#Sri La

[lokuhapuarachchi]

Remembering Sri Lanka’s Fallen Journalists: A Call for Justice and Support

On this solemn day, the 24th of January, we pause to honor the memories of two journalists whose lives were tragically cut short for their commitment to truth and freedom of expression.

Subramaniam Sugirdharajan (1970 – 2006) Popularly known as SSR, Sugirdharajan was a journalist for the Tamil-language daily newspaper Sudar Oli. At just 35 years old, he was brutally gunned down in the eastern port city of Trincomalee during the Sri Lankan Civil War. On the morning of 24 January 2006, assailants on a motorbike shot him at close range. A devoted father of two young children, aged three and two, SSR’s death left an indelible mark on the Sri Lankan media landscape. Today, his family, friends, and professional colleagues gather in Trincomalee to remember his courage and sacrifice.

Prageeth Ekneligoda (1960 – Disappeared 2010) Prageeth Ekneligoda, a cartoonist, political analyst, and journalist, disappeared on 24 January 2010, two days before a critical presidential election. Widely believed to have been abducted and killed under the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa, Prageeth’s disappearance remains unresolved. His ashes are thought to have been scattered, a grim symbol of the dangers faced by journalists in Sri Lanka. Today, his loved ones commemorate him at the Nawagamuwa Devalaya in Kaduwela, keeping his memory alive despite the shadows of impunity.

A War on Media Freedom The early 2000s marked a dark period for press freedom in Sri Lanka. Under the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government, which took power in April 2004, attacks on journalists escalated with alarming frequency. On 31 May 2004, veteran Tamil journalist Aiyathurai Nadesan was shot dead by government-backed paramilitaries in Batticaloa. His assassination ignited a campaign of violence against the media, silencing dissent with unprecedented brutality.

In the six years that followed, at least 43 journalists and media workers were killed or disappeared. Despite repeated promises from successive governments to investigate these crimes, no perpetrators have been brought to justice. The legacy of this violence persists, with families of murdered journalists left to bear the burden of loss, often without any financial or emotional support.

Remembering the Fallen

Thewis Guruge – Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, 23 July 1989

Premakeerthi de Alwis – Broadcaster, 31 July 1989

Sagarika Gomes – Rupavahini Corporation, 13 September 1989

Richard de Zoysa – Journalist and activist, 18 February 1990

K.S. Raja – Radio Ceylon presenter, poisoned, 1994

Rohana Kumara – Editor, Batana, 7 September 1999

Athputharaja Nadarajah – Editor, Tamil weekly, 2 November 1999

Maylvaganam Nimalrajan – Journalist from Jaffna, 19 October 2000

Aiyathurai Nadesan – Journalist, 31 May 2004

Balandaraja Iyer – Activist, writer, and poet, 16 August 2004

Tarakki Sivaram – Tamil journalist, 28 April 2005

Railangi Selvarajah – Broadcaster and actress, 12 August 2005

Subramaniam Sugirdharajan – Sudar Oli, 24 January 2006

Sampath Lakmal de Silva – Independent journalist, 2 July 2006

Suresh Kumar and Ranjith Kumara – Udayan newspaper, 2 May 2006

Selvaraja Rajivarnam – Journalist, 29 April 2007

Chandrabose Suthaharan – Editor, Nilam, 16 April 2007

P. Devakumaran – Tamil TV journalist, 28 May 2008

Lasantha Wickramatunga – Journalist and activist, 8 January 2009

Prageeth Ekneligoda – Cartoonist and journalist, 24 January 2010

A Plea for Justice and Support

The murders of prominent journalists like Lasantha Wickramatunga and Richard de Zoysa have drawn significant attention, yet many others on this list remain forgotten. Their families, often plunged into economic hardship, have received little to no support. It is time for Sri Lanka’s leaders to act decisively to address this injustice.

We urge the President, the Minister of Mass Media, and all political leaders to establish a system of financial compensation for the families of murdered journalists. Beyond bringing the perpetrators to justice, the state has a moral duty to ensure the economic security of these families.

Let this commemoration not only honor the lives and legacies of our fallen colleagues but also serve as a rallying cry for accountability, justice, and meaningful support. A society that silences its truth-tellers cannot claim to be free or just. The time for change is now.

- Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi

[dicentsalve]

I can't choose which one I like more, so

Another fanart on @denako's au, because I had an orgasm when I saw Melone's design

[exactlyatomicthing]

La la land 💌

[wgm-beautiful-world]

The beauty of Maldives

[postcard-from-the-past]

York street in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Ceylon

British vintage postcard, mailed in 1903 to La Ciotat, France

[infosisraelnews]

Incident inhabituel au Sri Lanka : des Palestiniens ont localisé un soldat de Tsahal

Effrayant – Nulle part n’est plus sûr

Un soldat en service actif de Tsahal a été localisé mercredi à Colombo, la capitale du Sri Lanka, par une organisation pro-palestinienne qui a réussi à recouper une photo qu’il avait téléchargée sur les réseaux sociaux lors de son service opérationnel à Gaza , comme le rapporte N12. L’organisation a diffusé sur les réseaux sociaux une photo du soldat et a affirmé qu’il se vantait d’avoir commis…

[adlertours]

Luxury Sri Lanka Tour Package

#LuxurySriLankaTourPackage 7 Nights / 8 Days #Kandy – #NuwaraEliya – #Yala – #Hambantota – #Colombo Tour Price: Per Person sharing a Double Room USD 2,363 based on 06 Pax ItineraryDay 01 : #Colombo Airport > #Kegalle > KandyHotel : #GrandKandyanHotel  Day 02 – Kandy > Nuwara Eliya Hotel : #HeritanceTeaFactory – 5*   Day 03 – Nuwara Eliya Hotel : Heritance Tea Factory – 5*   Day 04 – Nuwara…

[secretexpertwagoneagle]

Jacopo ඔහුගේ ජීව විද්‍යාත්මක පවුල සොයයි ❣️❣️❣️

Jacopo මට ලියයි, මම මගේ ජීව විද්‍යාත්මක පවුල සොයමින් සිටිමි, මගේ මුල් නම ෂෙහාන් 2000 සැප්තැම්බර් 18 වන දින ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ කොළඹදී මම රාගම ප්‍රදේශයේ ආයතනයක සිටියදී මා හදා වඩා ගත්හ. මට මගේ ජීව විද්‍යාත්මක පවුල සොයා ගැනීමට හැකි වන පරිදි මගේ ආයාචනය හැකිතාක් ��ෙදා ගන්නා ලෙස මම ඔබෙන් ඉල්ලා සිටිමි ඔයාට ස්තූතියි

[pensierodelgiornoblog]

“Non è necessario né possibile cambiare gli altri. Ma se puoi cambiare te stesso, ti accorgerai che non è necessario alcun altro cambiamento.” – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Spunti di riflessione

Nisargadatta Maharaj è uno dei più influenti maestri dell’Advaita Vedanta, insegnamento filosofico basato sugli antichi testi Veda dell’Induismo. L’Advaita Vedanta sostiene l’unità fondamentale di tutta l’esistenza, affermando che la coscienza dell’individuo (Atman) e l’Assoluto (Brahman) sono essenzialmente una cosa sola.

La citazione di Nisargadatta Maharaj, quindi, ci invita a rivolgere l’attenzione all’interno, riconoscendo che la fonte della vera trasformazione è la realizzazione della nostra identità con l’Assoluto. Attraverso questa comprensione, il bisogno di cambiare gli altri o il mondo esterno svanisce, poiché si riconosce la perfetta unità e armonia della realtà ultima.

L’Advaita Vedanta ci insegna che il cambiamento autentico è un cambiamento di percezione, un risveglio alla verità eterna che è la nostra vera natura.

Approfondiamo ulteriormente alcuni temi della saggezza di questo orientamento spirituale nell’articolo.

[theindyreview]

Lightning in a Bottle Attracts Seminal Musicians in 2024 Line-Up

@LIBfestival Attracts Seminal Musicians in 2024 Line-Up Legends of their Genres: @I_Skream @FatBoySlim and @MIAuniverse are slated to catch Lightning in a Bottle this year #festival #livemusic #news #lineup #dance #hiphop #dubstep #rap #hiphop

Lightning in a Bottle is an annual festival in Southern California. It features workshops, camping, and musical acts along a beautiful lake. Produced by the DoLab—what started out as a simple art installation at Coachella, turned into a five-day romp with some very high caliber artists (who aren’t usually heard on radio stations). LIB often pushes new artists and inventive sounds, but they also…

[drjacquescoulardeau]

Enjoy SDeri Lanka and La Chaise-Dieu

[eduardo-liebana]

En Vitoria-Gasteiz presentación del libro sobre Ramana Maharshi a cargo de Eduardo Liébana

En lugar de enseñar a través de las palabras, emanaba de él una fuerza constante, un poder silente, una energía interior que aquietaba las mentes de quienes la captaban. A veces les proporcionaba una experiencia directa del estado en el que él mismo estaba inmerso permanentemente. Sus enseñanzas silenciosas siempre estaban disponibles para todos aquellos que se acercaran con respeto y fueran…

[k-star-holic]

Jung Dong-won, Kim Sook (Earth Exploration Life)

[healthcare021]

Top 10 IVF Hospitals in India - Your Key to Parenthood!

India has become a hub for IVF treatment with some of the best IVF hospitals in the world. These hospitals have top-notch infrastructure, advanced technology, and highly experienced doctors who specialize in infertility treatments. The top 10 IVF hospitals in India provide a comprehensive range of services, including IVF, ICSI, IMSI, and PGS/PGD. With their patient-centric approach and focus on quality care, these hospitals have helped many couples achieve successful outcomes and realize their dreams of parenthood.

[suchananewsblog]

Exciting Food Festivals In Feb 2023 You Must Attend If You Are A True Foodie

The much-awaited weekend is approaching and the excitement is already running high. What are your plans for this weekend? If you are anything like us, you would be looking for some good food for your stomach and soul. And if there’s something special up for grabs, we want to know about it. The month of February is going to be a roller-coaster ride for all the foodies out there as there are…

[trulycertain]

On Dragon Age & Accents

(My unhelpful tuppence, as an English player.)

One small thing I wish had come up in Veilguard from previous games: the accent worldbuilding. It wasn't always consistent - DA:O only seemed to care about country or race, anyone non-human being generically North American and anyone human being mostly RP English unless they were Antivan; for regional accents, they seemed to purely use them for effect or go with VAs' natural ones. (There are about two bandit NPCs who seem to have badly-done Midlands English accents purely because they're not meant to be very bright; thanks, love Canadians reinforcing that stereotype. Anders being Lancashire seems to be pure coincidence because of his voice actor - you rarely ever hear the accent in any consistent way in other NPCs, and it's completely ignored in his very Southern DA2 recast.)

But by DA2, there seemed to be definite trends: Free Marches could be RP English or North American depending where you came from; dwarves tended to sound North American but there were exceptions for some people raised on the surface; elves tended to be either Welsh or Irish, which matches the "very old culture with a linguistically completely different root from Trade/English". Starkhaven is most definitely Scots.

And then DAI! DAI, my love.

DAI kept DA2's trends, while finally giving us more complexity and regional accents, albeit limitedly (and still with some inconsistencies). Finally, we have a (vaguely Germanic) Nevarran accent! And Miranda Raison did such careful work constructing it! The Avvar, Ferelden's mountain folk, sound Northern English. I'd hazard a guess that several sound Yorkshire, actually - this matches the whole "the Orlesians got up there less" lore in real terms; Northern England and Scotland, particularly Yorkshire, was under Viking rule longer than the South, which became Norman-conquered earlier, and there are subtle dialectal differences to this day. (Similar thing happened with the Celts and Romans, and the Avvar are blatantly Celtic and Pictish). There's a reason that RP ("neutral posh") English is Southern, from the seats of power. Cullen's from Honnleath, somewhere smaller and less Orlesianified, and while it's softened by the character's travel and the VA's own posher bents, there are moments the Northern English accent gets leaned into, a little similarity with the Avvar. It's a coincidence but it works so well, lore-wise. Sera's VA sounds... Derbyshire? I think? which is Midlands/Northern border and sounds more than Northern enough to keep a consistent Fereldan sound. And in terms of NPCs? A lot of Fereldan NPCs suddenly start turning up Northern, albeit less broad in their accents! Have a listen round the Crossroads. I remember Gaider mentioning Dorian wasn't originally meant to be Indian, they sealed it for sure when they cast Ramon Tikaram, at which point everyone went, "Yup, let's run with it", cast his dad accordingly, and Gaider figured that Dorian was either part of a pretty big migrant population (which, other than the Dorian Gray reference, the fact his name roughly means "from across the sea" also makes sense), or quite a lot of Tevene folk natively were. Considering Tevinter started as essentially "mage Rome" and morphed into, even according to the writers themselves, "mage Byzantium" and it's very close to Seheron, which I feel is North Africa/Middle East influenced - Tevene folk being akin to folk of Turkish, Middle Eastern, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Bengali backgrounds makes a ton of sense.

It is... exceedingly rare to hear working-class British accents in fantasy series at all (unless Brits make them, and then we're still often peasants or generic NPC #2, a la Origins). It is even rarer to have a fantasy series bother to keep immigrant accents and show the moulding of them through the generations. And I can only think of one other video game that has consciously cast British Asian actors, that's how rare it is even in games that supposedly care about representation - despite the fact that Asian folk make up something like 30% of our population.

Now: would I like some more background on why some accents in the Marches sound British and some don't? Yup! Would I have liked to have more regions in the elves' Irish accents and the dwarves' NA? Yup! But do those really matter? Nope! They would have been lovely icing on the cake, but the underlying cake was great. The plot didn't need it. It didn't have to be perfect, and the filtering of British culture through Canadians, and strategic anachronism? Those are things I love about Dragon Age. I loved how much they seemed to be trying and how much they were thinking about the lore. And I loved hearing a "British accent" that finally made sense to me, not played into the long attempts by toffs to stamp out everything North of London or outside England.

And then Veilguard sort of... forgot about it most of it? Adored that we could play as a Geordie! I really, really love them continuing pointed casting of folk with British Asian ancestry for several Tevinters (*waves lovingly at elek and neve*). But then... uh... look! Working-class Tevene people with generic Mancunian accents! To show they're working-class! That's fantastic progress... for Origins. But lore-wise, by DATV we've already shown that Manchester and Northern English accents live... *points at Ferelden* somewhere over there. We're back to "Tevinters mostly sound like generically evil English folk", as in DAO and bits of 2, which, sure, Dorian doesn't contradict - but then why not have everyone sound Southern, like him? Or add a different tint to it? And no, I am not saying everyone should put on bad "ethnic" accents, and I do appreciate the number of American, English and Mediterranean accents in Tevinter showing a very Roman "you're a citizen of the Imperium but you might have been born in one of its several countries" - but…

Gideon Emery's slight Afrikaans tint made a ton of sense with Fenris and what part of Tevinter he was meant to be from, even if it was unintentional; Jennifer Hale's take on Krem was going for English but came out more Aussie to my ear. Something like those could have been really interesting. But that also means that, including Fenris, we've now had several slaves with an accent that reads... quite posh, to English ears. Same with Neve, who is supposedly proudly from the shithole part of Minrathous, but she and several others have very RP "posh" accents (while others like Tarquin and Elek are Mancunian). Now, not everyone picks up their local accent! I am one of those people! I ended up cursedly plummy for a long time! But... we had hints through the series that Tevinter class markers would be very different from Fereldans', but they're now the same, for some reason?

Add that to the fact that they didn't want to make even one VA suffer through doing the Nevarran accent... See, it makes total sense for Emmrich, who's a posh professor who's done a lot of international study and would probably have learned Common as a second language with a very generic, "neutral" accent; he also was very concerned about appearances with his class background and trained himself not to give much away. And I'm sure the Mourn Watch has international students. But no Nevarran NPCs sound pointedly Nevarran? Not a one? Kal Sharok has hints of something interesting going on but it's rare, and the Anderfels is just... full of sad English and American-sounding people. Rivain is supposedly Caribbean and there are a bunch of actors of Caribbean descent they could've cast, but we only have one NPC sound even slightly so? That's when it stops being "Trade is taught with a neutral accent and there are a lot of Fereldan immigrants and slaves in Tevinter" and starts feeling handwavey.

Basically: I wouldn't mind if we'd gone with most fantasy games' "Eh, we cast broadly based on sound, stereotype or none of the above"; I'm very happy to just go with it. However, DAI told me to pay vague attention because the accents meant something. Then DATV has heel-turned and is telling me "Nah, go with it" the way Origins did. My ears are... confused, to say the least. And we're back to "'working-class' has one accent, and characters with something to say who aren't cast as stereotypically plucky underdogs are all Southern and posh", which just... makes me really sad. I don't hear people who sound like me, my family, or my friends growing up, in Dragon Age anymore. I did hear they had a different voice director in DATV, so maybe it's that?