 28 October 2009

The Age: Morality and Politics don’t mix

Shaun Carney, 28 October 2009

The current political argument over asylum seekers is one occasion when, superficially at least, our parliamentary system works: all sides get an airing, reflecting the breadth of views across the community. We should let them all in, we should keep them all out, some will be terrorists, some will be diseased, most of them are legitimate, most are frauds, we should take full responsibility for any boat headed for Australia, we should share responsibility with Indonesia.

You don’t have to move around our society too much before coming across those views, whether you like some of them or not. Few issues divide Australia more thoroughly or prompt such a degree of contempt between the opposing sides. More

SMH: Rudd’s policy belies the brutal honesty of Christmas Island’s names

David Marr, 28 October 2009

Christmas Island is a place of brutally honest names. Above The Settlement on a mountain of petrified bird shit called Phosphate Hill is a cluster of tin huts that once housed construction workers. Though now fenced, guarded and filled with asylum seekers it’s still called the Construction Camp.

Anyone visiting this place – as Human Rights commissioners Catherine Branson, QC, and Graeme Innes did a few months ago – can tell this is a secure detention centre holding lots and lots of children. They found 53 there and counted 36 without families, children who had made their way to the island on their own.

There were children everywhere when I visited the Construction Camp a few weeks later. After being signed in and giving up my mobile phone, I was led under escort to a big tin hut where women and children were gathered for a session with the nurse. The place was clean and grim. Underfoot was a wild bunch of Tamil children. More

Brisbane Times: Indonesia governor rebels on refugees

Tom Allard, 27 October 2009

AN INDONESIAN governor has lambasted Kevin Rudd’s policy of warehousing asylum seekers in his province, declining to allow the Australian Customs vessel Oceanic Viking to berth and railing against the notion Riau Islands should become a ”dumping ground” for irregular immigrants.

The outburst came as the Australian judge who decided the Tampa case, Tony North, criticised the United Nations’ processing of refugees and called for an international tribunal to ensure asylum seekers were not subject to a ”lottery”. The raw hostility of the Indonesian governor and other senior politicians in Riau Islands to the arrival of 78 asylum seekers from Sri Lanka on board Oceanic Viking casts serious doubts over the agreement between the Australian Prime Minister and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for Indonesia to take more potential refugees seeking to come to Australia. More

The Australian: ‘We’d rather die than go ashore here’: Sri Lankan asylum-seekers

Simon Kearney, 28 October 2009

THE 78 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking have threatened to kill themselves rather than walk off the ship and be interned in Indonesia.

The Australian visited the ship, anchored in the South China Sea 10km southeast of the island of Bintan, yesterday morning to find the Sri Lankans in an open area below the top deck at the stern.

They told their story by throwing messages in plastic bags tied to empty plastic water bottles into the water. Three messages were written in Indonesian and a fourth, containing this chilling threat, was written in English.

“If your country don’t want find us a good solution better we will close our life in here,” the unsigned letter said. More

Reuters Alertnet: Sri Lanka behind closed doors

HPN, 27 October 2009

In July 2009, a Times journalist reported that 1,400 people had died in Manik Farm camp following fierce fighting between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels (LTTE). This article looks at the truth behind these claims and the difficulties faced by humanitarian aid agencies in assessing the conditions faced by the displaced in the camps. More

Crikey: Question Time fun: See Kevin run. See Kevin hide.

Bernard Keane, 28 October 2009

Can the Prime Minister run and hide? With this Opposition, probably. Still, the pursuit of the Prime Minister over the Oceanic Viking made, inter alia, for a rather more interesting Question Time yesterday than we’ve had in some months.

The Government’s line on the Oceanic Viking – expertly put by a cool and impressive Stephen Smith on ABC Radio this morning – is essentially sound. Australia assisted Indonesia to aid a stricken vessel in its waters. Those on board don’t get to pick and choose where they go having been rescued.

Nevertheless, various parties on the Left and the Right are hellbent on whipping this into a Tampa-esque crisis. And the Government is constrained by its own rhetoric from stating the obvious: this is essentially an Indonesian matter.

It’s a bit like all those questions about schools spending that Julia Gillard fielded earlier in the year, in which she had to answer for the bodies actually implementing the schools component of the stimulus package- state education authorities. But because this Government is all about “ending the blame game”, any reference to State bureaucrats stuffing up could never pass Gillard’s lips.

In the same way, you won’t hear Rudd declare that the people rescued by the Oceanic Viking are Indonesia’s responsibility, even when they are. Not when he is heavily dependent on “regional cooperation” to help keep the boats away.

This made for elaborate ducking and weaving in Question Time yesterday. Five times the Prime Minister was asked about what he knew about arrangements relating to the vessel. Five times he avoided the question, giving brief answers full of fudge like “the normal agency of the Australian government” and “I cannot recall each step in that sequence of events” and “there are diplomatic negotiations which occur between governments”.

“Tough but humane” eventually appeared, although a much-anticipated and — as always -– unprompted refusal to make any apology didn’t.

He tried to throw his pursuers off – first with a reference to the “dirt-digging” email , for which a question had been reserved for a Anthony Albanese comedy routine later. That didn’t work, despite Rudd blatantly defying the Speaker and continuing to discuss it after he was told to stay relevant. But, asked a fourth time, he succeeded, baiting the Opposition and particularly Philip Ruddock and Kevin Andrews into an angry exchange over the detention of children and children overboard.

Both Ruddock and Andrews rose to complain — quite how it is possible to reflect in any way adversely on Ruddock’s integrity in a way he failed to achieve during his time in office is one of the sublime mysteries of Australian public life, but that didn’t stop him remonstrating – as did a number of other Opposition figures.

It was in the ensuing uproar that Speaker Jenkins appeared to come close to doing his block, with a particularly extended version of his schoolteacher trick of staying silent until everyone notices and shuts up. The silence went on so long Christopher Pyne eventually and hesitantly ventured “are you going to speak?”

Things settled down after that. The Opposition switched to infrastructure and other matters. Albo got to do his comedy routine about the Opposition email on digging dirt, reprising his e-security routine from the Godwin Grech incident. The question had been scheduled for earlier but the outbreak of animosity occasioned by the asylum seeker questions prompted them to delay it. Christopher Pyne then asked Julia Gillard about education, prompting her to approach the Dispatch Box carrying only her pen, always a sign she’s about to bite. She didn’t disappoint, giving a brief but vintage performance full of swipes at The Australian, the lack of Coalition policy and Pyne’s “bellows and yaps”.

Jenny Macklin later rose and spoke, quite movingly, about the apology to the Forgotten Generation, supported by an emotional Steve Irons. The momentary imposition of genuine feeling briefly imposed a sense of civilized behaviour on the House, although it didn’t last too long.

What about Wilson, I hear you ask. Wilson had a quiet day by his standards, until the end. Irons asked Justine Elliot about the numbers of aged care places in Perth. She was three sentences into her answer when Wilson rose to declare “this is a question about supplying assistance and facilities to aged people with dementia. It is wrong for the minister to raise issues either of the past or, more particularly, to read a diatribe of expenditure that is not materialised. Give the old people a go!”

Needs no comment, really.

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Reuters Alertnet: India offers $100 mln to help Sri Lanka refugees

S. Murari, 18 October 2009

India offered Sri Lanka on Sunday $100 million to help war refugees return home and rebuild the country’s ravaged north, as New Delhi seeks to engage in the island nation’s post-war reconstruction and retain influence.

Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said India was willing to provide the aid package to Sri Lanka if it submitted a “plan of action” on rehabilitation of Tamil civilians.

“Our concern is that the displaced Tamils should be resettled in their homes as early as possible,” the minister told reporters in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. More

Tamil National: Unlock the camp: Rally in London against Sri Lanka

18 October 2009

Several thounsand Tamils marched through Central London Saturday, 17 October to protest against the continued detention of civilians in Sri Lankan camps and calling to end 150 days arbitrary detention in camps and for an international independent probe into war crimes.

Over 280,000 Tamil civilians including at least 50,000 children in miserable and squalid conditions are illegally kept in camps run by the Sri Lankan military.

British Tamil Forum and Tamil Youth Organization (UK) jointly organized the protest rally urging to unlock the camps and end 150 days of forced detention of civilians, international independent probe into war crimes and Ban Ki-Moon charged with inaction. More