How can evil ever be low intensity? It is similar to a low intensity cyclone. It appears to be a misnomer. However it does really exist. A depression given the right conditions which causes spinning and convergence in the atmosphere becomes a highly damaging cyclone. Wisely meteorological institutions track depressions before they become cyclones due to their harm potential. Should not we be aware as to low intensity evil?

The celebrated author Miroslav Volf refers to low intensity evil as a complete system, which prevents others, from obtaining economic, social or psychological necessities through domination. It is low intensity because it is not outright persecution. Sadly it has the ability to work subversively trapping a naïve populace into believing in its perverted logic. Saying it -simply watch out! There could be schemes being hatched, already hatched, in fact the chicks could be running about even now, they appear normal, but they are working towards making someone, some people dominant. The flip side is that some people will not be finding the economic, social or psychological necessities that life requires because a group suppressed it to make themselves strong.  This article attempts to engage in a larger issue than the ethnic issue alone. It attempts to engage the way our society functions.

The logic to make someone or a group dominant at the cost of others is evil. Those who want to dominate make their viewpoints the most dominating viewpoints in public life. They make their viewpoint permeate every facet of society; it is beamed through different lenses and repeated intentionally so that it would influence the totality of the way people think. Then Historians pick up this dominating viewpoint and trumpet out loud how the past was glorious when the dominating viewpoint was in play, and how the past victimized us when some other viewpoint was dominant. Political scientists play the same tune in all forums like DJ’s play the ‘in song’ at all the parties. Cultural anthropologists make stoic arguments at to how the community is under threat if the dominant viewpoint is not dominant, or if any other viewpoint is allowed to compete. Artists extol the virtues of the dominant group, and what you get is a public trapped into perverted logic. Somebody or some group must go down for myself or my group to come up. Is it of little wonder that all these groups appear to find an easier path to the Sri Lanka parliament, simple by echoing the dominant viewpoint?

Think of the argument about national sovereignty that is in the air. Whose sovereignty does it deem to protect? Is there any chance for anyone to stand up and say, we are signatories to the conventions that espouse Human rights and Humanitarian Law, and if there has been a breach there has to be an investigation? If not what does sovereignty mean? Is the sovereignty of the people different to the sovereignty of the state?

The problem with low intensity evil is that it cannot be always managed. With sustained dissent or the convergence of suppressed anger and we can experience violent repercussions, leaving us to wonder what went  wrong.

Sri Lankan has been down this path before. Should we travel on it again?

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The  recent announcement of Government of Sri Lanka’s (GOSL) intention to establish a Media Development Authority (MDA) in Sri Lanka could be taken as an indication of its approach towards media in the context of post-war economic development. An official  statement posted  on 25^th July 2010 on a government news portal shows that the proposed authority will be modeled on along the lines of  the MDA of Singapore.

The sections dealing with the policy of MDA SL is almost copied word by word from the wikipage on the Singapore MDA, which in turn is based on the official Singapore MDA site.

Here are some examples:

“MDA will play a vital role as an umbrella organization for all kinds of media in transforming Sri Lanka into a Trusted Global Capital for New Asia Media. MDA spearheads initiatives that promote industry growth in arts, film, television, radio, publishing, music, games, animation, Interactive Digital Media, internet, Satellite,  Cellular Mobile Services, software & IT services” (GOSL announcement)

“MDA plays a vital role in transforming Singapore into a Trusted Global Capital for New Asia Media. MDA spearheads initiatives that promote industry growth in film, television, radio, publishing, music, games, animation and Interactive Digital Media.”(Wikipage on  the Singapore MDA)

“At the same time, in ensuring clear consistent and predictable regulatory policies and guidelines to protect core values and safeguard public interests, MDA helps to foster a pro-business environment for industry players through policy, process of registration and professional recognition.” (GOSL announcement)

“At the same time, in ensuring clear and consistent regulatory policies and guidelines to protect core values and safeguard consumers’ interests, MDA helps to foster a pro-business environment for industry players and increase media choices for consumers” (Wikipage on or of the Singapore MDA)

A simple Google search and comparison will show that most of the ideas in the GOSL announcement has its origins in the MDA of Singapore. Do we need any more hints as where the MDA of SL will be heading?

Minister Rambukwella who made the initial announcement on the MDA of Sri Lanka headed the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) during the last phase of war against the LTTE. Now the war is over and the MCNS is practically defunct. In one of his speeches as spokesperson for the MCNS Minister Rambukwella warned Sri Lankan media not to become unpatriotic giving an example from Israel.” I can cite an example when Israel attacks took place ( against Palestine)  not one single channel condemned it, while the whole world almost condemned it, they ( the media) had that patriotism. We appeal to television and print media to be courteous because what they carry out could be detrimental to the national security” (ITN news, 06 March 2007). Theoretically all news items related to war/national security had to be approved by the MCNS. Waging war was the priority to telling the truth.

Now as Sri Lanka is projecting to be the Miracle of Asia instead of Israel’s war media, Singapore’s development media may be the example to follow. In the Singapore model there is no place for rights of   people, material and moral development being the priority. If things move as planned most probably the MDA of SL will replace the MCNS. It will spearhead media control for moral policing and economic development taking Singapore as a model.

When we are  promised that the executive presidential system will be abolished what we get instead is a proposal to make the terms of executive presidency unlimited! When we are  promised a Right to Information Act what we get is a Media Authority! Clearly the signs  of the times!

Speaking to a weekend English newspaper former chairperson of the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Cooperation (SLRC) and the present director general of the information department Dr. Athugala had said “We have seen as to how some media institutions have gone astray. The setting up of such an authority would certainly help guide local media institutions to improve media ethics“. This statement shed some light on intentions of the MDA of SL. It intend to  guide local media on ethical journalism!.

Can any of us believe that the GOSL is serious in implementing  professional media guidelines to improve fair, balance and accurate coverage of social, political and cultural developments in the country? Not at all. Today the most unethical media behavior in Sri Lanka is the trademark of the state controlled media, which are the responsibility of Minister Rambukwella. The SLRC degenerated into the depths of a hateful and mud slinging gutter press under Dr. Athugala. Even the guidelines for state media imposed by the Commissioner of Elections during the two recent elections were flagrantly violated under Dr. Athugala. Charity begins at home and if the GOSL is to improve good journalism it must begin transforming the huge state-controlled media into a genuine independent public services media, which has become a naked political propaganda machine for Rajapaksha’s political agenda.

Here is the open question: what does it mean when the state which is the biggest violator of professional media ethics is establishing an authority along the lines of the MDA of Singapore to guide media? Where will it end-up guiding media in Sri Lanka? Looking back at how media was intimidated and controlled during the last few years, we may say that the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind!

###

Editors note: Even as the government talks about media development post-war, investigations into dastardly abductions, murders and serious threats against journalists perennially remain in stasis. As Gypsy Bohemia in …for The Missing notes,

Journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda went missing on the 24th of January, days after writing several critical articles regarding election malpractices by the Government. He remains missing to this day. Like him, hordes of journalists have been arrested, abducted, jailed, tortured and murdered for reporting the truth and expressing dissenting views. Some have been returned to their families. Others, like Ekaneligoda, have simply vanished without a trace, leaving their families with the horror of not knowing whether to hope or grieve.

These attacks are not simply hits against the media. They are a direct violation of our rights: the right to know the truth of what is out there, the right to ask questions of those who should answer to us, and the right to simply have a different point of view.

For every voice that is silenced, more must shoulder their burden, wear their courage and take their place to end this cycle of insidious violence.

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Photo credit: Associated Press, published in Sydney Morning Herald

Savouring the richly deserved cascades of press coverage last week of Muttiah Muralidaran’s retirement from Test cricket on the magnificent record of 800 wickets, it is difficult to resist a surge of heart-warming patriotism. It was not only the doosra-like sequence of events in the last day of the Galle Test against India – wholly implausible had it been a fictional plot – that precipitated this onrush of Sri Lankan pride in your columnist. For once, international media coverage was depicting Sri Lanka, due to the achievement of a man who epitomises the best in it, as it always should be: for world-conquering talent, effervescent spirit, generosity and humility in public, ebullient camaraderie in private, and unflappable good manners throughout.

In the field of Test cricket, we shall never experience again that delightful frisson of pregnant expectation in the images of Murali’s impish smile and devious, quizzical glances, disconcerting last minute field adjustments followed by devilish deliveries, nor the anarchic pleasures of his agricultural cameos with the bat. To be sure, we shall continue to see him in the shorter version, and also perhaps in that ultimate expression of vulgar populism in cricket, Twenty-20. But Test cricket is how cricket should be played, and it is the template that enabled the dazzling displays of stratagem and stamina, attack and attrition, subterfuge and intelligence that characterised his spin bowling.

The brilliant and controversial career of Muttiah Muralidaran has from the outset been underlined by an intensely political theme of identity. In the international contretemps over his bowling action, an argument that was frequently advanced by his supporters was the political one of latent racial prejudice; or in its more refined variation, that a Western individualist ideological bias informed the interpretation of the imprecisely drafted Law 24:2, which resulted in manifest injustice in Murali’s case. This was notwithstanding the fact that Murali’s most abiding (and graceless) detractor is Bishan Singh Bedi, an Indian, and one of his most ardent defenders has been the Englishman Peter Roebuck (Millfield, Cambridge, Somerset and England), who seems to exemplify the values of positivist liberal individualism given his Cambridge law degree (and that too, given his erstwhile advocacy of corporal punishment, of a veritably Edwardian variety).

The trauma of the chucking controversy was tangible, especially in Australia, where even Prime Minister John Howard joined the lynch mob with ill-informed comments patently designed for political mileage. He has since been suitably chastened, with his ambitions for ICC office peremptorily curbed.

Despite this, Murali underwent strenuous biomechanical tests which demonstrated the appearance of throwing as an optical illusion caused by a congenital deformity of his elbow. Perhaps as satisfyingly, this also showed that many other bowlers whose action had never been questioned were in fact bowling illegal deliveries, which led to a reform of the rules. The accomplishment of this ‘game-changer’ in the rules, in turn, has generated another kind of prejudice argument, viz., that if he were a white player, he would not have benefitted from such solicitous sympathy, or at least the fear of allegations of racism and neo-colonialism from Asian and African cricketing establishments, as to have had the rules changed. It would all have been, in Bedi’s words, a case of ‘tough luck.’ I think we were all rather lucky, if only for the sheer pleasure and entertainment Murali subsequently provided, that counsel saner than Bedi’s prevailed.

However, it is the symbolism of Murali being the first Indian Tamil in the Sri Lankan side that is of the much greater import in the politics of pluralism within the country. Of immediate cause for gratification is that he has ruled out a post-cricket political career, an irritating sub-continental tradition, and perhaps in this he drew a salutary lesson from the hero-to-zero metamorphosis of his fellow icon, Sanath Jayasuriya, if not from his former captain, the Schmittian Arjuna Ranatunga. To the extent he has made any public comments of a political nature, Murali has been at pains to make them as colourlessly unobjectionable as possible. That may be because he is uninterested in politics, but it may also be that he has the innate sense of pragmatism and survival that ethnic minorities develop in some types of majoritarian society, instilled through the baptism of fire his family experienced in the race riots of 1977. I suspect it is the latter. When a colleague of mine approached Murali to do a television spot in the 2008 campaign to commemorate the twenty fifth anniversary of Black July 1983, he declined, with disarming frankness, on the ground that his involvement would be perceived by the government as the espousal of an unacceptable political viewpoint, which would in turn harm his cricketing career.

It is this virtue of public ethnic neutrality that has made Murali a poster-boy for a widespread notion of ethnic harmony and general wellbeing, as some of the embarrassingly inept, if well-intentioned, commentary in the local press has shown over the years. The basic idea here is to interpolate from Muralidaran’s success in a national sporting endeavour, and his universal popularity among all Sri Lankans, a certain model of national identity as well as national success. If the minorities plight their troth with the majority as unequivocally as Murali seems to have done, the argument goes, what is there to stop us achieving great things, as we have shown the world in the field of cricket?

Without a doubt, in societies such as ours, the representation of diversity in national sporting teams is of enormous symbolic value. But to stretch the analogy too far is not only absurd, but also dangerous, for a cricket team is neither a country nor a democracy. The presence of Tamils, Moors, Malays, Burghers, and Hindus, Muslims and Christians together with Sinhalese and Buddhists in the national cricket team is a welcome symptom of the potential for inclusiveness and pluralism we retain in our society despite generations of discord and conflict, but it cannot serve as a model of national identity and statehood. It is as ridiculous as arguing that our cross-communal enthusiasm for arrack and baila, or love of political melodrama – between Thileepan and Weerawansa, demonstrably a shared weakness – can be contrived somehow into a basis of ethnic cohesion.

It should also be remembered that for those in the chauvinistic end of the political spectrum who subscribe to this model of unity in diversity, Murali’s apolitical tact in public utterances as a professional cricketer also denotes exactly how a Tamil should behave: recognised and even venerated for his talent, as long as he knows his place within the firmament and desists from making impertinent and awkward claims. That is, after all, the conclusion to be drawn from the mentoring relationship with Arjuna Ranatunga that gained so much for Murali in his formative years on the national side.

For the moment though, it is perhaps far more agreeable to just indulge in a bit of forgivable nostalgia on that footage from The Oval in August 1998 when Muttiah Muralidaran arrived upon the world stage, taking sixteen England wickets in the match (seven of them on the last day), and raise a glass to The Smiling Assassin, not only for the immeasurable joy he gave us for eighteen years, but also for the fact that, as the London Sunday Telegraph pointed out, throughout the vicissitudes of his career he ‘has always shown himself a pukka gent.’

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Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen and dear friends

I want to start my talk by bringing to the fore the experiences of another, which was seen as an intractable conflict – the apartheid struggle in South Africa.

In 1984, Mandela single handedly launched negotiations with the Afrikaner government. His reasons were simple and unambiguous.

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence — against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people. And I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences at this day at home, whether the methods which we have applied so far are adequate.

He knew that for lasting peace he had to focus on what he had in common with those who were persecuting him.

Mandela said: We need to make peace with our enemies and not with our friends.

I strongly feel that this applies to all communities of people living in any country.

Are there any experiences that we can learn from this story of one of the world’s greatest moral leaders?

I think there is a lot to learn. Some of the major lessons that can be drawn out from the experiences of the South African struggle are:

Never let go of your dreams

Be courteous even to your enemies

Talk with those you are in strife with

You can negotiate with even the most intractable and difficult people

Don’t indulge in ‘them versus us’ thinking

I think this story also shows us the direction towards peace and national reconciliation in Sri Lanka.

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It is in this political light I wish to address the material realties facing the inhabitants of the island.

At the outset can I state that I am not addressing you as a Sinhalese, but as a fellow human being regardless of whether you are Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher or member of any other community.

The Current Context

On 19 May 2009, President of Sri Lanka claimed military victory over the LTTE.

Given this victory was achieved through a brutal military onslaught; it seemed to have engendered immediate hopes of an era of reconciliation.

Many overseas countries including the United States commended the military defeat of separatism and went onto praise the Sri Lankan government for moving towards peace and making efforts to rebuild the country.

Though 240,000 internally displaced people have been allowed to resettle, many of them are still struggling to seek out a living.

More than 60,000 of them are still held in detention camps behind barbed wire.

In the north and the east, the government is said to have placed heavy emphasis on the development of infrastructure.

It is good to develop the economic sustainability of the people, living there under difficult intricate circumstances, yet we are aware that there may well be other agendas driving this infrastructural push.

Reports coming out of the country do not reflect a genuine desire or commitment for reconciliation by the government and their supporters.

The focus of the ordinary people living in war ravaged areas seems to be on the need to address the problems of the thousands who have lost their lives and limbs in the course of the war and to help their families to cope with the disaster of separation and loss.

Provision of employment opportunities and development of their livelihood have become major issues affecting their day to day survival.

Peace and reconciliation

Sri Lankan society is fractured along many fault lines.

It is not surprising to hear about various manifestations of racism within the Sri Lankan social fabric, which I consider as expressions of social exclusion.

A policy based on social inclusion has to fulsomely deal with not only such manifestations of racism, but also with poverty.

To my mind, any analysis of peace and reconciliation should commence with an analysis of economic injustice.

The government states that it aims to provide the benefits of peace in the form of a dividend to all its citizens with economic development spread throughout the island.

However, the economic picture seems much bleaker than the government admits.

The latest report I read was about the recommencement of blanket registration of Tamils by Police in many parts of Colombo where a sizeable Tamil community lives.

These harsh and arbitrary measures, 14 months after the end of the war, have created a sense of insecurity and injustice.

It is a move away from any serious effort towards peace and reconciliation.

Social exclusion and social inclusion

The measures the government has adopted do not seem to include a policy calculus with a genuine desire to address the issues that led to the ongoing conflict.

Over the years, a system of government has been built in Sri Lanka in which there is no accountability and transparency.

Security considerations and military operations are given the highest priority curtailing individual and group rights of all people in Sri Lanka.

Social exclusion in Sri Lanka can be partly defined as the living experience of the Tamil community because of the comprehensive policy calculus implemented for shutting them out of the socio-economic, political and cultural systems of the mainstream society.

Such measures caused and will continue to cause economic, social, political and cultural disadvantage.

The National question

The failure of successive governments to address social exclusion brought about alienation of communities and resulted in military conflicts both in the south and the north.

Both Sinhala and Tamil youth passionately contested these issues and sought alternative ‘other’ responses and failed miserably more than once.

If these tragedies are not to be repeated then the scope of formal equality defined in the laws, the constitution, and the human rights codes in Sri Lanka must proclaim the equality of all citizens living in Sri Lanka.

Citizens should be equally entitled to certain rights typically associated with a democracy.

The war between the government and the LTTE brought about a whole new set of tragic issues of helplessness, death and destruction to life and property.

Nevertheless, the desire for a fair and just political solution and peace with justice for those who are socially excluded has not come to an end.

The whole society including the political parties, their leaderships, communities of people and their leaders are divided on the issue of a political solution to the national question.

The standard prescription has been to find a structure of power sharing through devolution and regional autonomy.

Power sharing will weaken both the social forces that favour internal subjugation as well as those favouring separation.

This can only succeed in an environment of a strong leadership committed to power sharing arrangements.

Such an environment requires the building of a culture that treats the other with dignity, respect and fairness.

The three decades long separatist armed conflict and five decades long and ongoing political conflict were based on social exclusion and discriminatory measures adopted against the Tamil community.

The government does not seem to be pursuing a path to develop its long-promised political settlement to this issue.

The government seems not interested even in acknowledging or implementing what is already incorporated within the country’s Constitution.

Though such measures may not provide the Tamil community with what they have been asking for, the 13^th amendment, if fully implemented may represent a certain measure of regional devolution.

Since the recently concluded Presidential and parliamentary elections, the government and President do not seem to have any urgency to provide a commitment or leadership to implementing at least a measure of regional autonomy.

Nationalist claims

The current political conflict cannot be oversimplified to a simple linear equation between development and peace.

While the effects of the war such as death, destruction, injury, displacement and underdevelopment were mainly borne by the Tamil and Muslim communities living in the north and east, the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims in the south were also affected by the war and the resultant economic hardships.

As there is no memory of peaceful co-existence within the post-1983 Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim generations, it is not surprising that they look upon each other with hostility.

In my view, their thoughts are fathomed not by any rational analysis, but by the omnipresent rhetoric of historical and deep-rooted ethnic and religious differences.

This rhetoric has made these relationships more and more hostile towards reconciliation.

The political elite of the island who have made use of and are still making use of those historical, deep rooted ethno-linguistic and religious differences to consolidate their economic, social and family privileges and interests has done extremely well in ruining the harmonious relations the society enjoyed before.

The failure of the socio-economic and cultural systems in Sri Lanka needs to be understood in this context.

On the one hand, despite the political attempts to resolve the conflict through peace talks and cease-fires on more than one occasion, I believe that certain sections of the security forces assisted by certain ultra-nationalist forces ruthlessly undermined such efforts.

On the other hand, the LTTE never intended to abandon their goal of a separate independent state comprising the north and east of the island.

The Sinhala majority population wanted to annihilate such an attempt at any cost.

Muslims claim that they are entitled to their traditional land in the east.

They claim that they were subjected to targeted violence and ethnic cleansing by the LTTE.

Most of the rural Sinhalese only came to know the conflict through the loss of life and injury of their kith and kin enlisted in the armed forces or killed or maimed as a result of bombings.

The relationships among the ordinary Muslim, Tamil and Sinhala people have been seriously damaged by the armed conflict.

During and after the election of President Rajapaksa’s government, the alienation amongst the diverse communities of people has reached a crescendo.

So the opposition to achieving reconciliation through power sharing also has reached a climax.

Yet, the Sinhala people including Sinhala Diaspora also stands divided not only by their political affiliations but also by the issues related to their religion, caste, gender, language, class and individual and collective experiences.

The Tamil people including Tamil Diaspora also seem to have deep fractures.

However, I am not here to talk about those divisions; except to note that after the military defeat of the LTTE, these fissures seem to have become more apparent and overt.

It is also evident that the majority of Tamils living in the north and east and the majority of Tamil Diaspora still seem to insist on a rights based approach to a fair, just and equitable treatment.

Recent reports indicate that death squads are still operating in the island.

Incidentally, the subjects of these death squads do not extend to the family, friends and fellow travelers of the ruling elite.

What a coincidence?

The country’s highest court discarded the vital role international human rights law and international human rights bodies played and need to play in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka.

The pledges the Sri Lanka government made to the United Nations are yet to be realized.

Yet, the UNHCR sees vast improvements in the island’s human rights situation.

Coincidently, the United Nation’s effort to investigate alleged war crimes by the parties to the conflict seems to have been sabotaged by the very government that the UN says, has improved its human rights record!

The international pressure exerted on the Sri Lankan political leadership through diplomatic and economic measures does not seem to have worked, mainly due to the military collaboration between the Sri Lankan government and a diversity of regimes ranging from capitalist to socialist and communist and also those in between.

The government’s economic partnership with regimes like China, Iran and Venezuela will reduce Sri Lanka’s economic dependence on Europe and the USA.

These are some of the features I can see in the local and global relationships relevant to Sri Lanka.

Is there a way forward?

The current socio-political and economic environment in the island does only provide an extremely narrow space to achieve peace and reconciliation among the communities of people, to develop a fair and just framework to address the national question.

This is because we have reached the lowest ebb in terms of relationship with each other.

Therefore, in the short term I cannot imagine achieving peace and reconciliation through the development of a framework based on fairness and justice.

This less than optimistic situation leads to certain pointers.

To achieve reconciliation, I strongly believe that we, the diaspora who are originally from Sri Lanka, may have a better chance and opportunity for mutual interaction; though even in that space, such interaction seems extremely limited.

Before the end of the military aspect of the conflict, the Diaspora was bogged down in extreme positions with no interaction or consultation with each other.

The Diaspora on its own need not try and impose a political agenda on the Tamil people living in Sri Lanka without genuinely consulting their wishes and expectations.

For decades, they have been kept down due to social exclusion practiced within and without, and also due to the armed conflict.

Nevertheless, as far as I am aware currently there is no such process afoot.

A principled human rights based approach could commence with arrangements to build a common movement to bring justice towards victims who have been subjected to a diversity of injustice and to redress the issues that led to three decades long armed conflict.

What I emphasize here is that trust building between the peoples need to start by making certain compromises that need to be worked out through political dialogue and negotiations with each other.

This raises the pertinent question: can such compromises be made under the current circumstances of human rights violations in the island?

As the short term objective of the ruling elite seems to be consolidation of their political power for safeguarding their economic, social and family interests and privileges, a principled or rights based approach to resolve the issues of Tamil people cannot be expected to materialize from the elite.

Furthermore, the current national and international political environment is not conducive for any armed opposition.

Yet, I believe that there is still space for non-violent political activities to build a strong and wide opposition movement.

For this to progress, engagement with diverse organizations that have been campaigning for protection of human and democratic rights of the people of Sri Lanka is necessary and essential.

Such organizations may include political parties and organizations, trade unions and non-governmental organizations.

If such political action does not materialize, rebuilding the fragmented social relationships in Sri Lanka will get much harder with each passing day.

For an agenda based on social inclusion to have an effect, we need to have space to discuss the many varieties of social oppression and exclusion prevalent in Sri Lanka and in the Diaspora.

There is no way we can move straight from a society based on social exclusion to a society based on social inclusion, because such a transition is not possible without a thorough social conversation and analysis.

Such a conversation and analysis require parallel efforts of critical examination of hierarchies of social oppression.

It also requires promotion of a program of transition to combine together the variety of unrelated and dissimilar movements that struggle against oppression, inequality and injustice.

Such social movements could be bound together by a kind of inclusion that would lead to the creation of a more just and equitable society.

For this to occur, consultative, participative, democratized, open consensus building is necessary.

Thus, a conversation on social inclusion can provide a coherent critical examination of the multiple forms of social and economic injustices and the concomitant institutional policy and program calculus.

So I believe the way forward for peace and reconciliation lies in exploring the potential for rebuilding inclusive relationships among the diversity of people through the existing and available dialogue and interaction mechanisms within communities both local and diasporic.

There should be attempts to expand such possibilities to create more space for dialogue and interaction.

However, such dialogue and interaction require a different and alternate understanding of socio-economic and cultural space, citizenship rights and necessary pre-conditions for social cohesion and inclusion.

This requires challenging the dominant Sinhala and Tamil discourse of social exclusion and stressing the politics of difference that needs to put issues of inequality and social and economic justice at the heart of the issue of social inclusion.

It is in this light I appeal to those who value democracy, freedom and liberty to actively show that they oppose the repressive political culture in Sri Lanka.

They need to exert pressure on the state to negotiate towards a meaningful and just power-sharing arrangement.

Sinhala and Tamil expatriates that helped perpetuate the conflict need to make a positive contribution to its resolution by engaging in dialogue within their community and with other communities.

They need to become drivers of this paradigm shift by creating a new reality through their interactions with each other.

This is not without historical precedent. It happened in South Africa and it can happen in Sri Lanka.

Thank you.

[Authors note: This was a speech delivered recently by me in Melbourne, Australia]

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Some excellent goals scored, some unbearable moments of anguish celebrated as teams win and lose in an imperfect system, some stunning comebacks, terrible bouts of pain vanishing instantly once the arbitrator with a whistle awards a free kick, the tears of the Japanese, the despair of the Ghanians’, incompetent referees sent out to save face, all making a wonderful festival of sport.  All in all we have been witness to a wonderful world cup. FIFA president Sepp Blatter called it an emotional one. Emotional because we saw more than soccer in South Africa. We saw a nation healing. We witnessed what could be an answer for the modern tribalism, which is engulfing our world.

It was seen in a flag being celebrated equally by all races. Don’t be mistaken. A black and an Afrikaner were not spotted hugging each other, but the unity can be felt. Not pumped up, not voiced through news conferences and loud mouths in august assemblies.  The feeling gives you gut assurance that we are seeing the real thing. Imperfect, but it is open not incognito. It is recognizable and touchable. In the country where some of the most hideous crimes were committed, both in the name of racial purity and in the name of the emancipation of the oppressed, the human spirit is on the mend.

With the pessimist it can be agreed that it is not perfect. The extremist voices are there; the voices of hatred are not totally stilled as evidenced in the violent killing of Eugene Terreblanche the avid white supremacist.  Some even tried to make this a declaration of war by  blacks against whites. In the days prior to the world cup South African Police said white supremacists planned bombs in black areas. The president condemned the killing. From our own experience we know that such condemnation could mean something or nothing at all.

Presidential statements are immaterial when a process is on the roll. A process, which has caught the imagination of different strata’s of South African society. The word reconciliation is so perverted theses days. It is used as a means to obtaining funding nationally and organizationally. It is used to keep the prince in the palace and the poor man at the gate provided they are not throwing obscenities or hand grenades at each other.

Despite years since the end of conflict, the process of healing is in the kindergarten stage in South Africa, maybe because there is a ring of authenticity to it. The hope cannot be missed however even by the most skeptical. It might be best captured by the words of the song that was reverberating through the airwaves during the world cup.

“When I get older, I will be stronger
. They’ll call me freedom, just like a Waving Flag”

And I sat on my couch, got drawn into the crowds watching the enthralling soccer, but I cried. Tears of envy pouring down as I saw what I would love to see happening closer home.

Joanna, is their any hope and inspiration that you could give Colombo?

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