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CFA enters into 2543 days today. |
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| 'Still' Speaks |
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| Hero's day Statement |
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Commendable Quote | |
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 Europe which has a total population of 800 million is made up of 45 language based nation states. South Asia which has a total population of one billion, (1000 million) is comprised of four states. Who is preventing and therefore benefiting by limiting new nation-states in South Asia?
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| December HR Release |
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Explaining the July 1983 pogromIt is well known among academics and diplomats who have seriously studied the ethnic conflict in this island that the 1983 July pogrom was neither an isolated nor a spontaneous incident. Many more massacres have occurred without the international community bearing witness to it because they happened somewhere else in the island other than Colombo. It is also well known that the 1983 pogrom was well planned with mobs walking the streets with names and addresses of Tamils in Colombo. The collation of comments by some eminent academics about the ethnic problem listed below should be enlightening to those who do not have time for a serious study of the ethnic conflict and the tendency in Sri Lanka for violence against Tamils.
Sri Lanka: Lost in the wilderness? People and politicians in Sri Lanka get together to seek divine help to deal with existential problems that in many secular democracies in the west as well as the in the east have been effectively addressed by rational state intervention, guided not by spiritual leaders, but by scientists and professionals. Buddhist Monks and Ethnic Politics: A War Zone in an Island Paradise Buddhist monks who in the 1940s played a leading role in bringing about a nationalist revolution which unfortunately deteriorated into a narrow ethnic chauvinism. They are now a major obstacle to peace, which can only be achieved by sharing power with the Tamils. ……the new monks have mobilized themselves against legislative attempts to accommodate the minorities by devolution of power, and they have done so on every occasion that such attempts have been made. The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict: Towards a Peacebuilding Education for Children http://www.unicef-icdc.org/cgi-bin/unicef/main.sql?menu=/publications/menu.html&testo=download_insert.sql?ProductID=269 UNESCO has recently concluded that the tendency of history textbooks to exalt nationalism and address territorial disputes correlates with the xenophobia and violence found in many countries today. What is taught in history class and how it is taught is highly political and can foster either animosity or peace. A review of the textbooks used in the segregated schools of Sri Lanka in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, found Sinhalese textbooks scattered with images of Tamils as the historical enemies of the Sinhalese, while celebrating ethnic heroes who had vanquished Tamils in ethnic wars. Ignoring historical fact, these textbooks tended to portray Sinhalese Buddhists as the only true Sri Lankans, with Tamils, Muslims and Christians as non-indigenous and extraneous to Sri Lankan history. This version of national history according to one commentator, has been deeply decisive in the context of the wider state. Buddhist Nationalism and Religious Violence in Sri Lanka
Nick Gier Recently the Sri Lankan people have witnessed more religious violence than ever before. It has spread from the conflict with the Tamil Tigers to Buddhist attacks on Muslims and Christians. A monk whose popular songs published by the government and sung as the Sri Lankan goes into battle: Here we have the Buddhist equivalent of the radical Muslim Holy War. During 2003-04, 165 Sri Lankan Christian churches were attacked, resulting in the complete destruction of some, the stoning of parsonages, the smashing of statues, and the burning the Bibles and hymnals. Community Conflict: Policy and Possibilities What I shall show is that Sri Lanka had the easier problem but political institutions that exacerbated it; Malaysia had the harder problem but institutions that ameliorated it - and the difference is cast in terms of incentives for politicians to behave moderately. At independence, anyone forecasting the ethnic future of the two countries would have predicted far more difficulty for Malaysia than for Sri Lanka. Relative group proportions, conceptions of group legitimacy, recent political events, the relations of elites of the various groups, and the political culture of the two countries all suggested a Sri Lankan advantage. But where are they now? Despite those favourable conditions, Sri Lanka is in the midst of an ugly ethnic war. Despite Malaysia's unfavourable conditions, Malaysia is at peace……(He goes on about ethnic outbidding by Sinhalese politicians)......An entire half generation of recruits for Tamil separatist organisations was thereby created, and the seeds were planted for guerrilla warfare.
23 July 2006
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