Bloody funny politics of Jaffna

Jaffna Mayor

(May 23, Colombo - Lanka Polity) 
I know the gravity of my crimes and how serious they are.
-WANDA BARZEE, speaking Friday in court, where she was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 2002 kidnapping of then 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart.

Fifteen years for kidnapping a child! In Sri Lanka, you believe, especially in the Northern Province, this is not a crime but a part of normal life. Yes, even in the post-Prabakaran period.

Sometimes, you even elect child killer suspects to represent you. T. Illango, Sri Lanka's ruling coalition Deputy Mayor of Jaffna is an example. He was arrested along with several others for alleged complicity in the abduction and brutal murder of a 17-year-old school boy in a botched ransom bid. He was later given conditional bail and told to appear in courts every Monday.

Later, he was found outside the Magistrate Chavakacheri Magistrate T. J. Prabhakaran's house armed with a pistol along with one of the suspects involved in the abduction and murder. Now he is in remand for threatening the Magistrate.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of Jaffna, Ms. Patkunaraja Yogeswari, a mother too, placed an advertisement in a local newspaper calling for the dropping of the charges against Deputy Mayor T. Illango. Jaffna Chief Magistrate A. A. Anandaraja has severely reprimanded the Mayoress for interfering in judiciary matters.

It is bloody funny to see how things happen in liberated Jaffna under the democratic rule of the Colombo government.

Disaster capitalism and Sri Lanka government's moves to resettle Colombo flood victims

(May 20, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Sri Lanka Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resource Development has taken swift action to identify land to resettle the dwellers of canal banks in Colombo city. Most of these canal side dwellers are displaced now due to floods.

While the Minister of rrigation and and Water Resource Development is attending in the World Health Assembly in Geneva, the Secretary of the Ministry Ivan de Silva says that the land is being identified now on the instructions of the President Mahinda Rajapaksa. He said that the President instructed the officials to find them land close to Colombo city.

Perhaps the President might have understood that these people had dwelled in the city for a long time and their livelihoods are connected to it. Most of the people of these low income groups render a yeoman service in city cleaning and other services hard work is needed. Nice words of the President we have to wait and see the realization. Hope the 30,000 plus families now in camps will not be chased away when they go back to their houses once the floods recede.

Colombo Municipal Council Chief Engineer said recently that the sudden flow of water due to downpour is beyond the capacity of drainage channels of the city. The drainage system of Colombo city was constructed by British colonial rulers in 1910 and it has been used with slight improvements.

The unauthorized slum dwellers on canal banks actually contribute to pollution and blockade of water flow in canals while living in most unhealthy conditions. They are needed to be resettled in better places with better livelihoods for them.

But, the government has to really show that it is going to uplift their lives. This should not be another action similar to the uprooting of Colombo payment hawkers without providing them alternative to make a living.

Sri Lanka government is busy in its attempts in making Colombo city attractive for tourists and foreign direct investors. In this process, the government has forgotten the basic fact that Colombo is a traditional native place of diverse communities. Colombo is not only buildings and roads. Colombo residents and other people are also a part of Colombo. Developing Colombo should be developing its people too. Real city beautification is beautifying the lives of the city dwellers, especially the poor masses, whom the government always claims to be representing.

In her book THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

"At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets." (http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine)

Beware! Talks about resettling Colombo canal bank dwellers that are now displaced due to floods can also be a move of this disaster capitalism.

He was legendary Volleyball Sira of cricketing Sri Lanka

No action photos for media
Only this one with his son

(May 18, Colombo - Lanka Polity) W.L. Siriwardhana of Gampaha, who was known as legendary ‘Volleyball Sira‘ bade farewell to Sri Lanka.

Mr. Siriwardhana was the captain of Sri Lanka’s national volleyball team for 12 years in 1950s and 60s. He was renowned in the Asian region as a gifted dasher. He was popular among Sri Lankans as much as the brilliant cricketers were among cricket fans. However, he was not among the sportsmen the President Mahinda Rajapaksa recently awarded for their lifetime achievements. His funeral was also unattended by political bigwigs.

Volleyball is still the national game of Sri Lanka although it never reached to professional level.

Volleyball is a sport Sri Lankans can play anywhere in the island with low capital cost since the equipments and standard courts do not cost a fraction of expenses for a game like cricket.

Cricket is the most popular sport in Sri Lanka although less than thousand people play standard cricket. Few turfs are available even in Colombo except what are available the international cricket grounds. Most of the outstation schools and clubs play cricket on matting made of coir string. Tennis ball cricket that is played by the majority of the ordinary cricketers is far below cricket standards.

Most Sri Lankans do not play any kind of cricket although they are ardent fans of the game. Most of these fans are not healthy people since they do not play or exercise at all. One of them died in a heart attack recently when Sri Lanka beat India in a thrilling match to enter the semi-finals of T-20 World Cup.

Sports must be promoted as a human exercise and not as a way having sheer thrill or betting if a nation needs healthy and fit populace.

Sri Lanka can promote volleyball among people easily if it really needs it to be made the national sport. The chairmanship of Sri Lanka Volleball Federation itself reflects the pathetic situation of the national sport. The federation has failed to seek a powerful person to lead it.

Present Chairman Dilan Perera is a Deputy Minister of the government and he laments he has been denied a cabinet portfolio despite his presence in the parliament since 1994. Sri Lanka's national sport is also like him.

Sri Lankan village woman Kawamma the real miracle of Somawathi

(May 17, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Kawamma, a 79-year-old village woman and a mother of three from Wariyapola in Sri Lanka’s Northwestern Province, is the real miracle of Somawathi, a Buddhist temple in the Eastern Province. However, she is an ordinary village woman apparently uneducated.

More than 800,000 devotees flocked in this forest-locked temple to see the body rays of Lord Buddha from the dagaba in the temple on May 09th. Torrential rains and heavy traffic jam caused a stampede in which at least three persons were dead. Over 25 persons were hospitalized and some were missing for days.

Kawamma lost contact with her group of devotees and finally lost in the jungle and survived there for eight days until two Muslim fishermen that were fishing in Mahaweli River at Sungawila found her.

She had bruises in her body but she was healthy, Police said. Police admitted her in the hospital. She said to media that she did not eat anything but drank water from puddles and roamed chanting Buddhist ‘Gatha’.
The woman told the police she survived in jungle without any food for eight days drinking only water. She is a resident of the address Netiya, Malagane, Nuwarakanda, Wariyapola in the Kurunegala district.

Tamil Diaspora fail to find a sick bed for slain LTTE leader's mother

(May 13, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Seventy nine years old Parvathi Velupillai is a partly paralyzed, diabetic, hypertension patient. she, the widow of a late junior public servant of Sri Lanka that hailed from an ordinary family of Velvetithurai, Jaffna was (would you believe?) a threat to national security of mighty India, that boasts about the forth biggest Army of the world.

This woman lived with her husband for nearly two decades in India without being a security threat before 2002.

She is the mother of the slain leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) Velupillai Prabakaran. While the Sinhala polity celebrates the killing of her son an year ago, ending a three decade of bloody war, this sick woman has been admitted to Velvetithurai hospital in Jaffna with a minor paralysis in her body, said a medical officer of the hospital.

Mrs. Parvathi was brought to India from Malaysia for treatment few weeks back but India denied her entry on the basis she was a threat to national security. Later, with the intervention of the Tamil Nadu government she was offered conditional visa to admit into a hospital in Chennai.

Indian media reports said Parvathi's party rejected India's offer for conditional visa to visit Tamil Nadu for her treatment.

However, former Jaffna district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP M.K. Sivajilingam, a close relative of Prabakaran’s family said that she was admitted to the hospital of her home town on the request of the family members.

India gave refuge to a young Prabakaran in her soil when he was a busy young man organizing a violent movement for national liberation of Sri Lankan Tamils. The war in Sri Lanka led to a massive outflow of Tamils to developed West and a Tamil Diaspora was formed. It pumped blood to the LTTE that played a vibrant role in global politics although it was a banned terrorist organization in many countries.

Sri Lankan Tamils were always on the lookout for the good of the international community to save them from the Sinhalese they branded as evil-minded and hell-bent on hunting the Tamils. For them, Sinhala polity was a single unit of oppressors. Their strategy forced them not to look beyond that. There were some good individuals among Sinhalese, but the polity is wicked to them as a whole, they propagated.

Now, their slain leader Prabakaran's paralyzed mother cannot actually find a hospital bed from the societies they thought they would find good someday.

Eventually, it is Velvetithurai, her village by the sea in Jaffna peninsula that is now a military colony guarded by Sinhala soldiers, seems to be the place where she can lay to rest one day as same as many thousands of other Tamil men and women did without leaving tombstones.

Once and for all, Tamils have been disillusioned another time by the so-called saviors in the international community and the Tamil, Sinhala polities sit face to face once again with eyes full of hatred. Following three decades of war, we have again come to the starting point. There is no one to save us. We the Sri Lankans have to find a way to share this country respectfully without fighting.

Weddings in Buddhist temples and Christianization of Buddhism

New couple under a bo tree

(May 12, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Piyumi Boteju is a beautiful actress of Sri Lanka. She took the hands of a young man recently and she made a topic for us not because of her wedding but because of the venue it was held.

The wedding took place in Gangaramaya, a famous Buddhist temple in Colombo. Buddhism deals mostly with the spiritual side of the life and the Buddhist temple normally is not a place where weddings take place.

But in recent times, some young Buddhist couples tend to register their weddings in temples and some of them lobby for Buddhist monks vested in legal powers to register marriages, a power that the Christian priests possess.

This is the Vesak month the Buddhists commemorate the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha. It is interesting to see that the Buddhists send Vesak cards as same as Christians, make Sal Uyana, an equivalent of a Christmas decoration and sing Vesak 'carols'. The day following the Vesak full moon day is a holiday in Sri Lanka and many Buddhists feast on that day like Christians do on Christmas.

This 'Christianization' of Buddhism began in late 19th century under the patronage of Henry Steel Olcott of Buddhist Theosophical Society. One can study the ancient Sinhala literature to see how different the way the Buddhists followed religion before this cultural reform.

Weddings in temples are a culmination of this 'Christianization of Buddhism' movement.

Apart from the shifts in the traditional sects, some Buddhist monks have even imitated the evangelist Christian sects when they created a new kind of religious centers called Asapu in Sri Lanka.

Inter religious cultural transfer is common and Sri Lanka's Christianity too is immensely influenced by Buddhism.

But the problem here is that the Buddhist leaders blatantly imitate Christian values while criticizing West and sowing hatred against the minority religions in the country.

Original Buddhism is far different from what is now worshiped by most 'Buddhists' in Sri Lanka. During Vesak, it is good if Buddhists can focus to rediscover Buddha, leaving behind this hubbub of religio-business and chauvinist ethno-religious projects that go in the name of Buddhism in contemporary Sri Lankan society.

Stampede in Somawathi of Sri Lanka and Lord Buddha's ban on miracles

(May 11, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Sri Lankan W. Podi Appuhami, a 70 years old farmer of Welimada went to Somawathi in a goods transport truck to see the ancient pagoda emanate the light rays of Lord Buddha came home as a dead man. Media says that the man was killed when he fell from the lorry.

Forty two years old M.P. Lionel Samarawickrama of Galewela and 53 years old M. Karunawathi of Rajagiriya were dead in heart attacks at Somawathi. Media want to say that they were not killed in a stampede. But they could not be taken to a hospital due to traffic jam and torrential rains.

A stampede is a sudden, frenzied rush or headlong flight of a herd of frightened animals or people. The incident that took place in Sri Lanka's Eastern Province Somawathi is none other than a stampede although some elements are in need of hiding that reality. At least 25 people were injured in this stampede. Some are still disappeared.

This kind of accidents are rare in Sri Lanka. During war, people did not gather in such large numbers such as around 800,000 in more than 30,000 vehicles in a remote Buddhist shrine that is situated inside a forest reserve. This place is forest-locked and totally inadequate in facilities for such a huge crowd. The devotees were lured their by persons that publicized they would show the devotees the rays of Lord Buddha's body emanate from the pagoda there.

In Sri Lanka, there is a group of business minded persons that are disguised as monks that perform false miracles and attract crowds. They earn millions of rupees in hours by selling books, magazines, cassettes and CDs etc. to the crowd and even evade tax payments. The other religious businessmen that provide venues for these miracle performers also profit in various ways such as till and commissions from small businesses that sell various goods to the devotees.

These persons subtly manipulate media for their lucrative business and one can observe that they have already started false propaganda to hide themselves from the actual crime they committed and to mislead devotees further even before the dead persons were buried.

Many Buddhists that flock to see miracles do not know that Lord Buddha banned performing miracles for personal benefit.

Six years after attaining the supremacy, Lord Buddha stayed in Rajagahanuwara in the rainy season. By this time, a nobleman in the city that met with a Sandalwood trunk that came floating in a river made a bowl out of it. He placed it on a very tall post and challenged the monks in the city to perform miracle and take it. As all the other monks failed, a Buddhist monk called Pindola Bharadwaja took it.

When Lord Buddha came to know this incident, he banned performing miracles for personal benefit.