A Separation (Iran)

A Film by

Asghar Farhadi

(Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film – Academy Awards 2012)

Date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 at 5:30pm

Location: ICES Auditorium

A Separation  is a 2011 Iranian drama film written and directed Asghar Farhadi, starring Leila Hatami and Peyman Moaadi.   It begins with a married middle-class couple – Simin (Leila Hatman) and Nader (Peyman Maadi) – pleading with a judge to be divorced: she wants to leave the country with their daughter Termeh , while her husband wishes to stay in order to look after his father who has  Alzheimer’s.  They fail and decide to separate with Simin moving out.  Winner of numerous awards at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, Asghar Farhadi’s A Seperation is  a sophisticated, superbly acted and wholly gripping portrait of modern Iran.  The film has been nominated for this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Address: 2, Kynsey Terrace, Colombo 08

Sanayi Marcelline

Politics of State Reform Project

International Centre for Ethnic Studies

History after the War

by Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri

Date: 25 January 2012

Location: University of Ruhuna

Dr. Nirmal’s main argument was that, in the context of thirty years ethnic civil war, history also became one of the main sites of struggle. He explored the way how different interpretations of the historical past of the Sinhala community played a role in legitimizing the hegemonic nationalist claims over the state. Although we might have different forms of knowledge of history, a particular knowledge amongst them, which was inscribed in Mahavamsa, has become a sort of patent for the claims that Sri Lanka is the ‘chosen’ land for Buddhism, that this country should always be united and that it belongs to Sinhalese. In the second part of his lecture, Dr. Nirmal analyzed how the above mentioned mainstream nationalist narrative of history has acquired a new role to play within the post-war context in the country. He explained how the mainstream historiography is instrumental in constructing a certain mythical link between the ancient kingdoms of the country and the present political regime, which is ideologically based on Sinhalese-Buddhist ethno-nationalism.  This political use of history, Dr. Nirmal argues, presents us not merely an academic but a significant political challenge, in terms of democracy, equality and social reconciliation.

*The event attracted over 500 participants.

The New Year brought a valuable gift in my email. It was a dossier entitled ‘Seeking Space for State Reform’ and carried an even more beguiling subtitle, ‘Consensus and Contradictions in Public Perceptions’.  A publication of the ICES (the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, from and of which I hadn’t heard for quite a while), it was a product of the Politics of State Reform Project. What made it compelling reading was that it was nothing less than a ‘National Survey of Grassroots Perceptions of State Reform’, which, translated, meant that it was a recent survey of public opinion across all communities, about the ethnic conflict and the  various reform proposals to address or resolve it.

The statistics of the survey conducted from June to mid August 2010 reveal the problem, but also indicate the solution.  At its starkest the problem is that a shade over half of Sri Lankan Tamils polled, appear to think that the solution to Sri Lanka’s travails is an independent Tamil state. Simply put, 54% of Sri Lanka’s Tamils (who comprise 14% of the sample) support a separate state, i.e. a Tamil Eelam. Set that against 95% of Sri Lankan Sinhalese (who comprise 72% of the sample) who stand for a unitary – that’s right, unitary, not merely united—form of state, with a stratospheric 96% of the view that the unitary state is “necessary to prevent the disintegration of the country”. This is also the view of the third largest community, which is the second largest minority, namely the Sri Lankan Moors, 90% of whom agree that a unitary state is “necessary to maintain a sense of national unity”. So, the Sri Lankan problem is the probably unbridgeable chasm between a plurality of the minority Tamils who are for a separate state and a near-totality of the Sinhalese majority and the Muslim minority, who are for a unitary state.
The second chasm is between 90% of Sinhala opinion which holds terrorism responsible for the conflict and the much lower 42% of SL Tamil opinion that holds the same view. In political terms, the refusal of the TNA to denounce Tiger terrorism is unlikely to render that party more acceptable to the Sinhala majority which it has to convince or at least ensure the benign neutrality of, if it is to obtain the reforms it seeks.
Is federalism a simple and obvious solution perhaps? No, because here too the gap is as wide as to be unbridgeable, with almost 90% of SL Tamils for it and nearly 80% of Sinhalese opposed. Sinhala opinion may have been more malleable had the Tamil preference for federalism accompanied a Tamil majority option for a single, united Sri Lanka; in other words if a majority of Tamil opinion were for a federal solution and simultaneously against an independent state for the Tamils. Matters are perceived far less sympathetically when the option for federalism lies alongside the option for a separate state. This understandably reinforces Sinhala misgivings that federalism will not be an alternative but an enabler for secession and is therefore far too risky an experiment.
Coupled with the low degree of acceptance among the Sinhalese of the Indo-Lanka agreement, regional autonomy and the Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga ‘packages’ of 1995-2000, it would seem at first glance that there is no intermediate solution. Interestingly the CBK proposals are the single most unpopular of all reform proposals among the Sinhalese (with a 67% disapproval rating, higher than that of the Indo-Lanka accord, with 63%).
Happily, there is an intermediate solution; a saddle-point. Going by the ICES figures, the Sinhala people are not dogmatically in favour of an unreformed unitary state. Theirs is not an ironclad conservative or neoconservative mindset. Strikingly, the data reveals that the Sinhalese are sensitive to minority grievances, do not support/are opposed to an unreformed state and are acutely conscious of the dangers of lack of reform.
“Significantly, a majority of the Sinhalese (61.8%) also agree that the legitimate grievances of minority communities and lack of equal treatment for all citizens (61.4%) were causes for the conflict.” (p 8 )
“However, all the communities…including a majority of the Sinhalese (58.9%) disagreed with the statement that there was no need to reform the state.” (p16)
“A majority of the Sinhalese agree along with the minorities that without state reform the minorities would continue to have grievances (80%), continue to be discriminated against (68.7%), development and economic progress would be hampered (76.5%), the international community would not help the country (62.8%) and significantly that even a return to armed conflict was possible (72.2%). These findings indicate a greater awareness among the majority community about the legitimacy of minority demands and the need to provide a constitutional or political settlement to the ethnic conflict despite the decisive defeat of the LTTE by the Sri Lankan state.” (p18)
Senior Minister  and veteran leftist Prof Tissa Vitharana comes across as an unsung hero in that the APRC proposals issuing from the process he chaired “are the only state reform proposals which the Sinhalese seem to find acceptable with a significant majority of people in the ‘agreed to some extent’ and ‘agree’ categories over the ‘disagree’ categories.” (p 15)
Even if one were to consider the APRC as bypassed by the flow of events, the situation remains hopeful because the Sinhalese, though against “regional autonomy” (North-East merger), are fairly solidly in favour of provincial level devolution and a strengthened, not a weakened, system of provincial councils.
84% of Sinhalese think that Provincial Councils give “fair access to resources”, while 85% think that PCs “give all communities a voice at the provincial level” and 76% believe that “PCs will resolve the problems faced by the minority community”.
When the crucial question “can enhance devolution of powers to the Provincial Councils solve the ethnic conflict?” is posed the study tells us that “In general, when the Agree and Agree to some extent categories are taken together, the findings indicate more support for, than against for Provincial Councils as a solution to the ethnic conflict among all the communities in the country.” (p26)
This conclusion is sharpened in the next segment entitled ‘The most necessary state reform initiatives to solve the ethnic conflict’, the findings of which tell us that:
“The full implementation of the Provincial Council Act was approved by all the communities. This was also the level of devolution of power which a majority of Sinhalese (60%) and Sri Lankan Moors (92.3%) found the most acceptable…All the communities support the establishment of a second chamber in parliament and greater power sharing at the centre.” (p27)
The Conclusions of the ICES study clearly re-state the only possible answer to the problem:
“The statistics provided above indicate that…Among all the communities, enhanced devolution of power to the provinces is seen as a possible solution to the ethnic conflict. Provincial Councils were the level of devolution of power most acceptable to the Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan Moors. The Sri Lankan and Upcountry Tamils favour greater devolution or a system of federalism like that found in India. What is significant however, is that there is more space for devolution than ever before, because of the Sinhalese support for Provincial Councils, which a significant number of Sri Lankan and Up-Country Tamils find acceptable.” (p30)
Every decent opinion survey contains surprises. A big one in the ICES data set is the congruence of opinion among the Sinhalese and Tamils with regard to the West, and more specifically, “a conspiracy by the West to undermine Sri Lanka” as a causative factor of the conflict. Roughly 63% of Sinhalese and 70% of SL Tamils polled – yes, a higher percentage of Tamils than Sinhalese—holds that this is a factor.
Going by the ICES figures, mainstream Sinhala nationalist opinion (as distinct from that of Sinhala ultranationalist opinion) seems more moderate than mainstream Tamil nationalist opinion.
The results of elections after the Arab Spring show that citizens in that region are increasingly opting for a moderate nationalism (and a modern, liberal Islam). The results of the ICES survey show that the great majority of Sri Lanka’s citizens are also moderate nationalists. The country’s tragedy however, has been that the nationalists are not moderate or are insufficiently so, while the moderates are not nationalist or are inadequately so.

Source: http://dailymirror.lk/opinion/16028-conflict-reform-a-reconciliation.html

Consensus and Contradictions in Public Perceptions

Politics of State Reform Project - International Centre for Ethnic Studies

The main objectives of the Politics of State Reform Project were to identify and assess efforts to solve the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka through state reform. The research involved analyzing the structural impediments and politics behind the state reform initiatives and the reasons for their failure to provide a political solution for the ethnic conflict. What made this project unique was the attempt to understand the above from the perspectives of political elites and their constituencies – the citizens or the general public.

The category ‘the public’ includes all those who though politically active as voters or as a political constituency have no direct access to the workings of politics at the level of elite politics – political parties, civil society    and the state. Peoples’ perspectives proved to be an interesting and important counterpoint to that of the political elite who profess to speak for them.

Grassroots perceptions about state reform were initially examined through more than a hundred in depth individual interviews and focus group discussions across 8 provinces in the country including the North and East. The interviewees were purposively selected through a combination of stratified (on the basis of region, socio-economic status, religion and ethnic differences) and snowball sampling. The findings from the qualitative research were extensively used in developing the comprehensive questionnaire for the national survey of 3,584 respondents. The qualitative research findings will be a part of a research report on the entire project to be published shortly.

The quantitative survey which is among the largest surveys carried out recently on public perceptions on politics in Sri Lanka was outsourced by ICES and carried out by a Colombo-based survey research organization with an extensive network of enumerators throughout the island.

This report provides descriptive statistical data on public perceptions of the Sri Lankan state and the question of state reform which is of particular significance in a post-war, post-LTTE context. The specific aim of this report is to provide relevant findings to the project stakeholders including policy makers and other interested individuals about the levels of public support for different reform initiatives among the diverse ethnic communities in the country. The findings of this research are especially salient at a time when there is a growing need for a political solution to the ethnic conflict as a prerequisite for reconciliation and long term peace and stability in the country. It is hoped that this information will feed into formulating relevant state policies and civil society activism.

(American Centre in association with ICES)

by

Dr. Joyce Neu

Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 4:30pm

Location: ICES Auditorium

Joyce Neu is a conflict resolution specialist with expertise in conflict assessment, facilitation, mediation, the design and management of peace processes and gender mainstreaming in peacemaking and peacebuilding.  Over the past 18 years, as the founding Executive Director for the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego and as Senior Associate Director and Acting Director in the Conflict Resolution Program at The Carter Center, she has been responsible for designing and implementing peacemaking and peacebuilding initiatives in Africa, the Balkans, the Baltics, and the Caucasus.  Dr. Neu recently completed a contract as Team Leader of a new UN Standby Team of Mediation Experts.  Her role was to advise UN and African Union Special Envoys and Special Representatives on peace processes.  Dr. Neu was a senior Fulbright scholar in Poland and a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal.  She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern California.

Reconciliation and Reconstruction through  Organisational Change

by

Professor Martin Hall (Vice Chancellor of the  University of Salford, UK)

Date: 6 December 2011 at 5:45pm

Location: Earl’s Court, Cinnamon Lakeside

South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 were a milestone in reconciliation and reconstruction following the years of conflict in the apartheid era. Over the following fifteen years many organisations – universities, public bodies, private corporations and others – embarked on projects to transform their cultures as institutions, the stereotyped views different groups of people held about each other, and the day-by-day discrimination that allowed some groups of people to prosper at the expense of others. This work demonstrates that organisations provide significant opportunities for effective action following a wide rage of societal returns, including conflicts. Whether state institutions, privately owned corporations or third-sector bodies, organisations bring people together from a wide range of circumstances, define a set a common purposes and have their own, often distinctive, institutional cultures. This opens up fertile possibilities for connecting individual and group mentorship and mediation with developing shared and distributed leadership objectives and for addressing aspects of the organisational cultures that play such an important role in a wide range of ways. This presentation will use some examples from South Africa’s pathway to reconciliation and reconstruction to outline ways in which organisational change may contribute to reconciliation and reconstruction in other countries, now and in the future.

Speaker Biography

Martin Hall is Vice Chancellor of the University of Salford. He is also Professor Emeritus, University of Cape Town, where he is affiliated with the Graduate School of Business. Previously Professor of Historical Archaeology, he was inaugural Dean of Higher Education Development and then Deputy Vice Chancellor at UCT (from 1999 to 2008). He is a past-President of the World Archaeological Congress and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and the University of Cape Town. He is an accredited mediator with the Africa Centre for Dispute Settlement.

He has written extensively on pre-colonial history in Southern Africa, on the historical archaeology of colonialism, on contemporary public culture and on issues in higher education. Recent publications include “Identity, memory and countermemory: the archaeology of an urban landscape” (Journal of Material Culture 11 (1-2)L 189-209, 2006), Historical Archaeology (edited with Stephen Silliman; Oxford, Blackwell, 2006), Desire Lines: Space, Memory, Identity in the post-Apartheid City (edited with Noleen Murray and Nick Shepherd; London, Routledge, 2007), “Transformation and continuity in the university in Africa” (Social Dynamics 33 (1): 181-198, 2007), “Stitch Wise: Strategic Knowledge Management for Pro-Poor Enterprise on South Africa’s Goldfields” (in The Business of Sustainable Development in Africa: Human Rights, Partnerships, and Alternative Business Models, 2008), and the The Next Twenty Five Years? Affirmative Action and Higher Education in the United States and South Africa, edited with Marvin Krislov and David L. Featherman, University of Michigan Press, 2009. A full list of publications, as well as current work, is available at www.salford.ac.uk/vc

The end of war has created new avenues for collective action across Sri Lanka. The Potential for Solidarity examines instances of successful North-South collaboration in Sri Lanka’s fisheries, realigns divisive perceptions that have hindered solidarity during the war, and encourages island-wide collaboration.

Date: 26th & 27th of November, 2011

Location: Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

Date: December 7 – 9, 2011 (Daily – 2:30 and 5:30pm)

Location: ICES Auditorium

International Centre for Ethnic Studies is pleased to invite you to the International Human Rights Film Festival – Wednesday, December 7th to Friday, December 9th at the ICES Auditorium, 2, Kynsey Terrace, Colombo 8 at 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. The three day festival is part of the Human Rights Day which falls on December 10th.

Incendies (Canada)

A film by Denis Villeneuve

Incendies is a 2010 Quebec film written and directed by Denis Villeneuve. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s play, Scorched, Incendies follows the journey of twin brother and sister as they attempt to unravel the mystery of their mother’s life. A beautifully filmed and movingly performed drama which explores how personal motives breed political radicalism. (130 minutes)

Wednesday, December 7 (2:30 and 5:30pm)

Invictus (USA)

A film by Clint Eastwood

Actor Morgan Freeman portrays anti-apartheid activist and former South African president  Nelson Mandela in this Clint  Eastwood-helmed political drama adapted from author John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation”.  Set just after the fall of apartheid and during Mandela’s first term in office.  The Human Factor explores how the political prisoner—turned president used the 1995 Rugby World Cup – which was hosted by South Africa – as a means of bringing blacks and whites together after decades of violence and mistrust.  (134 minutes)

Thursday, December 8 (2:30 and 5:30pm)

The Whistleblower (Canada)

A film by Larysa Kondracki

A political thriller based on the experiences of Kathryn Bolkovac, (Rachel Weisz) an American police officer who takes a job working as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia.  Her expectations of helping to rebuild a devastated country are dashed when she uncovers a dangerous  reality of corruption, cover-up and intrigue amid a world of private contractors. (111 minutes)

Friday,  December 9 (2:30 and 5:30pm)