Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Inspired by Yugoslavia’s market socialism, Trotskyists in the Sri Lankan government instituted workers’ councils during the 1970s. A decade later, the experiment collapsed. What explains its rise and fall?
On June 28, 1948, the Cominform, the Stalinist alliance of European Marxist-Leninist (...)
Set during the Sri Lankan civil war and narrated by a dead man, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is part murder mystery, part political satire and part love story. Its author recalls the grim events that inspired it – and the editor who kept pushing him to do better
When Shehan Karunatilaka (...)
I am not in Sri Lanka, and I feel torn about what is happening there. Acute anxiety about how millions will survive the shortages of food, fuel and medicine jostles against a glimmer of hope that this crisis could be the beginning of the end of a decades-long nightmare. Since the country gained (...)
It was daily routine for Robert to exercise every morning on the balcony. He was exercising as usual on that fateful day while two of his comrades stood by watching. Suddenly there were three or four “plops” in succession. A bleeding Subathiran was rushed to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital nearby, (...)
A study on the paradox of religious art and Sri Lanka’s diverse ethnic history
That Sri Lanka was an ancient trading hub based on our strategic positioning on the global map is a well-known facet of our history and that positioning as a trading hub is one that we’re still very much trying to (...)
Sarath Wijesinghe Charithapadanaya saha 71 Tharuna Pibidhime Yatapathkala Ithihasaya (The Biography of Sarath Wijesinghe and the Suppressed History of Youth Awakening in 1971)
By Susila Hemamali Wijesinghe Author Publication, Colombo, p. 380, 2022
The title of this book review is borrowed (...)
I do believe that Sarath Amunugama’s memoirs will prove a valuable resource for future historians. However, in the cause of historical accuracy, I should like to take issue with what he writes (“April Fifth 1971: High drama in Temple Trees”, the book extract published in the Sunday Times of (...)
Deepa Mehta’s latest film, an adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s Sri Lanka-set coming-of-age novel “Funny Boy,” has been picked up by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing, and will land on Netflix this December, Variety revealed.
The Oscar-nominated “Earth” and “Midnight’s Children” director wrote the (...)
This Thursday will see the launch of my documentary Keenie Meenie – Britain’s Private Army.
It investigates the shadowy mercenary group Keenie Meenie Services (KMS), which secretly helped Sri Lanka’s military to suppress the Tamil independence struggle during the 1980s.The film accompanies my (...)
The first anniversary of the passing away of Richard (Batty) Weerakoon, who was Batty to all those who came to know him, falls on October 7th. He had a varied career as a political activist who rose to the position of the General Secretary of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, lawyer who rose to the (...)
When her resignation as Human Rights Commission (HRC) Chair became public two days before the August 5 Parliamentary election, it was speculated that Deepika Udagama had quit under pressure.
“I want to say upfront that, when people ask me whether I was leaving because I succumbed to (...)
She was born to a life of privilege and was planning a career as a medical doctor. However, she gave it all up in pursuit of a dream of changing this country to one where all citizens would enjoy equal status.
Hemamali Wijesinghe was just 18 in 1971, and she was amongst the many young people (...)
Protests after police shot a labour protester in 1939 contributed to the coalescence of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) as a party representing labourers and middle-class anticolonial activists.
The national leaders of Sri Lanka made several attempts to take the ruling power of Sri Lanka (...)
“Friends, you have dark skins, but white hearts- while my people here have white skins but their hearts are packed with black treason of such a nature that even an infected rat would despise to dwell in their ‘hearts’”
—Bracegirdle addressing a group of estate workers
Mark Anthony Lyster (...)
How during a brutal, 25-year civil war in Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers failed the women soldiers who sacrificed everything to fight for a sovereign state for the Tamil minority.
Velu Chandra Kala was 17 when she charged into her school principal’s office with a bag of milk toffees. She was (...)
The Vavuniya Diaries, by Neville Jayaweera Ravaya Publishers, Maharagama 2017 pp117+xvii, Rs250
This slim memoir spanning a few months in 1971 is noteworthy for its insider view on the failed first insurrection of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP—Peoples Liberation Front), or more exactly (...)
It was not until eighteen years after the October Revolution of 1917 that the first Marxist- led political party appeared on the Ceylon scene. This was in striking contrast to other Asian countries, where soon after the revolution small groups of Marxists began to organize.
The new Soviet (...)
The Government of Sri Lanka is planning to celebrate the forty years operation of neoliberal policies introduced in 1977. This also coincided with the Prime Minister’s forty years in Parliament. Senani and Kalpa, two of my former students gave me a wonderful gift when they returned back to Sri (...)
In this fifth extract from his book Sri Lanka: Arrogance of Power – Myth, Decadence and Murder, Rajan Hoole looks at the central role played by the Left, and especially the LSSP, in the period stretching from the country’s independence through to the 1970s.
As the country drifted towards (...)
Plantation workers of Sri Lanka have historically been subjected to much adversity and oppression before they rightfully became citizens. But not much has changed since
At the end of a back-breaking day, only one question awaits tea plucker Velu Parameswari: ‘‘How many kgs?’’
That is all “dorai” (...)
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