The futility that is Omanthai: Post-war Sri Lanka’s reconciliation shortfalls

Image courtesy JDS

Omanthai Checkpoint, 12.30am: As the conductor switches on the bright florescent lights inside the bus, the bus comes to an abrupt halt, jolting awake blurry-eyed passengers travelling from Jaffna to Colombo, who, in response to the instruction “okkomala bag arung eliyata bahinna…” (“Everyone, take all your bags and get off the bus…”), scramble around in search of their respective bags, still half asleep. Once having located their individual items of luggage, young...

Continue reading

Arbitrary Detention in Internment, Rehabilitation, and Surrenderees in the Prison System

Photo courtesy GlobalPost. Stephen Hird/Reuters.

In January 2012 I traveled to Sri Lanka with a group of fellow students from the University Virginia School of Law.[1] We wanted to learn about legal issues in other countries, and we arrived in Sri Lanka eager to hear views from government officials, NGO workers, and local citizens. I chose to focus on arbitrary detention in a number of settings including the internment of IDPs from May to December 2009,...

Continue reading

The End of War in Reflections and Challenges released as iBook

From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka. Over this week alone, the site received over forty-thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty-thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty-thousand words of commentary.

By popular request, The End of War in Sri Lanka: Reflections and Challenges, a compilation of content that appeared online...

Continue reading

Optics and politics of grief

Photo courtesy asianews.it

“I was on my motorcycle going through this area behind a couple on a motorcycle. The woman was pregnant and they were out probably to do some shopping. The couple was coming fast. They signalled to me and I moved aside to let them overtake. I suddenly saw the couple fall down for no discernible reason and the man writhing in agony. He had been hit by a bullet from the army’s side....

Continue reading

The LLRC report and ‘accountability’ in Sri Lanka

Readers will find no big surprises after reading the final report of Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).

It is very much what most people were expecting. A document that looks to the future, exonerates the military, does not touch on the question of accountability and includes some touchy-feely language about the country’s need to move forward, celebrate its diversity and be grateful for the defeat of terrorism.

Essentially, all civilian casualties were...

Continue reading

Turning Former LTTE Personnel into Sri Lankan Citizens?

Whatever the death toll during the last stages of Eelam War IV in 2009 the official government data in that year acknowledged that 11,696 (9078 male and 2024 female)[i] of those who survived had identified themselves or been identified as members of the LTTE — whether combatants or active functionaries. There were others who had been arrested elsewhere in the island (that is beyond the battlefields), often on flimsy evidence, in the years 2006-09. Muralidhar Reddy stresses that “once bracketed in...

Continue reading

Vavuniya GA blasts BBC for twisting war-related news – Ministry of Defence (press release)

Vavuniya GA blast...

Continue reading

How can society protect vulnerable women from post war atrocities?

I just viewed a documentary produced recently by Al Jazeera titled ‘Civil war leaves Sri Lankan women vulnerable’. The film has left me deeply disturbed, shocked and ashamed particularly because as a woman, I am not doing my duty in protesting vociferously against such atrocities. Some sections of the documentary appear to have been deliberately blocked for apparent reasons.

We cannot continue to turn a blind eye...

Continue reading

Ground report: Widespread public perception of military links to ‘grease devils’?

Image released by Police Headquaters which was saved allegedly in the phone of a 16 year-old who was arrested for a number of robberies in the Uva Province.

As we post this article, there is a tense situation in Kinniya, spilling over from yesterday on the issue of ‘grease devils’. A Daily Mirror SMS update notes that,

.bbpBox102997217274630144 {background:url(http://a1.twimg.com/images/themes/theme7/bg.gif) #EBEBEB;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px}...

Continue reading

Photographic evidence of war crimes in Sri Lanka, or not? (Updated)

“The resulting carnage, photographed by Harun, was indescribable, but worse was to come.”

The Living Scotsman’s review of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers by former UN spokesperson Gordon Weiss flags, inter alia, photos taken by Ret. Col. Harun Khan when his UN convoy came under attack in the final days of the war. The so-called Convoy 11 incident is covered in detail in Gordon’s book. As our review notes,

“Weiss speaks of...

Continue reading