| http://www.ceylontoday.lk/35-10445-news-detail-hope-reborn.htmlBy Shabna Cader
Photos by Ruwan Walpola “Our people have forgotten that to live means to do more than breathing and keeping your body alive. Those who are in power, those who rule our state, what they should have done, is take steps to eradicate the fear and mistrust that has become embedded in people’s minds over decades of war. We are being told that one form of terrorism has come to an end. But what we can see taking place today is another equally terrible system that is being put in place” – Chandragupta Thenuwara When art conveys a message, it speaks not just of one notion but volumes. ‘The Monument and Other Works’, Chandragupta Thenuwara’s latest exhibition is currently being held at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery. Continue reading |
Monthly Archives: July 2012
A cauldron of refugee and safety issues
http://www.ceylontoday.lk/59-10374-news-detail-a-cauldron-of-refugee-and-safety-issues.html
By Dilrukshi Handunnetti
For 25 years, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees have been reaching the shores of Tamil Nadu, the Indian state closest to Sri Lanka, for their safety. It is in these camps and in small settlements in rural Tamil Nadu that they found safety and shelter for years. It is also in these camps that another generation was born and nurtured.
But recent developments indicate that the safety of the refugees is in question, following the rape of a six-year- old girl within the confines of a camp in Tamil Nadu and the growing use of the South Indian States as convenient transits in human smuggling rackets with Sri Lankans suspected of playing a key role. Continue reading
Producing the Present: History as Heritage in Post-War Patriotic Sri Lanka – Nira Wickramasinghe
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Whither Sri Lanka’s media?
http://groundviews.org/2012/07/24/whither-sri-lankas-media/
24 Jul, 2012 by Inside Outsider
Having been through the grind in the field of Sri Lanka’s mainstream print journalism for nearly two decades, what I feel is a growing sense of frustration. Whatever standards and respectability that was maintained by our past peers are deteriorating to the extent that journalists are being looked at, more with ridicule, than with esteem. Today journalists have come to be often identified as so and so’s catcher or hanger on other than men and women of integrity and fair play. The failure to do some serious soul searching by those of us in the media fraternity has led to this situation. Continue reading
The pathetic plight of War Widows
http://www.ceylontoday.lk/59-10043-news-detail-the-pathetic-plight-of-war-widows.html
By Camelia Nathaniel
Despite the fact that it has been three-and-a-half years since the war that ravaged this country ended, the sufferings of thousands of war widows have been ignored. These widows continue to live in poverty and suffer from social stigmatisation and economic deprivation, purely because they have lost their husbands.
According to the Assistant Divisional Secretary of Koralai Pattu in Valachchna, there are an estimated 374 war widows in the Koralepattu village in the Valachchenai Divisional Secretariat alone. The majority of them have had no proper education and are struggling to feed their families, said. Continue reading