OPINION

Opinion

Latest news from and about the homeland

Bollywood has long been guilty of distorting historical narratives for commercial appeal. But when such distortion targets an oppressed people’s liberation struggle, it transcends fiction and becomes a political act. Over the past decade, India’s Hindi-language film and streaming industry has repeatedly vilified the Tamil Eelam liberation movement, portraying it as terrorist fanaticism rather…

Terror on cue

Sri Lankan security forces have an overbearing presence in many Tamil-speaking areas where 'grease devils' - night prowlers - are terrorising villages.

Until very recently, the term ‘grease devil’ had not appeared in international reportage on Sri Lanka. However in the past few weeks it has been associated with an epidemic of terrifying attacks and attempted attacks by night prowlers on women, largely in Tamil-speaking areas. Wearing masks or face paint, they either break into female-only houses and residences, or loiter in areas frequented by women.

The incidents have not only caused panic amongst residents in Tamil, Muslim and Upcountry Tamil villages (mainly, but not exclusively), but also anger - which has been directed, tellingly, at the security forces who are seen to be protecting the prowlers.

Sri Lanka has been making much of supposed local superstitions. But people are terrorised by the attacks themselves, not paranormal readings of the perpetrators. Indeed, they have often chased after - and sometimes apprehended - the prowlers when they encounter them.

It is no coincidence the wave of attacks comes as Sri Lanka’s authorities are under international pressure to repeal draconian Emergency Regulations and reduce the overbearing military presence in the war-shattered Tamil areas. In short, the ‘grease devil’ phenomenon has emerged as an all too convenient justification for Sri Lanka’s security establishment to continue its massive deployment in Tamil areas.

What does the Global Tamil Forum want?

In an interview with The Sunday Leader newspaper, the Global Tamil Forum’s spokesman, Suren Surendiran, set out the organisation’s goals in Sri Lanka:

Turkey’s air strikes on the Kurds

The air strikes launched by Turkey against Kurdish bases across the border are part of a misguided strategy aimed at eliminating an entire people.

Turkish leaders now seem to have discarded dialogue in favour of what has been described as a “Tamil solution” to the Kurdish question. This will lead to disaster for the country and more death and destruction for a region that is already in flames.

Revealing Remarks

Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Ashok K. Kantha’s address to mark his country’s 65th independence anniversary was starkly at odds with international opinion, disconnected from political developments at home, and elided the enduring humanitarian and ethnopolitical crises in Sri Lanka.

On Sri Lanka’s ‘development’ in the Northeast

These are extracts from a press release by the British Tamil Forum (BTF) on August 12, 2011.

[Sri Lanka’s] so-called development agenda is geared towards establishing the infrastructure necessary to sustain the long-term occupation of the Tamil land by the Sinhala only military.

TYO-UK remembers 5th anniversary of Sencholai bombings

TYO-UK remembers the 5th anniversary of the attack on Sencholai orphanage and the children who lost their lives in the air raid.

On the 14th of August 2006, sixteen bombs were dropped by Sri Lankan Air Force jets killing 53 female students and injuring many more. The students had been attending a first aid course in an orphanage. Only a short-while before the bombings, the coordinates of the orphanage had been given to the ICRC who in turn had informed the Sri Lankan state.

The myth of sports and repressive regimes

David Clay Large, professor of history at Montana State University, writes in the New York Times (see full article here):

Few Olympics are as famous as the 1936 Berlin Games, whose 75th anniversary falls this month. The publicity that accompanied the competition, held under the watchful eye of Adolf Hitler, supposedly tamed the Nazi regime.

On TNA's election victory

This statement in Tamil by a senior leader of the Tamil National Alliance, Suresh Premachandran, after his party swept the local government elections in the Tamil areas, was translated by groundviews.org.

What Black July means for the future

Based on a speech at the  vigil in London on July 23, 2011 to remember the victims of Black July.

Every year, for 28 years, the Tamil people and our friends across the world have come together in July to remember a crucial turning point in our history. Black July was the largest and most significant of Sri Lanka’s pogroms, more horrific and unrestrained in its violence than the Nazis’ Kristallnacht.

Australia’s cricketers should shun Sri Lanka

Despite growing international outrage over the Sri Lankan military’s mass killings of over 40,000 Tamil civilians in 2009, the Sri Lankan government is defiantly refusing to heed international demands for an independent investigation into the atrocities. Instead it is escalating a range of discriminatory and repressive policies towards the Tamil people.