"RSF finds it highly disturbing that literature is being celebrated in this manner in a land where cartoonists, journalists, writers and dissident voices are so often victimised by the current government." "We believe this is not the right time for prominent international writers like you to give legitimacy to the Sri Lankan government's suppression of free speech." - Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) and Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), in a letter to attendees of the forthcoming Galle Literature Festival. It was signed by Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Ken Loach, Antony Loewenstein...
The 18th anniversary of the deaths of Colonel Kittu (Sathasivam Krishnakumar) and nine other LTTE cadres was marked in several Tamil Diaspora locations last weekend.
“The failure of [Sri Lanka's] policing system to protect victims and witnesses - and its tendency to undermine rather than reinforce their rights - precludes the development of public trust in law enforcement, the judicial system, and the state.” - Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, political consultant and writer, Asian Human Rights Commission. See her analysis here . See also the report ' A Study of Police Torture in Sri Lanka ' by Morten Koch Andersen and Basil Fernando. " Torture is a way of life at all police stations in Sri Lanka , whether the alleged crimes investigated are those relating to...
The work of young Tamil filmmakers in Canada will be screened this weekend at the Canadian Tamil Film Festival ( CTFF ). The Arts and Culture Council of Canadian Tamil Youth Alliance ( CTYA ) will hosting the screening of films on Saturday Jan. 22 (10am-4pm) at the Markham Civic Centre. The award ceremony is on Sunday at 6.15pm, following the screening of ‘1999’ (2-4pm). Register here for the event. “The event will provide the Tamil artists with a venue to broadcast their talents in the film industry and it will also serve as an encouragement to youth with an interest in the film industry,...
Singapore will introduce a new Tamil-language elective next year for high-ability secondary and junior college students who want to go deeper into the language, its literature and culture, the Straits Times reports . The National Elective Tamil Language Programme (NETP) will be similar to the existing Chinese and Malay language electives, but will not be amongst examined options. Presently examined options include Tamil, Higher Tamil and Tamil literature, alongside similar in Chinese and Malay. The NETP will instead be an enrichment programme with modules ranging from classical and...
The all-pervasive climate of terror being engineered in the Jaffna peninsula is intended to stifle the revival of Tamil political and economic activity there. The brutal killings, abductions, ‘disappearances’ and intimidation are not random or manifestations of ‘lawlessness’, but a deliberate campaign of targeted violence with specific political and economic goals.
The wave of terror in Jaffna by Sri Lanka Army-backed paramilitaries serves to undermine planned international efforts to restore normalcy in the peninsula.
Why was the new Tamil movie, Sengadal (Dead Sea), about a journalist’s quest to profile the travails of fishermen from Tamil Nadu and refugees fleeing Sri Lanka, refused a rating by the Chennai Regional Censor Board?
Despite assertion of an inevitable ‘post-conflict boom’, Sri Lanka’s growth in 2010, according to the Central Bank , was 7.6%. The Bank says growth in 2011 will be 8%. By way of comparison, the bank’s figures during the final phase of the war were: 2009 (3%), 2008 (6%), 2007 (6.8%) and 2006 (7.7%). In other words, reported growth two years after the end of the war is similar to that in 2006 - when the Norwegian-led peace process collapsed and the war erupted again. During the peace process, a period marked by massive donor support and investment, including after tsunami, the figures were:...
27 journalism students from Jaffna University received a warm welcome from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Madras this week when they attended a two-day seminar there. University links between the island's Tamils and south India began over 150 years ago, but were largely disrupted by Sri Lanka’s Sinhala-first policies after independence.