Conférence annuelle de la Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI)- Association irlandaise d’études politiques, Université de Cork, Irlande, du 20-22 octobre 2006

La PSAI constitue en Irlande, l’organisme principal qui réunit les chercheurs universitaires, professionnels et d’autres spécialistes en science politique de l’île (Irlande du Nord incluse). Parmi de nombreux événements organisés par cette association très dynamique, la conférence annuelle est au premier plan. Pour l’an 2006, elle sera accueillie par la célèbre University College, Cork-UCC, université irlandaise très appréciée pour ses résultats de haut niveau dans tous les domaines académiques. Je suis invité à présenter une communication sur les questions de nationalisme et la construction étatique dans le monde post-coloniale, sous une approche comparative. Le titre provisoire de ma communication est : Influential Experiments : Nationalism and State-Building in the Post-Colonial Space : Eire/Ireland and Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Je metterrai cette annonce à jour dès que j’ai plus d’informations sur le déroulement de ce colloque aussi prestigieux qu’international.

Conférence de la Conflict Research Society, Birmingham, Royaume Uni, le 6 septembre 2006

La Société pour la recherche sur les conflits (Conflict Research Society-CRS) est l'organisme le plus important au RU dédié entièrement à l'étude des conflits armés et les enjeux de sécurité. Chaque année, la CRS organise une conférence internationale, dans un centre universitaire au RU. Cette année, la conférence s’est tenue à Aston University, Birmingham. On m’a accordé l’occasion d’intervenir lors de cette conférence et ma présentation était intitulée : Revisiting History : Contemplating a New Approach to Resolving the Sri Lankan Conflict. C’était la dernière intervention de la journée, et elle était très appréciée par l’audience composée de spécialistes de renommée pour la plupart et de 3 doctorants. Encouragé pleinement par la présidence de la CRS, ce texte est en cours de révision pour être considérée pour une éventuelle publication dans une revue académique britannique.

Je tiens à remercier la CRS pour leur soutien financier, qui m’a énormément facilité ce voyage de recherche.

Chaminda WEERAWARDHANA
Tours, le 20 septembre 2006

Here’s a little excerpt from a piece of writing I’m working on at the moment. I have been writing quite a lot lately, but it's very difficult to fnd the time to sit and revise, & work on more writing. The following excerpt is a letter written by the main character, a Sri Lankan student in France, to an academic who treated him in a way that the French would call spéciale… More about the story soon.

Open Letter to Ms .............,
Dear Ms ............,

I write this letter to you directly, simply because I am not the kind of person who speaks behind peoples’ backs.
I remain shocked and extremely appalled by the way you expressed yourself at the ......(censured)...this evening, and I do not refer to yourself as Mrs .......(censured).... hereafter, as I deem it a most intolerable insult upon your husband, for whom I harbour a very high sense of respect.

You certainly succeeded in overtly expressing your sheer unwillingness to see me actively involved in the work of the organisation, and I am glad about this, as I was under the false impression that you were as diplomatic, generous and open-minded a person as your husband.

I can hardly think of any harm I have committed upon you, to receive such a dramatically disgusting reaction. I would never have expressed any desire to work for the organisation if I did not have “enough time”, and I wander since when my “time” became your problem. At the same time, I may very humbly remind you that I am in no way an office assistant or valet of yours, to be asked to “go looking for” your favoured candidate for the post in front of an educated and distinguished gathering, which fully displayed a shocking absence of anything even remotely close to the slightest diplomacy, respect and neutral, equal treatment to younger members of the association. You may certainly have been involved in the birth of this organisation, but I wish to note that it will be detrimental to its future if you wish to run it the way YOU want, ignoring all democratic procedure.
Your proposition of someone’s name for the secretarial position was done in an extremely disgusting and disrespectful manner, expressing a great desire to take an exceptional upper hand in the association. It was far from proposing the name of another person for the job, but a “need” to see the person you proposed as secretary and me out. I got the message very clearly, and you can certainly be pleased about your communication skills!

I may make it a point to note that office bearers of this organization are apparently appointed on a vote, and the thoroughly outspoken manner in which you supported one candidate is very, very distant from any “democratic” procedure.

I have strictly nothing to be doing in a group that excludes me, and I will certainly make it a point to avoid engaging in any activity with the your organisation hereafter, which should certainly be good news for you. I am a person who says what I have to say right on the face, (to anybody), but, as a grateful person, I make it a point to remember people, both good and bad, and more importantly ways they have treated me (good and bad), and be very 'grateful' in both cases in the best possible manner.

Kevin Shivmalan

The following is the abstract of a paper to be presented at an international conference on the theme of 'water in/and the Indian world(s) to be held in Jonzac, France in early September 2006.

Precious Water to Reddened Water : The ‘Water image’ and Sinhala-Buddhist Nationalism in Ceylon/Sri Lanka

The ‘water-pagoda’ concept, or the water-image as a whole can then be read as at the root cause of Tamil Nationalism, leading to loads of manslaughter and bloody civil war, making reddened waters flow in all parts of the island. The extremist Sinhala Buddhist political parties in present-day Sri Lanka still continue to base their political discourse on this concept, which seems to appeal to a substantial quantity of the Sinhalese community. This can therefore be read as a direct obstacle that keeps the country and her people away from constructive drives to peace.

The university town of Tours, in the heart of France, is a very youthful place. Students from the central region and many foreigners come to Tours, especially to study at the well-known François Rabelais University and in the famous language schools in the town. More and more foreigners who wish to learn French and immerse themselves in French culture are attracted to Tours as the 'French' spoken in the central region is supposed to be devoid of any 'accent'; it is thus often said that they speak a kind of 'pure' French in Tours.

The university is well-known for its high-level research centres and academic strong points, such as African American Studies, modern history, urbanism, medicine and the biological sciences.

All these provide good reasons for many young people from both francophone and anglophone worlds to visit Tours and spend prolonged periods here as students, young researchers and full-time research fellows.

It should be highlighted that, contrary to what certain individuals tend to assume, the scope of international scholars in Tours is not limited to the so-called European Union (EU) or the European Economic Area (EEA). Certain personalities in the French government and, worse than that, educated members of the Tours University faculty (some of them at high positions in the administrative hierarchy of the University) tend to believe that the university of Tours, and universities in France and in Europe as a whole need to be 'European' and that they ought not give any 'stable'position to anybody who is 'non-European' (and NEVER if a potential candidate is 'non-white')....

The student body of the University of Tours extends not only to students from faraway lands of the French-speaking world, but to a substantial number of students from the Commonwealth of Nations. Among my batch-mates are students from the English West Indies, South Asian Commonwealth countries and Australasia. The Australasians are widely assumed to be 'white Europeans' or 'oxidentaux' as people in the (above-mentioned) discriminatory category have it.

This document is meant at unfolding a major act of xenophobia taking place at the Loire Valley International Airport, the only airport in Tours and the central region. Being the regional air-travel base, and having a low-cost flight to London, the heart of the Commonwealth of Nations, the airport in Tours is a passing terminal for many tourists of all colours and different nationalities. As the airport of such an 'international' university township, the personnel in such an institution ought to be accomodating and appreciators of 'the other'. But the policies that govern the airport in Tours can be called absolutely and deplorably 'racist', totally xenophobic and a living example of the 'xeno-racism' that has become a living reality in a country supposed to be one of the world's greatest model democracies.

The target of this racism are non-white, non-European travellers, hence the suitability of the term 'racism' to describe their acts. Whenever a non-white non-EU national goes to one of the three check-in desks, they have an irritating statement to make:

“On va vérifier votre passeport. Vous attendez par là”

They have a policy of taking the passport of all non-white non-EU (and non-North American) travellers, taking it into a small office room, virtually going through every single page of the passport, and brining it back after a while with a cynical smile on their faces. A certain senior official does this efficiently, while there is a 'particular young employee' who takes more than half-an-hour to 'check' a passport, for the mere reason that the bearer is non-white and non-European.

In a world where international relations have seen many developments, this practice needs to be highlighted as 'racist', and 'ultra-xenophobic'.

The authorities concerned, and many people who uphold the ideologies of racist political figures such as Mr Philippe de Villiers or Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter, may affirm that this kind of control is necessary in order to avoid illegal immigration, the passage of clandestines from one EU country to another, and, of course, for reasons of defence and security.

If they are really concerned about these issues, a human being with the slightest intellect should be able to understand that the kind of control described above is absolutely futile in reaching their goals. In today's world, no terrorist would have the foolish idea of travelling in Europe with a non-EU passport. Many of the non-EU travellers who head to London from Tours are Commonwealth nationals, who certainly have the right entry permits and certain 'rights' within the UK territory, and for them, going to London is virtually equivalent to going to a land of their own. Such people , from English-speaking South Asia or the English West-Indies have absolutely no need to travel to the United Kingdom illegally; if they cannot travel to the UK as regular tourists, how can anybody else be able to set foot on UK territory...? The personnel at the Loire Valley International Airport, and most importantly the high-level officials there should be sent back to secondary school, or given a good few intensive lessons in history, international relations and diplomacy.

Besides, the immigration authorities in British airports are extremely well-organized, and their policies, though strict, have absolutely no stain of racism or xenophobic treatment of peoples depending on their skin-colour and ethnic origin. The French authorities at the Loire Valley airport ought to take their British counterparts as an example, and they ought to learn to cohabit in a world of diversity, ethnic and racial inclusion. Their racism and xenophobia are their problem and they should not bring all that into their workplace and put innocent, educated, respect-worthy people in unpleasant circumstances.

Furthermore, non-EU nationals are not the only victims of this xenophobia. Marion(we call her so to secure confidentiality) is a postgraduate student at the University of Tours. She is from the overseas territory of a French Overseas Territory in the Americas and...on her way back from London after a short tour a few months ago, she was held back for over 15 minutes!!! The only reason for this being the apparent 'transportation of drugs from that Département d'Outre-Mer to metropolitan France'- which was making news that week...She was just like the large number of other young people on their way back home after a short tour in Britain. Who can say that Marion would have undergone the same experience had she been 'white' and more 'European looking'? How else can such an attitude be described other than with the word 'racist'?

We expect all moderate-minded individuals to join hands with us in rising against this xenophobic and shameless malpractice and force the racist authorities and their equally racist and 'xenophobic' employees to change their ways of treating non-white, and non-EU nationals.

Name: Chaminda Kumara WEERAWARDHANA
D.O.B: 14. 07. 1982
Sex: M
Address: Apt 413 B 1, No 5, Allée Guy CHARFF, 37200, Tours, France.
Tel: + 33 6 86 83 77 06
E Mail : chami82@voila.fr
Civil Status: Single

Education: (Secondary and Third Level)

2005-2006: Interdisciplinary Masters Degree Course at the François RABELAIS University1, Tours, France. My degree course entails the in-depth study of politics, literature and history. The programme is entitled Mondes Anglophones2.

2004- 2005: Interdisciplinary and bilingual Licence degree3 (Hons) from the François RABELAIS University at Tours, France (specialization in Literature, history and politics).

2003 – 2004: Second year at the University of Tours and successful graduation, obtaining the French Diplôme d’études universitaires générales (DEUG)4.

2002- 2003: 1st undergraduate year at the University of Tours.

2001: International French Language Diploma (Diplôme de langue française) from the Alliance Française de Paris5.

2001: Advanced Level Examination.

1998: General Certificate of Secondary Education.

Writing/ International Conference Presentations/ Publications:

Currently, I am working on my M.Phil thesis, which incorporates complex areas such as economic crisis/deprivation, paramilitarism and the struggle for self-determination in the armed conflict in Sri Lanka. Relatively few scholars have worked on paramilitarism in South Asia, and I am in the process of compiling a bibliographical record on paramilitarism as a global phenomenon and more specifically on paramilitary activity in Northern Sri Lanka6.

I will be presenting a paper at an international conference to be held at the Durrell School of Corfu from the 4th -9th of June 2006. The conference is entitled 'Empire and Aftermath: Core and Periphery'. The tentative title of my paper is: Influential experiments? Nationalism and Nation-Building in the 'Postcolonial' Space: Eire and Ceylon-Sri Lanka.

I have been invited to present a paper at an international graduate conference entitled ‘Literature and the City’ hosted by the City University of New York (CUNY), on March 23rd 2006. The title of my paper is City of violence, City of Trauma: Portrayals of Colombo by Three (Post-Conflict) Sri Lankan Writers.

I presented a paper at an international conference on African Studies held at the University of Nottingham (UK) on 27th January 2006. My paper is entitled Images of Africanness: Border-crossing, Identity Crisis and Politics of Race in Travelling with Djinns by Jamal Mahjoub. The conference programme is available at: http://crossingplaces.blogspot.com/

I presented a paper entitled Writing Conflict : Representations of Conflict by Three Sri Lankan writers7 at an international conference entitled Perspectives on Conflict, organized by the University of Salford (UK) on September 8th 2005. I am working on further developing this research project (i.e. the use/function of literature/writing as a tool for constructive conflict transformation in divided societies) and publishing it in book form in the near future. The conference programme can be read at:
www.esri.salford.ac.uk/seminars/forthcoming/perspectives_programme.doc

Poetry published in the Sri Lankan weekly The Sunday Times, in the Final Draft, anthology of creative writing annually published by the Young Writers’ Association of Sri Lanka (YWA).

Work Experience
November 2005: Part-time assignment at the main library of the University of Tours.

Summer 2005: Intensive summer internship at FEPP, a computer training centre in Nazellzs-Negron, France. I was fully initiated to all the subtleties of MS Word, PowerPoint, Access, Excel and Publisher. I was also trained to handle administrative chores and marketing strategies. I worked with the director on a proposed trade partnership with several Chinese firms.

2004- 2005: Part-time assignment at the library of the Department of English Studies, University of Tours8. I was responsible for:

Handling the computerized data system of the library during the lunch hour (12.00 noon to 13. 30)
Assisting the senior librarian (Ingénieur d’études) in documentation research work (related to the acquisition of new books and journals, etc.)
Reception of students, academics and visitors to the library and guiding them in their research and academic needs.

Summer 2004: Internship at Auralog9, internationally recognized firm specializing in e-learning. I held the functions of on-line tutor and marketing assistant and was responsible for:

Conducting sessions of online tutoring (for British English)
Administrative chores in a newly-opened language school in Paris
Marketing strategy. Attending meetings of the Marketing Dept., field work, surveys on our targeted market and the general interest in E-learning among the public, writing reports, presenting my findings at a weekly meeting chaired by the CEO of the firm.
Reception of clients at the E-Learning shop of the said language school.
Launching a telemarketing publicity campaign for our products.
Data processing and assisting the director in many official assignments.

October 2003- March 2004 : I Conducted an English Language Course for adults at FEPP10, a vocational training institute in Amboise (Central France), financed by the Conseil Général du Centre (a major regional governing body in the French system of provincial administration).

Summer 2003: A summer job in a restaurant (namely in one of the Buffalo Grill chain restaurants) in Tours, France.

April 2002- September 2002: I completed a Teacher-training Course (“Stage intensif aux métiers de Professorat de Français langue étrangère- FLE”) at the Alliance Française, soon after which I was appointed French language assistant (professeur stagiaire) at the Alliance Française de Kandy. I conducted French language lessons at the Beginners and Intermediate levels, and for London O Level (GCSE) students.

January 2002- June 2002: Assistant Boarding House Master at Trinity College, Kandy.11 I was responsible for:

24 hour supervision of the boarders, coordination of relations with pupils’ parents, supervision of discipline, academic work and extra-curricular activities.

October 2001- June 2002: Supply teacher at Trinity College, Kandy. I was in charge of:

Conducting a course entitled Initiation to Literature in English for grade 9 pupils.
A newly started pilot project for French language teaching.
Languages:

Bilingual (English12/Sinhala13), French (fluent), Tamil14 (fair), German (poor), Hindi (poor), Irish(currently taking lessons).

IT Skills:

Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and in the use of Internet Explorer. Many experiences in handling entirely computerized data systems effectively (e.g., this is the case with my present job in the university library. In summer 2004, (as an intern), I was forced to spend many work hours handling complex computer programmes as an online tutor and an administrative assistant of a complicated information structure.

Academic/Research Interests:

I am interested in subject areas related to the social sciences and humanities, very specially conflict resolution and peace studies. I frequently use the web resources of the Department of Peace Studies of the University of Bradford, the CAIN (Conflict Archive on the Internet) project of the University of Ulster at Coleraine, the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the Berghoff Foundation for Constructive Conflict Management- Berlin, the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), London and many other NGOs and research organizations working on related issues.

Keen interest in issues related to immigration, exile, refugees and asylum seekers and race. I worked on a project on the Asylum seekers in Britain during the first semester of the academic year 2004-2005. I am a subscriber of the online newsletters of the Refugee Council (based in London) and of the weekly digest of articles of the Institute for Race Relations, London.

Voluntary work:

In conjunction with the Institute for Social Development, Kandy, Sri Lanka, a local NGO which focuses its work on the welfare of the Tamil plantation workers in central Sri Lanka. As a high School pupil, I took part in many awareness campaigns, workshops, and sessions of field work organized by this NGO.

Other:

Travelling, crossing national and territorial borders discovering new places and lifestyles. Making new friends, swimming, hiking, reading and creative writing (poetry, short stories and a planned novel –The saga of a Sri Lankan family from Jaffna which immigrates to France…) both in English and French; (& very specially theatre (I take part in one of the theatre workshops of the Department of English at Tours, in which we worked on contemporary British political theatre during the academic year 2004-2005).

References:

Available on Request.

Working Bibliography

N.B.: Please note that this bibliography was prepared at an early stage of planning my research proposal, when I was considering the idea of working on a comparative analysis on paramilitarism in armed conflict, in the cases of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Northern Ireland.