Come, give me a hand, let’s go (A poem)

If you are not dead
Or dying
You have to wake up
When the day breaks
Every morning is fresh
Although not in a dew on a petal
Wipe the dust on your bruised forehead
Come, give me a hand, let’s go
Forget the nightmares of blood
Tread soft on wreck
There’s a brook of fresh life
Somewhere in the land
Forget we were defeated
What is the meaning of success?
Life is minutes, days and years
Come, give me a hand, let’s go

-Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe

Mercy Mission arrives in Cape Colorado instead of Captain Ali

(July 07, 2009) The load of relief items collected by Tamil Diaspora in UK in April in the name Mercy Mission to be dispatched defiantly to the civilians that were trapped in a Sri Lanka government designated no-fire zone prior to the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), is finally arriving in Sri Lanka today in a ship named Cape Colorado instead of the Captain Ali that languished for months near Colombo and Chennai ports seeking permission to be unloaded.

The Tamil Diaspora now seems less interested in the welfare of the internally displaced people who are now held in government run camps amidst severe hardships and they have focused their attention in setting up of a Transnational Self-governance for the Ealam Tamils. The separatist Ealam movement has lost ground in Sri Lanka amidst the severe suppressive measures of the government to crack down on the LTTE remnents.

However, the 27 container load weighing 884 tons of relief items will be vital for the Tamil IDPs to ease their hardships at least a little. Proud Sri Lanka government rejected these relief items but later agreed to accept it under the influence of India.

Last link to old left of Ceylon passed away

(July 07, 2009) A prominent figure of the early leftist movement in Ceylon and wife of S.C.C. Anthony Pillai, Caroline Anthony Pillai a.k.a Dona Caroline Rupasinghe Gunawardena, passed away in Kosgama, on the outskirts of Colombo on July 06. She was born on October 08, 1908.

She is the sister of Philip, Harry and Robert Gunawardhanas.

She spent much of her life in India, but gradually became less of a revolutionary and more of a helpmate to her husband in the labour movement in Madras, reported The Hindu, quoting S. Muthiah.

 S.C.C. Anthony Pillai joined the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in 1936 and party and the leadership soon felt he had the makings of a good trade union leader. But he needed to know Sinhalese and Philip Gunawardena suggested he take lessons from Caroline. Later the teacher and the student go married.

The Party asked them to move to central highlands and, together, despite harassment by both the planters and the authorities, they helped to organise the labour. During the World War II period, as the authorities cracked down on the LSSP leadership, Anthony Pillai went underground in Madurai with the help of Bolshevik Leninist Party of India. He was later arrested in March 1947 and sentenced to two years R.I. for possessing seditious literature. 

On June 6, 1946 Anthony Pillai was elected President of the Madras Labour Union and became a major figure in the Indian labor movement. 

In 1947, he was elected President of the Madras Port Trust Employees’ Union, in 1948, he was elected to the Madras Municipal Council, then he became, in turn, General Secretary and Vice-President of the All India Port and Dock Workers’ Federation and then President of the All India Transport Workers’ Union. In 1952, he was elected Vice-President of the Hind Mazdoor Sabha, the Socialists’ trade union federation.

S. Muthiah wrote to The Hindu on February 23, 2009, "By then he had matured considerably from the days of the B&C strike, and in the years that followed gained the reputation of being a trade union leader who preferred negotiation to strikes and who encouraged productivity so that he could demand monetarily more for the workers from managements. This ‘softening’ cost him the leadership of a couple of unions."

When Anthony Pillai died in 2000, Caroline returned to Sri Lanka. 

Clash between Chinese employees of the coal power project and villagers in Sri Lanka

(July 07, 2009) A Chinese national was injured and hospitalized following a clash with a group of villagers of Bingiriya area in the Northwestern Province of Sri Lanka on July 05.

The Chinese national is an employee of a concrete workshop belonged to the contractors of the Norochcholai coal power plant.

Reports from the area said that the Chinese employees tied a villager in the workplace and the villagers clashed with the employees after that. Four villagers were also injured.

Sri Lanka's first coal power plant is under construction in the Northwestern Province with credit facilities provided by the Export and Import Bank of China.

Poor response from Sri Lankan Muslim militants to the call to surrender arms

(July 06, 2009) Police sources say that the Muslim armed groups in the Eastern Province have surrendered a fraction of the arms and ammunition they are believed possessing.

The deadline for surrenderin arms concluded on July 04 after extension. Armed groups surrendered a small number of weapons including 18 T-56 automatic rifles.

Deputy Inspector General of Batticaloa Central Edison Gunathilaka said to Lakbima News newspaper on Sunday the intelligence reports had revealed that jihadist militants possess 250 T-56 assault rifles.


Minister of Health, Eastern province, M. L. A. M. Hisbullah said he distributed 600 weapons to villagers to be used to defend the Muslims from Tigers.

He said he received them from the late President R.Premadasa and distributed them a day after an incident of massacre in Kathankudi in August 1990. “We never kept these weapons to fight the security forces. We used them to fight against the Tamil Tigers.”

New Governor of Sabaragamuwa; Victim and chosen

(July 06, 2009) President Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed his relative Janaka Priyantha Bandara as the new Governor of the Sabaragamuwa Province to fill the vacancy that was created by  the sudden demise of former Sabaragamuwa Governor, Mohan Saliya Ellawala on 12th  May 2009.

In 2005, when he was the Magistrate of Wellawaya, Janaka Bandara was nterdicted by the Judicial Service Commission after he issued a warrant on Senior Superintendent of Police Sherief Deen, who was alleged to be involved in a fatal accident case.  Then President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka Desmond Fernando criticized this interdiction as an unfair unilateral action former Chief Justice without consulting the other members of the Judicial Services Commission. 

Janaka Priyantha Bandara was later appointed as Public Trustee and he was compelled to resign following detrimental remarks made by the former Chief Justice regarding the Public Trustee during the hearing of a Fundamental Rights petition filed by an employee of the Public Trustee Department in 2008. 

Later, he was appointed as the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to United Arab Emirates.

Janaka Bandara, whose father was believed assassinated by the People's Liberation Front (JVP) rebels during the 1987-89 insurrection was a prominent member of Janatha Mithuro, a political movement initiated by present Minister of Environment Champika Ranawaka in 1993 following the suppression of theJVP.

The Hindu editor writes after his privileged visit to the IDP camps in northern Sri Lanka

Following is the article written by 'The Hindu' newspaper editor-in-chief N. Ram following his hyped visit to the IDP camps in northern Sri Lanka. The government of Sri Lanka provides access to a selected few outsiders to the camps. Local media and even the parliamentary representatives of the displaced people are blocked access to these camps.

Visiting the Vavuniya IDP camps: an uplifting experience
N. Ram



The photographs by Thilak Bandara – taken during our visit on July 1, 2009 to some of the Zone 1 IDP camps on the outskirts of Vavuniya town in Sri Lanka’s mainland North – speak for themselves. They are testimony to the Sri Lankan government’s efforts, with international assistance, to care for a brave and resilient Tamil community, which will be resettled and rehabilitated in the next few months through an ambitious programme.   Colombo: The last phase of Sri Lanka’s low-intensity military conflict saw the elimination of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as a military force. It simultaneously witnessed a poignant human drama in which some 300,000 Tamil civilians were rescued by force of arms from a terrorist organisation that, claiming to fight for their freedom, had no compunction in using them as a human shield.



Most of these internally displaced Sri Lankans are now housed and cared for by the government in transitional relief camps located in five demarcated zones of the 1500-acre Menik Farm on the outskirts of the town of Vavuniya in the mainland North. International concern has been expressed over the present condition and the future of these Tamil civilians, who include a large number of children, women, and senior citizens.



Following a three-hour conversation, including a recorded interview, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa at ‘Temple Trees’ in Colombo, I had, at his suggestion and thanks to the helicopter and other facilities provided by the Defence Ministry, the opportunity of seeing for myself how the Tamil IDPs were being sheltered and cared for in the camps. It was an uplifting experience, which is reflected in some measure in the photographs by Thilak Bandara published on this page. The sight of tens of schoolchildren returning from makeshift schools and of the distribution by the Controller of Examinations and his team of preparatory material for the A-level exams, which will be taken in a month, was special.




What became clear during the visit to Anandakumaraswamy Village in Zone 1, through glimpses of other camps in the vast IDP relief complex, and in conversations in Tamil with some of the displaced people was this. Conditions in these camps are much better than what has been depicted, mostly second-hand, that is, without visiting the camps, in western media reports. Moreover, they are visibly better than conditions in Sri Lankan refugee camps in India, which are still mostly inaccessible to journalists, researchers, and other outsiders. Basic needs, including education for the schoolchildren and vocational training for older boys and girls, are being met by the Sri Lankan government with assistance from the United Nations, a number of countries, including India, and more than 50 INGOs.




Hearteningly, the best hospital in the Menik Farm IDP relief complex is the one staffed and provisioned by the Indian Medical Team with its eight doctors, four nurses, and overall strength of 60, including senior and junior paramedics. After this highly skilled and dedicated medical team, led by Dr. K. Vasantha Kumar, moved to Settikulam from Pulmodai (in the East) in March, it has treated close to 13,000 Tamil civilians and performed several surgical operations.




In his interview, which will be published in The Hindu on Monday, President Rajapaksa claimed, without exaggeration, that “the condition in the camps is the best any country has.” He admitted some “shortcomings,” chief among them being a lack of “freedom of movement.” But he also emphasised his responsibility for the security of his people and pointed to the need to speed up the work of de-mining in the heavily mined Wanni, which needed to be certified by the U.N. He reiterated his personal commitment to resettle all the Tamil civilians speedily.



The Sri Lankan government is now confident that the President’s 180-day resettlement plan can be implemented. This confidence would have been boosted by the unexpected success of the first meeting of the All Parties Committee for Development and Reconciliation, in which all parties, including the Tamil National Alliance, promised cooperation and support to the project of reconciliation and development in the North.




Brigadier S. Perera, who has responsibility for the Vavuniya IDP complex. Photo: N.Ram.