A Sinhala activist addresses the funeral of Prabakaran's father challenging taboos of the polity

(January 11, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Dharmasiri Lankapeli, a journalist and trade union activist who is also a member of Nawa Samasamaja Party and the Kaluthara district representative of Left Front presidential candidate Dr. Vickramabahu Karunaratna was arrested and later released by Velevetithurai police of Jaffna. The reason for the arrest was his Sinhala language address at the funeral of Veerasami Thiruvengadam Velupillai on January 10th. Late Velupillai is the father of Velupillai Prabakaran, the founder leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), who was killed in the final battle with the Army on May 18 in the last bastions of the rebel-held Vanni in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka.

Mr. Velupillai was a peaceful man who never followed his youngest son's extremely violent path for the liberation of the Sri Lankan Tamils. He lived most of his life since 1983 to 2002 in south India and settled in rebel-held Mallavi during the Norway-brokered ceasefire. He was arrested by Sri Lanka security forces from a IDP camp following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers and the government says he was kept in protective custody in Panagoda Army camp since then.


He passed away on January 07 and with the legal permission of the dead man's sons and daughters, the body was taken by Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP M.K. Sivajilingam to his village Valvetithurai for cremation. Dharmasiri Lankapeli accompanied Sivajilingam and he dared to address the funeral in Sinhala language challenging the taboos of the Lankan polity over Prabakaran and his family.


Prabakaran's siblings Manoharan (Denmark) Jegatheeswari (India) Vinodini (Canada) decline President Mahinda Rajapaksa's offer to come to Sri Lanka for the funeral.


Photos of the dead bodies believed to be of late LTTE leader's two sons and daughters were in internet and the taboos do not open space for questioning these killings. The killing of the youngest son of Prabakaran, 12-year-old Balachandran was also readily approved by the Sri Lankan polity that is predominantly Buddhist in religion wise.


According to Buddhist history Suprabuddha was the father of Devadatta who conspired to assassinate Lord Buddha. He was also the father of Yasodhara, the wife of Siddhartha Gauthama who attained the Buddha status later. No one denounced Suprabuddha for being Devadatta's father. In the same way, no one denounced Yasodhara for being Devadatta's sister.

Sri Lankan media did not dare despite all of their so-called liberal policies to address this dead man as ‘Mr. Velupillai’ although he is completely innocent. Mr. Velupillai was a loyal public servant who retired as a district land officer. He hailed from the reputed "Thirumeni" family in Valvettithurai. The family holds hereditary trusteeship of Velvettithurai Sivan temple.


Mahawansa, the prominent historical chronicle venerated by Sinhalese describe how the hero of the Sinhalese King Dutugemunu respected his enemy Tamil King Elara who was defeated by him. That history did not repeat even before the children and the elders of Prabakaran.

Regenerative Agriculture; a People’s Agenda

by Sarath Fernando
Moderator, MONLAR
(Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform)

In today’s Sri Lanka, the growing poverty of the rural population is one of our biggest problems. Small farmers in Sri Lanka and the rest of the world are being marginalized. Agriculture has been transformed into an activity that requires considerable capital investment. 

It is estimated that over half of all small scale farmers will be reduced to destitution because of market globalization. In India, around 40 million small farmers will suffer that same fate in the next decade. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target or reducing the world’s hungry people by half by the year 2015 cannot be achieved. Instead, the hungry increased from 840 million in 2000 to over one billion in 2009. People who are excluded from the globalized market since they are not needed by it are called upon to develop their own agenda.

A strategy of the poor to overcome their poverty cannot depend on external capital whether local or international. Whoever invests such capital will have the interest of earning more capital and not of allowing this capital to be distributed or "trickled down" to reduce poverty. Lenders use the process to get what they want. Thus the sovereignty of the people is taken away, and even elected representatives have little opportunity of disagreeing with them.

Therefore, we need to present ordinary people, the majority of whom are poor, with a strategy that addresses their needs directly. It must be economically sound, address social justice, achieve economic sustainability, and deliver true democracy that respects sovereignty of the people and prevents political violence. It should allow ordinary people to take over the agenda of formulating economic policies and political systems that affect them. 

The essential need of the poor is to solve the problem of hunger. Then address health, housing, education, livelihoods and culture. Issues arising from modernization - improving skills and understanding, skills of organization and self-government, needs of advancement and entertainment and so on – must then be addressed.

The most basic need is to guarantee the opportunity to use people’s creative potential, and this can begin now. Dr. Vandana Shiva identifies three different economies in human history, the "economy of nature", "economy of the people" (or the subsistence economy, where people meet their economic needs outside the market) and then the "market economy". Those who cannot survive in the market economy have to maximize their potential in the economy of nature and in the people’s economy where they have considerable comparative advantage.

The fundamental principle of a strategy of non-dependence on capital is to integrate the abilities of human beings, their creativity, with the benefits that are available in nature free of cost. A major transformation of the way food is produced is an essential starting point. 

The priority need is for "survival" and it should be the guiding principle for us all. Concerns such as "sustainability" show that there is an overall threat to survival. But it is necessary to recognize that what the world needs today is not mere "sustainability". Trying to sustain systems that are not basically sustainable is impossible. We need the recovery and restoration of regeneration. 

The Agenda

The agenda of people excluded should be one of survival based on recovering nature’s ability to restore, part of an emerging promotion of "ecological agriculture". This is much broader than the idea of "organic agriculture", which is the production of food without external chemical inputs, or even "sustainable agriculture". We should refer to "regenerative agriculture". We need to restore natural processes. We need nature’s ability to regenerate if humankind and other life forms are to survive.

The natural growth process of a tree or plant is entirely dependent on nature’s free contribution. They absorb sunlight for free, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, water from rain. There is a completely natural cycle where food is produced in leaves, enough to feed not only the plant, but other plants, animals and human beings as well. Plants grow and give flowers and fruits to feed others. Then they grow old and decay to become part of a bigger process. Decaying leaves, branches and also animals, including their dung, fall to the ground and decay, a process carried out by millions and billions of micro organisms, earthworms and other tiny animals. Top soil is a medium that can sustain these microorganisms, but not if it is eroded either by wind or rain. Microbial activity can also be destroyed by unnecessary ploughing and cleaning of top soil, addition of poisonous external inputs such as weed-killers, pesticides or chemical fertilizer. 

We need diversity to ensure ecological sustainability and regeneration. Insect and plant diversity provides natural balance, natural fertility and natural pest control.

The recycling of organic matter ensures this diversity. It is known that animal dung and urine promote microbial activity. Therefore, we need to combine animals with plants in a proper approach to ecological agriculture. It has also been found that the indigenous varieties of animals, cows etc. give much better results. We should use indigenous seeds since they are much more adapted to local conditions, whereas high yielding varieties require external fertilizer and thus capital.

Experiences in such ecological farming have shown that the overall productivity of land can be equal to, or even much bigger than the type of external input dependent agriculture.

Sri Lanka has a large population of small farmers where such a strategy of "regenerative agriculture" could be followed effectively. 

We cannot continue to depend on imports of food and agricultural inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides. At the moment there is considerable loss of natural soil fertility due to the use of damaging inputs of chemical fertilizer, pesticides and weed-killers; tremendous pollution of water, soil, food and atmosphere, and deaths and illnesses caused by pesticide poisoning; environmental damage caused by unhealthy agricultural and productive activities and loss of immunity caused by chemical contamination of food.

It is now possible to think of an agenda that the poor, marginalized and excluded people could present as their programme. The overall agenda should be that people use a production process that makes the best use of nature’s resources to meet their survival needs first, then their other needs and those of the rest of society. 

Since they have only limited access to nature’s resources, this has to be done in a non-depleting and non-destructive manner. Nature’s regenerative capacity is central. This should be relevant to not only the poor, but also to the rest of the country. It should also be meaningful in the present global context, something that can unite the poor people in Sri Lanka with those in the rest of the world.

Many organisations and people are currently working on a similar agenda. One way of proceeding would be to present a policy document for wider discussion initially among those organizations, and through them to a wider public. This should be done without creating any illusion that the elected president, whoever it is, would carry out such an agenda. 

This has to be a people’s agenda planned and carried out by them. They should claim ownership and it should be based on their experiences. Much of this agenda can be carried out irrespective of what the government does. Practical implementation is the best way of understanding the concepts in depth.

Sri Lanka ruling coalition likely to resort to racism as the minority community leaders express support to opposition presidential candidate

(January 09, Colombo - Lanka Polity) “Sri Lanka ruling party is likely to resort to Sinhala racism or ethnic chauvinism in the days ahead up to January 26 presidential since major elements of the ethnic minorities of the island nation are bent to express support to the opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka.

Sivageetha Prabakaran, the lady Mayor of Eastern Province Batticaloa Municipal Council has expressed her support to Fonseka breaking away from the ruling alliance while Minister Segu Isadeen, a Muslim leader of the ruling coalition also did the same on the same day.

Ms. Prabakaran was elected the Mayor via Tamil People's Liberation Tigers (TMVP) ticket in the local government elections held immediately after the state forces wiped out the Tamil Tiger rebels from the Eastern Province.

Rumours are spreading that her former colleague, Eastern Provincial Council Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillaiyan, an ex-rebel, is also likely to express support to Fonseka's candidature. No wonder if former Deputy of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman, a Minister of National Integration will also cross over to the opposition in this context..

Two political leaders of the Upcountry Tamils recently expressed support to Fonseka and rumors are spreading that Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC) leader and powerful Minister Arumugam Thondaman will also express support to Fonseka before January 26.

The major Muslim party Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) is supporting the opposition candidate from the beginning.Ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) Muslim leader Minister A.H.M. Fowzie is also slated to express support to the opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka.

There is a long list of names of the Ministers that are to express support to Fonseka and it appears that the opposition campaign managers are using these 'resources' thriftily.

In this backdrop, the campaign managers of President Mahinda Rajapaksa have already turned to brand Fonseka as a traitor who is backed by the remnants of the LTTE despite the claims that Rajapaksa led the forces to wipe out the rebels outright. The major evidence cited is the backing of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Fonseka is receiving. TNA was considered a proxy of the LTTE when the latter was powerful. In any case, the TNA is still strong among Tamil people and Rajapaksa also discussed with them to win their support before it discovered the TNA was the same LTTE, as a Minister stated on Friday.

Analysts point out that Rajapaksa regime will resort to racism and ethnic chauvinism as they have decided to lay all their eggs in the basket of Sinhala vote base. Sinhala polity is also divided since opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka is also an arch-Sinhala nationalist who in September 2008 said to Canadian National Post "I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people...We being the majority of the country, 75%, we will never give in and we have the right to protect this country...We are also a strong nation ... They can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue thing."

Fonseka, the ex-Army Chief led the state forces to an outright win over the Tamil Tigers and he claims for equal credits with Rajapaksa for the war victory.

Shock and anger continue one year after Lasantha Wickrematunge’s unpunished murder

(January 08, Colombo - Lanka Polity) “A year has gone by without any progress in the investigation into his murder,” Lal Wickrematunge said today to Reporters Without Borders, on the eve of the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of his brother, Lasantha Wickrematunge, the Colombo-based Sunday Leader’s well-known managing editor. It is Lal who has replaced him at the helm of investigative weekly, some of whose journalists were recently threatened.

“When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me,” Lasantha Wickrematunge wrote in an editorial that was published after his death. Known for his revelations and criticism of the government, he was called a “terrorist journalist” by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, while the president’s brother, defence minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, used the courts in a bid to silence him and tried to smear his reputation in foreign press intervieඅs after his death.

“The emotion and anger have not gone away in the year since this famous Sri Lankan journalist’s death,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The anger is being sustained by the government’s flagrant obstruction of the investigation. Lasantha Wickrematunge’s name and memory will not disappear and, in that sense, those who were behind his murder made a mistake.

“Even if these criminals continue to feel sufficiently protected that they can threaten the Sunday Leader’s new editor in messages written in the same red ink, we are confident that one day they will be punished.”

The press freedom organisation added: “We urge the various candidates for the 26 January presidential election to pledge to shed light on this murder and on the other serious press freedom violations that have taken place in recent years and to punish the perpetrators and instigators severely. Some candidates are promising the truth. We hope this is not just words.”

Lal Wickrematunge told Reporters Without Borders: “After a 10-month investigation, the case was transferred to the criminal investigation department but since then they have not taken any serious statements. They called me once, but not again. The examination of the case before the courts has been postponed 24 times. Each time, the police say they don’t have enough evidence. And the only eye witness has been missing for months.”

Lasantha’s widow, Sonali Samarasinghe Wickrematunge, herself a journalist and lawyer who has sought refugee abroad, said in an email to Reporters Without Borders: “One year later, no progress has been made (...) Accusations are being hurled in a desperate attempt to exploit the issue for political gain.”

The murdered journalist’s relatives and friends will meet at his grave in Colombo tomorrow and then participate in series of activities in his memory. Lasantha was attacked by four gunmen on motorcycles as he was driving to work on 8 January 2009. He was taken unconscious to a hospital where he died from his head injuries.

Sri Lanka was ranked 162nd out of 175 countries in the 2009 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. This was the worst ranking of any democratic country.

-RSF

Blatant misuse of public property in a tough battle for the presidency of Sri Lanka

(January 07, Colombo - Lanka Polity) A written complaint lodged by the All Sri Lanka Harbor Workers' Common Union leader Chandrasiri Mahagamage before the Election Commissioner points to shocking revelation of blatant misuse of public property for the presidential campaign of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The Minister in charge of the Ports Authority  is Chamal Rajapaksa, the elder brother of the President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The complainers  say that 300 workers and 70 vehicles of the Sri Lanka Ports Authority have been deployed in presidential propaganda and election violence. The union has exposed the names of the employees and the numbers of the vehicles.

The personnel  have been stationed in three places in Colombo, Embilipitiya in south and Dambulla in north for election operations.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is using or rather misusing  the platforms of the Sri Lanka Ports Authority for his rallies. Ports Authority employees have been deployed in erecting the stages with overtime and bata allowances violating the election laws, the union points out.

The President  has not spared a single pebble unmoved in the state sector in a tough presidential battle with his ex-Army chief Sarath Fonseka. Senior public servants like his powerful brother defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa who has no right for party politics due to his public-paid position is also running a series of seminars in support of his brother blatantly violating the election laws and the establishment code of the public service. Even the President's Secretary, a senior civil servant is also talking in public in support of Rajapaksa. Thousands of people are summoned to a massive tent set up in the Prime Minister's place now he occupies for meetings and they are treated with  food and beverages. Nobody knows who bears the costs as the government says no public funds are used for them.

On the New Year eve, the President  delivered an SMS to all 12 million mobile phone users via the service providers. Many identified the act as an infringement of the privacy of the phone users and the President's unauthorized New Year greeting finally turned to be a spam.

The use of pubic media for the President's propaganda and for slinging  mud at his major opponent was so irresistible to the Election Commissioner and he took measures to ban five programmes of state TV for its notorious content.

Police also came under criticism  of the Election Commissioner for not removing the illegal mega billboards with the images of the President at every nook and corner of the island.

Sri Lankan Tamils Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

(January 05, Colombo - Lanka Polity) The decision of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to support opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka at the January 26 presidential is a crucial victory for the opposition and the TNA move has potentials to make impact on the voters of the other minority communities as well.

In 2005, United National Party (UNP) candidate Ranil Wickramasinghe lost the presidential to the current President Mahinda Rajapaksa since he was deprived of the Tamil votes by the election boycott of the then powerful Tamil Tiger rebels.

Sinhala polity is divided with the candidature of the ex-Army chief Sarath Fonseka and Rajapaksa can claim for the arch-chauvinist Sinhala votes and his campaign will be more Sinhala-centered in the days following the TNA decision.

Already the Upcountry Tamil party Ceylon Workers' Congress is divided and the government is receiving half-heated support from major political parties of the Upcountry Tamils. UNP bagged 128,289 votes at the Central Provincial Council election last year while the ruling coalition was able to achieve only 146,418 despite all its war successes and the state-sponsored propaganda. UNP also won the Nuwaraeliya-Maskeliya electorate that is the heart of the plantations. The decision of the TNA can have a great impact on the Upcountry Tamil polity. The same happened in the 2005 presidential and the turnout in the plantations was also low.

Although the leaders of several Muslim splinter groups are with the government, the major Muslim party Sri Lanka Muslim Congress supports opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka.

A number of paramilitary based political groups of Tamil origin support Mahinda Rajapaksa. The Eastern Provincial Council election was held in 2008 just after the province was cleared of Tamil Tiger rebels. The TNA had no opportunity to contest due to the prevalent conditions. Tamil People's Liberation Tigers (TMVP) leader ex-paramilitary cadre Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan swore in as the Chief Minister after the government coalition won the election. Due to the clashes with ex-TMVPer Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman and due to the displeasure caused by the sidelining of the Chief Minister from the development work in the province handled by the President's all powerful brother Basil Rajapaksa, the TMVP is also not offering fullest corporation for Rajapaksa's presidential campaign at the moment.

The major Tamil constituent in the parliament is TNA. It was branded as a proxy of the Tamil Tigers before the latter's defeat. TNA has lost gravity since then but it performed unexpectedly well in the local government elections of Jaffna Municipal Council and Vavuniya Urban Council. They won the Vavuniya Urban Council while they were placed second to the government coalition in Jaffna Municipal Council through a low profile campaign vis-a-vis state-sponsored propaganda of the opponent.  The ruling coalition collapsed to third position in Vavuniya Urban Council.

All these facts lead to the argument that President Mahinda Rajapaksa has poor support from the minority communities of the country. Quite extraordinarily the Tamils have opted to Sarath Fonseka who was equally Sinhala chauvinist and equally instrumental in the brutal repression of the Tamil struggle. Jaffna University Teachers for Human Rights identified the war victory in the terms "For both parties, the key to military dominance lay not in brilliant strategies, but in an utter disregard for the lives of civilians and combatants alike, driven by their leaders’ single-minded pursuit of personal power."

However, the Tamils appear to be tired of the Sinhala chauvinist rule of the Rajapaksa regime and they have expressed their displeasure through choosing Fonseka but with less hopes for a better future.

Senthan Nada, a Toronto spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop the War in Sri Lanka, told Digital Journal in an e-mail on Sunday that Tamils in Sri Lanka are like “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” because both candidates were partnered together during the military operations.

“I think The Tamils have to choose between the lesser of the evils. Tamils are considering Sarath Fonseka as a common opposition candidate and lesser evil of the two evils,” he says.

People's power defeats state terror at Kelaniya in Sri Lanka

(January 04, Colombo - Lanka Polity) The supporters of opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka faced the thugs believed to be of the Sri Lankan Minister of Labor Mervin Silva at Kiribathgoda town, the center of the Minister's electorate. The hooligans were wielding clubs and bottles filled with sand etc. and police that observed the gang did not disperse them as they should have done. Instead, the police officials approached the group of Sarath Fonseka's supporters that were engaged in propaganda and asked them to stop their campaign. However, the campaigners including both the members of the United National Party (UNP) and the People's Liberation Front (JVP) did not turn away and marched forward to face the consequences.

They endured it with people's power and the thugs had to flee as the police was compelled to fire  tear gas at them. The whole episode was telecast by many private media channels. The state-owned media had a totally different version in which a group of supporters of the government being attacked by a mob that came in white vans. Nobody seems to believe it since the evidence were abundant to understand who attacked whom.

Most of the pro-Fonseka media have also forgotten the importance of this incident. We think it is politically important since the atrocity was faced and defeated with people’s power though it was the UNP and the JVP.

The workers of the state-owned Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation taught a lesson to the same Minister few years back as he manhandled an official right inside the premises of the television channel. However, his bosses continue to ignore the people’s response regarding this Minister’s notorious behavior at whatever the cost. Mervin Silva is a symbolic character that depicts one of the many faces of the monstrous regime of Rajapaksas.

We think the incident that took place at Kiribathgoda is politically important since it a step forward by people in the struggle to free them from state terror. Kelaniya electorate is a good venue to begin the struggle since the state terror is mingled with underworld there.