News: The Island

By Ahilan Kadirgamar Perhaps our collaboration during the years of a flawed peace process and the beginnings of a brutal war, posed significantly different questions than the current post-war context. How would Kethesh respond to the post-war political mess that we face now? The truth is, I will never know. Kethesh’s demise is a great loss for the country at large and the Tamil community in particular. Nevertheless, Kethesh left certain principles, commitments and politics which I believe can shape our political culture.

As Jaffna approached local government elections two years after the war, some aspects of its social, economic and political landscape are now more apparent. Resettlement and the return of many of the displaced have been gradual; the process continues to have many economic challenges including issues of land. Economic activity has accelerated particularly in agriculture and fisheries, but also in trade with the expansion of markets after the A-9 road opened twenty months ago. Labour is heavily in demand with increasing wages as sustained economic activity has created serious shortages in skilled labour for construction and agriculture. While land prices skyrocketed last year in a post-war bubble, prices are now coming down and stabilising in many areas after improved access to services and quicker transport to Jaffna Town. Indeed, infrastructure, particularly roads, electricity, banking and telecommunications are expanding; with a visible increase in the number of vehicles and mobile phones.

NOTEBOOK OF A NOBODY<br /> by Shanie A group of people who shared the vision and thinking of Thiranagama and the UTHR formed the Rajani Thiranagama Memorial Committee to remember the twentieth anniversary of Thiranagama’s assassination. The Committee continues to function and has taken the initiative in publishing, in collaboration with Vijitha Yapa Publications, the diaries of Ben Bavinck, a Dutch church worker, who was both a teacher of Thiranagama and a close friend of the founders and leaders of the UTHR. The diaries are published under the title ‘Of Tamils and Tigers - a journey through Sri Lanka’s war years’. The book was launched in London recently and the quotation at the head of this column is from the Introduction to the Diaries written by the Rajani Thiranagama Memorial Committee. Whereas the UTHR bulletins were based on investigative reporting by the authors, Bavinck’s dairies are personal reflections by the author during the period covered which is from 1988-1994. (A second volume covering the years 1994-2004 is under preparation.) The bulletins and the diaries therefore complement each other in providing the only accurate and independent recording of the events of that period in our country’s troubled past.

BY SHANIE The thrust of Palihakkara’s lecture was that Sri Lanka, which has in the past enjoyed a diplomatic profile disproportionate to its geographic or demographic attributes and military or economic clout, should be able to show the world that our country, after emerging from an injurious and costly conflict, still retains the strength of character and the political will towards introspection; to look at our own track record and see if we had gone wrong somewhere and if we had, what remedial measures we can, as a civilised society, undertake and what course corrections should be made. We should encourage the building up of a society where peaceful dissent is seen as an enriching experience and an exciting democratic challenge and not an act of treachery or treason.