Sunday, August 30, 2009

Colonization

A source close to the President of Sri Lanka said that the release of 300,000 innocence civilians have been postponed indefinitely with the government focusing on a plan to resettle them along with the new Sinhala and military settlement that are to be set up in the north.

The source further noted that the plan is to resettle people in areas in Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, below Mannar and above Vavuniya, where there are currently no people. The plan is said to remove all the old Tamil villages that existed in the respective areas. Although thousands of displaced persons currently living in camps even after completing the security checks, Sri Lanka government said.

Half of the government's stipulated period of 180 days to resettle the displaced persons has lapsed. The government had proposed the above mentioned plan while the others who are supportive of power devolution have objected to it.

Meanwhile, Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told parliament on the 19th May that the displaced would be resettled by 31st December.

7 comments:

  1. I'm shocked that so many people are imprisoned in Sri Lanka impermanent camps. I've heard that conditions are horrific. And now the President of Sri Lanka said that their release has been postponed indefinitely?? And another thing, that the Sri Lankan government will resettle them in Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu or other areas. What is this? Did the authorities promise for the millions of times in the millions of interviews all over the world, to resettle IDP's in their own villages? And now, what happened? The Sri Lankan government is lying again? I'll be praying hard for all the poor souls in concentration camps, for all 300,000 of them.

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  2. Colonization? Discussions of Sri Lanka's political futures should be left to Sri Lankans. In international media, policy thinktanks and human rights group - have been for some time now been cast in simple terms. They present an uncompromising, militaristic "Sinhala-dominated" and a "marginalised Tamil minority", once authoritatively represented by Tiger rebels, now routed militarily. Given this framework, "a political solution" with "autonomous self-rule" for the Tamils is urged.
    Framing non-European societies as collections of prescriptive communities has been for several centuries now been a persuasive and authoritative way of knowing that certainly has some truth value. But such an Orientalist orientation can also freeze our understanding into a dichotomy of "west" versus an ethnicised "rest", which is more about the authority of the knower, than the life worlds of the known. Those concerned with radical democracy and social justice would do well to think beyond such a framing.
    First, the island polity, complexly conflictual through the many centuries of its known history, could not be, until a century or so ago, rendered intelligible through a Sinhala v Tamil binary. These ways of being solidify through the British colonial project of enumerating populations and configuring political representation through primordial prescription. In the postcolonial period, the reserved "communal" representations of a colonial state council are what bourgeois, nationalist "Sinhala", "Tamil" and "Muslim" political parties continue to battle each other for, in the name of their "communities".
    The tradition of the Sri Lankan left, especially when it was rooted in a militant working class, was organised along different lines - those of socio-economic inequality that cut across prescriptive community. While the parliamentary left drifted towards a Sinhalised social democracy in the 1970s, many strands of independent leftist thought and activism continued, until the early 1980s, to argue and work for alliances that cut across the "communities" of the nationalists. It was at this moment that significant left groups, some parliamentary, some extra-parliamentary, which had watched the back of urban trade unions broken by the rightwing Jayewardene regime, began to see the incipient movement of Tamil nationalist radicals as progressive and able to mount a challenge to the state.
    In left parlance then, what was hitherto seen as the colonial legacy of bourgeois Tamil nationalism was recast as the national question; Tamil self-determination became a popular cause for progressives. In this framework, which made sense in the days before the collapse of the USSR, the revolution of the national question - the project of Tamil self-determination - was never an end in itself; it was a necessary turning point on the way to capturing state power. This is the root of the alliance between a variaty of radical, democratic, socialist and feminist groups on one hand, and Tamil nationalists of conservative, liberal, violent and non-violent hues on the other. For the latter, of course, unlike the left, self-determination, self-rule, or separation was an end in itself.
    Tamil nationalism did challenge the state, and very seccessfully, but it grew brutal and xenophobic, never making common cause with dispossessed in other communities. Like any other nationalism, Tamil nationalism seeks to erase diversity within its putative bounds, violently masking social inequality; the call for self-determination for Tamils qua Tamils remains within those bounds. It is time that radical, democratic or liberal intellectuals and activists, both in the island and outside, struggle for the rights of Sri Lankans as citizens, disassociating themselves from Tamil nationalism, as they must also from violent, racist Sinhala nationalism.

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  3. Oh Goodness! such a long response. You think the LTTE was atrocious. But for you to write now about how had Tamil nationalism is kind of misses a number of points. First of all, there is Sinhala nationalism, and that is triumphant in Sri Lanka now, and that is in my view, worse than Tamil nationalism ever was, precisely because Tamil people never were a majority in any modern nation-state, and still are not. They do not have the power to raise an army of more than 200k, and they do not have the power to round up that many civilians, bomb them from the ground and the air for days, and then keep them trapped in barbed wire camps for an indefinite period of time. There is no excuse for any of this. The Rajapakse brothers are both guilty of war crimes. The fact that Mahinda has been president while the most recent atrocities against Tamils have occures does not exonerate him, as he apparently thinks it does. The problems with Tamil nationalism are irrelevant at this time. Prabhakaran is dead. The LTTE will not rise again. The problem you have to face now, as a Sri Lankan citizen, is how to get the whole damned country on track toward a decent respect for human rights. It is down there now with Sudan, Myanmar, and a range of other internationally despised states - despised because of what they have done to their own civilians. Are you proud to be a Sri Lankan? Do you think Sri Lanka is doing just fine? Are you one of those who think the army was right to kill and imprison so many civilians? Is so, then I can only think that you have totally lost your mind.

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  5. Gayatri,

    You are wrong. Sri Lanka belongs to Sinhalese only and all Tamil lands are ours!!!!
    Sri Lanka President His Excellency economic incentives TO DO ANYTHING. Under whatever development model, people want to see that they can buy more, enjoy more, etc. Govt's economic development plan should deliver these in the short and long terms.
    The old model of "years of hard work and sacrifices but not much economic rewards in the short term" is a failure in SL. This cannot be changed. And no point blaming to ppl.
    There are many methods to bring both short term and long term development. Rapidly expanding the agri sector, fisheries sector is one EASY and VERY VERY effective way forward.
    1.Ensures food supply. (the biggest problem is solved)
    2.Ensures unemployment IN THE MOST VULNERABLE SECTIONS of the society is taken care.
    3.Minimun govt repeated investments. Most investment in these sectors are private.
    4.Ppl become rich. Yes, rich enough. After that they invest. A garment girl or a EPZ worker will never become rich.
    SL already has world's aecond highest yield per hectare in rice production. It cannot be practically increased radically.
    What we can do is, increase the cultivated area and reduce cost. When area increases, cost per 1 MT reduces. The same goes for other crops.
    There is enough land in the north and enough water.
    Having handled the most critical problems of basic food, unemployment of BIGGEST potential trouble makers, govt should develop industry.
    2 Kinds of ppl. (the GOLDEN RULE)
    1.Those who love SL
    2.Those who hate SL

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  6. Nisha your opinion is contrary to mine. Democracy, fair treatment of minority in Sri Lanka is the only way to achieve lond lasting peace and prosperity. Sri Lankan President Mhinda Rajapaksa is a war president; he doesn't know how to govern in peace times. He is so called "development" is a pure racism and vile colonizations of Tamil homelands.

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  7. New colonization is happening now and it is done by Chinese not Sinhalese.

    Chinese paymasters who will surely soon own more of your island than the Tamils ever did. So the Sinhalese Beware

    But you have not pulled the wool over the eyes of world opinion.

    We know, we all know, what crimes are being committed in your name, with your tacit approval.

    Shame on you all and shame on the good name of Sri Lanka, a country I once loved, I feel sorry for you.

    I’m sure you don’t all support these crimes but if I lived in Mass Murderer President Malinda Rajapaksa Sri Lanka I too would be frightened of speaking out.

    This "man" has a history of silencing dissent, permanently

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