GLF WTF?
Closenberg Hotel, Galle
To I think uniform ‘huh?’ within Sri Lanka, RSF and Arundhati Roy have called for a boycott of the Galle Literary Festival. Apparently they want to express solidarity with writers by… preventing writers from speaking. This is honestly an ignorant joke. I have appeared at the GLF and criticized the government, the government media guy has come and gotten liberally yelled at, it’s generally a free space. Whatever these people are doing has to do with their own agendas, nothing to do with free speech or writing in Sri Lanka.
Basically, if Groundviews is condemning your boycott, you are pretty fucking silly. The GLF can be criticized for being too liberal and disconnected from Sri Lanka politics (which an international festival should be), but to be attacked as part of the problem in Sri Lanka means that these people have no interest in being part of the solution.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
People calling for boycotts should be gassed. I mean this is a dictatorship after all yeah, and our leader does have a mustache. tsk tsk
Well at least now RSF and the “Journalists for Democracy” have shown their true face. Those who criticized them stand vindicated and those who were defending them have been exposed. But it’s absurd just how ill informed many foreign organisations are when it comes to Sri Lanka.
Lol,i went to one of these art exhibitions in galle once. it was amusing in a not so good way
Arundhati Roy had no issues with Sri Lanka when she visited the island to promote her book God of Small Things soon after she won the Booker in 1997. At that time the war was raging in the North and every couple of months a suicide bomb was going off in Colombo. She didn’t utter a word about the war until very recently. Maybe she was worried that her book would not sell here, the way it did back then. Shame shame!
Leave a comment on the Journalists for Democracy’s page (http://www.jdslanka.org/2011/01/galle-literary-festival-international.html#comment-form). Let’s see how much they walk the talk.
Shameless. Your comment explains why you’ll never win a Booker.
A far better novelist than miss roy once said she’s “emotional & unintelligent” i’m going to leave it at that. She comes up with these sensational remarks just to grab attention & confirm her existence, nothing more to it
But she does grab attention, doesn’t she?
And she was actually beautiful 10 years ago, before she cut her hair. Probably that’s why so many people (including Dodo and Shameless and Indi) are so interested in everything she does or says. They wouldn’t give a damn if Martin Amis asked writers to boycott Galle LF. But when Roy says the same thing, they behave just like a man would behave at his ex-wife’s lesbian wedding.
The Annual Galle Literary Festival Bash Fest keep getting inovative every year. Now its gone global. Great guerrilla publicity for everyone.
Err I mean “innovative” not inovative.
If the GLF is a forum to speak out or yell your views, has any participant of GLF taken part in agitations/protests held at Lipton circus against government action to curb media ?
If you mean local participants, yes, I know several who have taken part in those mindless and pointless protests. But since when was it obligatory to participate in the causes of others if one is to avoid being harassed or blackmailed? Is reasoning and logic totally alien to you?
Hi David, My comment was in relation to what the writer of the article had said “…I have appeared at the GLF and criticized the government, the government media guy has come and gotten liberally yelled at…”
In that context what do you mean by “…since when was it obligatory to participate in the causes of others if one is to avoid being harassed or blackmailed?” Take it easy david…we are a very compassionate society that do support each other when in need :-)
I know what your comment was in relation to. My response was in the context of your questioning of whether anyone from the GLF had participated in a protest at Lipton; implying that unless a participant of the GLF had done so, the GLF cannot be a forum for speaking one’s mind. If this wasn’t your implication, perhaps you would care to clarify the point. It was in this context that I question the RSF and JFD boycott which is certainly harassment and blackmail, given that the GLF has no connection to the GoSL, and that the boycott implies that any event giving the impression of normalcy in SL will be targeted.
Have you seen the New Yorker’s recent article on Sri Lanka? Here is the abstract.
“ABSTRACT: A REPORTER AT LARGE about Sri Lanka’s brutal victory over its Tamil terrorists. When the end came for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in May, 2009, it was overwhelming and unmerciful. In a three-year offensive of increasing sophistication, the Sri Lankan Army outmaneuvered one of the world’s most ruthless insurgent armies. The battlefield defeat ended a vicious conflict that for twenty-six years had divided Sri Lanka along ethnic lines, as the country’s Tamils, a mostly Hindu minority, fought for the creation of a separate state against the ruling majority of Sinhalese Buddhists. The L.T.T.E. was led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, who had become one of the most successful guerrilla leaders of modern times. The Tigers were persistent suicide bombers, as well as relentless guerrilla fighters, and the war took at least a hundred thousand lives in Sri Lanka. To the extent that a counter-insurgency campaign can be successful, Sri Lanka is a grisly test case for success in modern warfare. The Tigers’ collapse began in January, 2009, when they lost the town of Kilinochchi, their de-facto capital. By May, their remaining fighters retreated into the jungle near the coastal town of Mullaittivu, taking along more than three hundred thousand Tamil civilians who were trapped with them. The Sri Lankan Army designated a series of “no-fire zones” and told civilians to assemble there. It then shelled those zones repeatedly, while issuing denials that it was doing so and forbidding journalists access to the area. Hemmed in by the sea, a lagoon, and a hundred thousand government soldiers, the Tigers were all but helpless. On May 16th, the Army commander, General Sarath Fonseka, declared victory. Two days later, the Army announced that the Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, had been killed. After the carnage, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government adopted a posture of triumphalism at home and resentment of the outrage it caused abroad. The important thing, Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in London said, was that Sri Lanka had ended terrorism, making it the first country in the modern age to have done so. Describes the history of ethnic tensions and the civil war between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. Until the very end, Velupillai Prabhakaran believed that the international relief community, the U.N., and Western governments would save the Tigers. “The L.T.T.E. continued to read the world as if it was pre-9/11,” Jayampathy Wickramaratne, an adviser to Sri Lanka’s past two Presidents, explained. President Rajapaksa had described his postwar vision as “one nation, one people,” but many Tamils believed that this was simply the first step toward complete Sinhalese domination. In the months after the war’s end, lawyers in the U.S. Justice Department began exploring the possibility of war-crimes prosecutions of the Minister of Defense Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, as well as the former Army commander Sarath Fonseka. President Rajapaksa, meanwhile, has signed a number of economic deals with China. Mentions James Clad and Lasantha Wickrematunge. Many of the Tamils the writer encountered felt that the peace was perilously fragile. It should not be forgotten that the more successful counter-insurgencies, like Sri Lanka’s, are ugly in practice.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_anderson#ixzz1CEQhblyM“
I just wanted to mention that there is a Facebook group for people opposed to the boycott:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_177552512286865
Please join.
One of the GLF boycott organisers, a hack called Antony Loewenstein was ‘honoured’ to participate in the boycott. Anyone who disagreed with him (including the wet Colombo liberals:) were ‘nationalists’! So, Indi, you’re now officially named and shamed as a Nationalist! Guess you’d better get your membership with the JHU sorted out…..
Even better, Loewenstein says ‘well done’ to the pro-LTTE diaspora instigated, Sri Lankan textiles boycott in Europe. That’ll really help the over-paid girls in garment factories to overthrow the ‘genocidal regime’ (his words), no?
His Twatter (sic) feed glories in his power and influence.
http://twitter.com/antloewenstein/status/32575621808791552
Unfortunately Antony’s commitment to free speech doesn’t extend to dissenting views be posted his blog. Typical!
Well, it’s nice to see the “Colombo liberals” receive a sharp slap. Hope it woke them up a bit.
Antony Loewenstein (who was ‘honoured’ to participate in the GLF boycott) Loves Free Speech – except at Sri Lankan literary festivals.
“Free speech is a delicate beast that must be constantly nurtured and defended. Our society can handle robust engagement on a host of issues. Some will offend Jews. Some will offend Muslims. Some won’t offend anybody. Hurt feelings shouldn’t be a crime.”
http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8013#comment-10250
So in AL’s opinion, only Western society is capable of safely handling free speech. Sri Lankans obviously haven’t yet reached that exalted stage of development.
[...] a credible, independent commentator on Sri Lankan affairs, they only have themselves to blame when Sri Lankans and others treat their reporting with [...]