Tag: racism

My Country, May She Ever be Right…

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…But right or wrong, my country.* Ethnic minorities have been visibly present in the widespread protests calling for Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government to resign; none more so than the country’s Muslim community, typically distinguished by their conspicuous garb. Long an undeserved target of the chauvinistic politics that has plagued the country since independence in 1948, the Muslims have been especially marked for persecution in the decade following the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009. Announcing his run for the presidency days after the Easter Sunday bombings of 2019, Gotabhaya Rajapakse blamed the Muslims for the act of terrorism, accusing them of killing hundreds, and vowing to stamp out Islamic extremism and restore national security. Borne aloft on a wave of fear and nationalism, he won a landslide victory seven months later, but today stands charged with having engineered the bombings himself as a ploy to gain power. The country’s majority Sinhalese Buddhists, similarly making up the bulk of the protestors accusing the government of corruption and ineptitude, have welcomed minority participation; presenting, for now at least, a united voice for change. Colombo, April 2022.

• 50mm • f/4.5 • 1/1250 • ISO400 •

*An oft-used misquote of American Commodore Stephen Decatur’s ““Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” after victory over the Barbary pirates in 1816.

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Many Languages, One Voice

David BlackerLeave a comment
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Ethnic minorities have been visibly present in the widespread protests calling for Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government to resign; none more so than the country’s Muslim community, typically distinguished by their conspicuous garb. Long an undeserved target of the chauvinistic politics that has plagued the country since independence in 1948, the Muslims have been especially marked for persecution in the decade following the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009. Announcing his run for the presidency days after the Easter Sunday bombings of 2019, Gotabhaya Rajapakse blamed the Muslims for the act of terrorism, accusing them of killing hundreds, and vowing to stamp out Islamic extremism and restore national security. Borne aloft on a wave of fear and racism, he won a landslide victory seven months later, but today stands charged with having engineered the bombings himself as a ploy to gain power. The country’s majority Sinhalese Buddhists, similarly making up the bulk of the protestors accusing the government of corruption and ineptitude, have welcomed minority participation; presenting, for now at least, a united voice for change. Colombo, April 2022.

Special Feature — Retracing My Black July

David Blacker3 Comments

A version of this post first ran in July 2008, on my blog, The Blacklight Arrow, under the title, ‘Black Thoughts’, and was later reproduced on Groundviews as ‘My Name is Cedric, do You Remember Me?’; part of a Black July anthology. With my intention to move some of my online writing to this site, I thought I would retrace my journey on that first day of the July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom, from my school in Borella to my grand uncle’s home on Temple Road, Maradana, and on to my own home on St John’s Way, in Mutwal. So I walked and taxied across Colombo today, trying to find some of the places I had described thirteen years ago, and compare them to the images in my head from thirty-eight years ago. I took a few photos too.

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Wesley College, Colombo, where generations of Blackers have graduated by the skin of their teeth, and yours truly, in June 1982, a year before Black July.

July usually passes me by without too much notice, beyond the vague worry that there might be a Tiger attack on Colombo, and a few flashbacks to that weekend in 1983. But this time it’s been a bit different. I’ve found myself reliving that day a lot more this year. It isn’t the fact that this is the 25th anniversary of the carnage which most people see as the starting point of our war, though that has been the focus of a lot of attention. What did it was a phone call a couple of weeks ago.

Continue reading “Special Feature — Retracing My Black July” →

Guns and Lucia

David BlackerLeave a comment
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A Highlander of the Sri Lanka Army’s Gemunu Watch stands guard outside St Lucia’s Cathedral, Kotahena, yesterday, on the eve of the second anniversary of the 21st April 2019 Easter Bombings. Three churches and three 5-star hotels were hit by suspected Islamic suicide bombers of the previously unknown ISIS-affiliated National Thowheed Jamaat (NTJ). Two of the three churches targeted were Roman Catholic, and St Lucia’s, consecrated in 1902, is the largest and oldest Roman Catholic parish cathedral in the country, standing a short distance from one of the bombed churches, St Anthony’s, Kochchikade.

5DMkIV & EF 16-35mm/2.8L courtesy Canon/Metropolitan.

Broken Trust

David BlackerLeave a comment
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The face of Mr Tuan Rishard, a Muslim resident of Kochchikade, displays the shock he feels at the carnage wreaked on his Christian neighbours, by what is widely believed to have been Islamic extremists of the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ), a militant group claiming ISIS affiliation. Five days before, on Easter Sunday morning, 21st April 2019, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside the crowded St Anthony’s Shrine, just around the corner from Mr Rishard’s home in Newham Square, killing over a hundred worshippers. Until the Easter Bombings, which simultaneously hit several churches and large hotels in and around Sri Lanka’s capital, the Muslim and Christian communities, both small minorities in a largely Buddhist population, had lived alongside each other peacefully. Both religious minorities have been regularly targeted by Buddhist extremist groups, with several violent anti-Muslim pogroms being initiated in the years leading up to the bombings. Shot on assignment for Polaris Images.

Integrate or Die

David Blacker1 Comment
Scraps of white cloth festoon the outer fence of the crematorium at Colombo's largest cemetery in Borella.
Scraps of white cloth festoon the outer fence of the crematorium at Colombo’s largest cemetery in Borella. White is the colour of mourning in Sri Lanka, and the pieces of cloth are both a protest and a symbol of solidarity; protest against the cremation, last week, of a 20-day old baby, suspected to have died with COVID-19, and solidarity with his Muslim parents who refused to agree to the cremation. Sri Lanka continues to cremate the bodies of COVID-19 victims as a precaution, despite there being no scientific evidence of its usefulness. Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority believes cremation is a desecration. Colombo, Christmas 2020.
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Six Month’s Ago: Black Flags over Kochchikade

David BlackerLeave a comment
Black Flags over Kochchikade, Colombo, Sri Lanka by Son of the Morning Light on 500px.com
8.45am, 21st April 2019; Easter Sunday. The moment when life stopped for over a hundred people gathered for the morning mass at St Anthony’s Shrine, Kochchikade, close to the port of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. A suicide bomber, claimed by the government to be from the previously unheard-of ISIS-affiliated Islamic group, National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) entered the crowded church and detonated the explosives he was carrying in a backpack. 
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Have You Forgotten, Prime Minister?

David BlackerLeave a comment
Pro-Democracy Rally, Colombo, Sri Lanka #16 by Son of the Morning Light on 500px.com
A Muslim resident of Colombo during the first pro-democracy rally at Liberty Circus, on 30th October 2018.
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Easter Sunday Shock

David BlackerLeave a comment
St Anthony's Shrine, Kochchikade, Sri Lanka #5 by Son of the Morning Light on 500px.com
Sri Lankan police and Navy guard the bomb-damaged St Anthony’s Shrine in Kochchikade, close to the Colombo Port. The church’s glass doors, open on Easter Sunday morning, remain intact, but the semicircular lunettes over them have been blown out by the shock of the suicide bombing that killed over a hundred worshippers. The attack — along with five others across Colombo and Sri Lanka — killed more than 250 people and wounded over 500, and has been attributed to the ISIS-affiliated Islamic extremist group, National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ), a small local outfit barely known before the Easter Sunday massacre. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 26th April 2019 (licensed to Polaris Images).

It Depends

David BlackerLeave a comment
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A Muslim woman walks past Buddhist flags at Independence Square in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital, Colombo. As Sri Lanka commemorates sixty-six years of independence from Great Britain, its minority Muslim and Christian communities have come under increased threat from right-wing Buddhist extremists, particularly in cosmopolitan urban centers such as Colombo.