Category: Breaking News

Experts in the field from Tamil Nadu and members of the Jallikattu Protection Committee helped the organisers conduct the event in Sri Lanka, while the Animal Husbandry department ensured the bulls were fit for participation.

Pongal, the harvest festival celebrated by Tamils across the globe, came a week early this year for the people of Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province, which scripted history on Saturday by organising the first-ever Jallikattu, a bull taming sport, outside Tamil Nadu.

The event, which was organised by Eastern Province Governor Senthil Tondaman and the Tourism Bureau, saw the participation of over 200 bulls and 100 bull tamers. Hundreds of people queued up at the Sambur public playground in Trincomalee, the capital of Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province, as early as 7 am to catch a glimpse of jallikattu for the first time in person.

Thondaman flagged off the event after which a temple bull was the first to be released via the vaadivaasal into the playground as tens of young men jostled with each other to tame the bull.

Over 200 bulls decorated with flowers, including at least half a dozen raised by Tondaman’s family, were released into the ground one by one with winners returned home with plenty of prices like mixer grinders, rice cookers, and ceiling fans among other household appliances and items.

Vaadivaasal is a narrow passage from where the bulls are let into the ground to be tamed by men. Though ethnic Tamils and plantation Tamils, whose forefathers were taken from several parts of Tamil Nadu to work in coffee and tea plantations in Sri Lanka by the British, celebrate Pongal every year but jallikattu was never part of the harvest festival.

“This is the first time that the sport was conducted in Sri Lanka. Over 5,000 people participated in the jallikattu event held on Saturday,” A P Mathan, Chairman, Eastern Province Tourism Bureau, told DH over the phone.

Experts in the field from Tamil Nadu and members of the Jallikattu Protection Committee helped the organisers conduct the event in Sri Lanka, while the Animal Husbandry department ensured the bulls were fit for participation.

Jallikattu is celebrated with much fervour in several parts of Tamil Nadu, especially in Madurai, Sivaganga, and Pudukkottai districts, during the Tamil month of Thai (mid-January to mid-February).

Referred to as eru thazhuvuthal (embracing the bull) in Sangam Literature, jallikattu is deep-rooted in Tamil culture and a symbol of Tamil pride and valour. Jallikattu is derived from Tamil words salli kaasu (coins) and kattu (a package). It means those who tame the bull will get the package (prize money) that is tied to the animal’s horns.

Kalithogai, a rich Sangam Era Tamil literature dating back to 200 BCE, calls eru thazhuvuthal (embracing the bull) as a sport played in Mullai (forest) land. Historians say eru thazhuvuthal was a sport of the masses and it has a deep-rooted cultural identity.

Two Tamil women activists were taken into custody yesterday (05) as they attempted to meet president Ranil Wickremesinghe who is now touring the north.

The president travelled by air on a four-day visit there and was participating in a district coordinating committee meeting at the town hall when the arrests were made.

Police prevented protesting members of the association of missing persons from entering the premises.

Secretary of its Vavuniya branch Sivanandan Jenita and Meera Jesmine were then arrested and dragged into a bus, video footage by the media showed.

Police claimed to have obtained a court order against Jenita that prevents her from holding protests.

Families of missing persons are on a campaign for more than 2,500 days to demand justice for their loved ones.

The 15th anniversary of the assassination of The Sunday Leader founder Editor-in-Chief Lasantha Wickrematunge, which falls on Monday, 8 January, will be marked with a service at his graveside.

Family, friends, former colleagues, and others will gather at Borella Kanatte at 9 a.m. to mark the anniversary and remember Lasantha.

Assassinated on 8 January 2009, Lasantha was one of Sri Lanka’s leading journalists and an outspoken critic of the then Rajapaksa Government. He was attacked as he drove to work and later died of his injuries.

The brazen attack was carried out by two gunmen on motorcycles in the middle of morning-rush-hour traffic.

The investigation into Lasantha’s murder has yielded no tangible results thus far and his killers still roam free, 15 years later.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe backed the India-mooted 13th Amendment as a solution to address the minority Tamil community’s long-pending demand for political autonomy.

The 13A became a part of Sri Lanka’s constitution in 1987 through the direct intervention of the then-Indian government led by prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. It created nine provincial councils for nine provinces with a temporary merger of the North and East which the Tamil minority claims is their traditional homeland.

If we examine the provisions of the 13 Amendment, there is ample authority to establish a robust local economy. We pledge not to intervene in those affairs. I am encouraging you to take the initiative,” Wickremesinghe said. Presently, the Western Province is the sole region capable of substantial independent spending, while others are financially dependent on it, he said. “This situation warrants reconsideration. By utilising the powers within the 13th Amendment, each province can chart its course to development. It’s time to put these powers into action, he said.

Wickremesinghe’s willingness to grant full powers other than police to provinces was shot down by the powerful Buddhist clergy who claimed the move could endanger the unitary state of Sri Lanka. An all-political party meeting called by Wickremesinghe last year to reach a consensus on implementing the 13A ended up in a stalemate.

Take Japan, for instance, it is not a federal state yet various departments and regions are well developed…Look at the United Kingdom – Scotland and Wales have their own developed economies. Why can’t we emulate such functioning regional economies, the president asked. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which fought for a Tamil homeland for nearly 30 years had rejected the 13A.

They fought the Indian Army that was deployed as part of the Indo-Lanka Accord. In 2013, the Tamils for the first time voted for their own chief minister for the North. The previous provincial elections were severely hampered by the LTTE’s armed campaign.

The current Tamil political parties stay sceptical of the political will in the majority Sinhala south to fully implement the 13A. The Tamils put forward their demand for autonomy since gaining independence from Britain in 1948 which from the mid-70s turned into a bloody armed conflict.

Over the years, the Sri Lankan government has been aggressive against Tamilian groups following its war with LTTE which collapsed in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

(PTI)

Sri Lanka’s recent decision to enact a moratorium on foreign Marine Scientific Research (MSR) vessel visits to the strategically placed island nation in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), is a short-term solution to what will become a bigger headache in the coming years.

The moratorium essentially buys Sri Lanka some breathing space to navigate around geopolitical rivalry and diplomatic pressure in 2024, which is a crucial year for the island, in terms of economic and political stability, with the possibility of multiple elections on the horizon.

However, Sri Lanka needs to formulate a robust strategy to deal with MSR visit requests, which will likely increase in the coming years, as tensions between India – China – and the United States are likely to continue to complicate situations for the littoral states of the IOR.

India, the United States and others have exerted significant diplomatic pressure on Sri Lanka regarding the high frequency of Chinese MSR visits to the island nation.

Sri Lankan policymakers and those who craft foreign policy, need to fully grasp that China has long-term designs for the IOR, and that Chinese presence in the “Indian Ocean” will only grow in the coming years. China, seems to be borrowing a page from the British Empire, US and Soviet “Cold War” period playbooks, and has begun “patrolling” and seeking basing options for the PLA Navy along its lengthy lines of communication (supply routes).

With a significant tonnage of China’s energy supply, raw materials, and exported goods traversing through the Indian Ocean, China is clearly trying to ensure that its supply chain vulnerabilities are reduced.

While China is now pushing hard to expand its maritime science boundaries and build expertise, the kind of joint research they have collaboratively carried out thus far with local institutions, are yet to deliver significant scientific results which have global implications.

Further, China’s track record of playing by the international rule book when it comes to maritime matters, is problematic. China’s reaction to international law and verdicts about its claim to disputed maritime territories in the South China Sea, paints a poor picture.

In what may be indicative of what’s in store for the future, China recently began to refer to the IOR as the “China-Indian Ocean Region” (CIOR), at a recent conference on “Boosting Sustainable Blue Economy to Build Together a Maritime Community with a Shared Future,” which was held in the Yunnan Province of China, in early December, 2023.

The United States several years ago ‘re-envisaged’ the Indian Ocean as the ‘Indo-Pacific’ to suite its strategic aims. The re-designation of the IOR as China-Indian Ocean Region indicates China’s ambitions, and how it views the world, where a rising China wants to become a “superpower”.

Such re-envisioning of the IOR along with projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), will see China shift focus towards the Indian Ocean in the coming years.

The Chinese long-range fishing fleet, and MSR’s equipped with unmanned and autonomous systems will increase their visits to the IOR. Already, several Chinese MSR’s have been flagged by some South East Asian countries for operating with their Automatic Ship Identification (AIS) tracking systems shut off, in what is termed as “going dark”, deifying international law.

Further, several such vessels have been accused of deploying autonomous undersea and surface craft to collect scientific data in coastal waters and in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of Southeast Asian Countries to collect data, which also have military applications, without the expressed permission of such countries.

As such, Sri Lanka needs to move swiftly to formulate well thought-out foreign policy measures to deal with what could be an escalation of the Chinese inroads to the IOR, though these have been mostly legitimate under international law to date.

It is said that the Government is reviewing its foreign policy, in tandem with a defence review which is also said to be ongoing. With both “reviews” lacking transparency, or Parliamentary oversight, let’s hope that they are actually taking place, with the competent subject matter experts being consulted, and would not end up like many other “reviews” which have in the past only rubber-stamped the ideas which a few politicians and their advisors deem fit for the nation.

It is also incumbent on the Government and policymakers to ensure that such key policy matters are not “shelved” due to 2024 being an “election” year. Given the weak economic state Sri Lanka finds herself this year, the state and policymakers cannot afford to be distracted by an “election fever” and become complacent regarding critical foreign policy challenges.