Features

Village school reaches internet heaven and its irrigation tank gets new sluice gates

Published

2 years ago

2023/10/23

Thilina Walpola

Experiences with dedicated officials worth commenting on

by Lokubanda Tillakaratne

My village Maradankalla is located six kilometres south off Anuradhapura-Trincomalee Road (A12) above Mahakanadarawa wewa, near Mihintale, in the North Central Province. But I have lived in Los Angeles for the past 43 years. During all these years, this village is where my heart has been.

Although the history of Maradankalla spans centuries, it was not on the map of the country until 1947 when its elders built the one-room school hoping the government would hear about it and step into support. Soon after it was built, the small wattle and daub schoolhouse got space for the village on the maps that came out later. In the same year, the Anuradhapura Madya Maha Vidyalaya was started 10 kilometres south of the Sacred City, under the Central College concept of the C.W. W. Kannangara era. It remains the jewel and the axis mundi of the provincial education. But as time passed, villagers realized this well-thought of Kannangara idea helped create an educational tribal system. That’s a story for another day.

The two tales I write about say how this small village in the backwoods of Anuradhapura District got connected to telephone landlines and internet to its school, got two new sluice gates and a new spillway for its irrigation tank which irrigates 60 acres of paddy lands. This is an ode to all those involved in these projects discussed here.

For A/GB/Maradankalla school, the telephone line is the instant highway to communication and the internet heaven which most city folks take for granted. The two new sluice gates will replace leaky sluices built probably in the dinosaur age.

Disparate and Separate,Supposedly Equal

Sadly, though, over the last few decades, some schools, a few kilometres from Maradankalla, lost their map space and disappeared into the hereafter. One such school is A/GB/Ihalagama, above Mahakanadarawa wewa. It is deserted now. Its crumbling buildings occupy an eerie landscape overgrown with brush. Now only the families of elephants come there daily for night classes!

Nevertheless, thanks to the untiring dedication of the teaching staff and resilience of parents, Maradankalla school still survives, like similar schools threatened with lack of modern facilities and difficulties, to keep up with well-equipped schools elsewhere. This school is still a magnet to 180 students from a few villages around it. Like its sister schools in similarly remote areas, it has precious talent and hidden gems. Every year, it sends a couple of students to city schools on 5th grade scholarship examination results. One such student, a resident of Maradankalla itself, just graduated from the Peradeniya Medical School. Another is a Law College graduate. Few more attend universities still as I write this. So, any epithet that the village school students lack potential is a myth and an outright insult.

This shows what failure and shame rural education had been on the part of all of us. In my reckoning, this misfortune was due to lukewarm Interest from the education authorities to highlight and address the systemic decay in education equality in village schools, and failure to provide an environment with new pedagogical ideas and improvements to arrest the degeneration and make these schools attractive and competitive. Retooling them to fight the draw of urban sprawl and slow down students from migrating to the city schools never found a footing here. This put parents at greater disadvantage and pressure, appallingly first with pervasive national disgrace of payoffs to school officials to get the child’s place in the city school, and other related costs.

On the other hand, Madya Maya Vidyalaya, of the same age as Maradankalla school, has over 4000 students, and is crowded to suffocation. As expected, it sends many scores of students every year to universities for higher studies. It is in the class of education royalty with the designation of ‘National School’ which is generally rewarded with, among other perks, a computer room of substantial size with internet facilities. A NASA regional Control Room comes to my mind.

But no one should get lulled into thinking that students in the schools in run-down sections of the cities get the short end of educational opportunities and second-hand treatment, too, and use it as defence to rationalize inequities students in village schools receive. Less than exemplary treatment of schools in poorer sections of the city is an injustice beyond comparison, and unacceptable. But in the village, I might add, patronized by herds of wild elephants on a nightly basis and staffed by stellar teachers, the level of educational assistance the kids there get is so bad, it is an unspeakable travesty and tragedy. One should not tell me otherwise. I know. Because I once lived through it!

Until a few weeks ago, Maradankalla school had no phone landlines, therefore it was locked out of the Internet. But it has two working computers sitting in a converted classroom. Computer facilities elsewhere with every unit connected to the Internet and usually declared opened with pageantry by VIPs of the Machiavellian political nobility, in a room bristling with air-conditioning and so much care, to enter them one must remove shoes to prevent dust and detritus desecrating their holy environment.

Meanwhile, the principal of the village school sends his mandatory reports to the Kalaape (Zonal) office through his handphone, or while Gedara Yana Gaman through a copy. And faxing store in the town.For the principal in the city, it is so quotidian, it only takes him few keystrokes on his desktop computer: Disparate and separate but supposedly equal.

Homework or Looking for Landmines?

According to the Computer Literacy Survey for 2021 by the Department of Census and Statistics, North Central Province scored the lowest computer literacy rate in the country at 24.8% while the highest was reported, no surprise there, in the Western Province at 47.1%. Maradankalla feels the heat of this alarming disparity. It sits in the dead centre of the North Central Province.

When education policymakers send out fiat asking students to do homework using Internet on their handphones, they give little thought to these survey results. For convenience, these experts who devise education policies take them out of the equation. For them, the homework is for all students across the board, without caste or creed, in well-equipped schools and in schools with one or two working computers in a converted classroom.

Without land phone lines, a village school student has no access to the Internet, even if one is lucky enough to have a computer at home. These students use their parents’ flip phones, not the cool Samsung type others carry around with conceit. When the Education Lords ask these students to do homework and ZOOM classes by phone or at home at Maradankalla, it is akin to Marie Antoinette telling her subjects “Let them eat cake.”

During the COVID times, well, those few students who managed to have the out-of-production phones climbed the rocky outcrop by their village temple to do homework. They pointed the phones literally in all directions looking for good reception. The sad irony of this is that anyone who saw them would have mistaken them for looking for landmines using metal detectors! Meanwhile, our own Antoinettes and Antons of the policymaking fellowship carry beauties in the Rs. 200,000 range talking to their children attending foreign universities or working in embassies and consulates overseas. This is not hearsay or imagination. This is the reality.

After the Internet crept in as an educational tool, and not having it in Maradankalla school, for a long time I wanted to do something to mollify the burden dumped on its students and teachers by this ‘fair and modern educational atrocity.’ I spoke to the principal and decided to write to government officials and the private phone companies to see if they could help us to build the road to the Internet here. Sadly, after introducing Internet-based pedagogical practices, the education authorities seem to have not made any coordinated efforts to get village schools like Maradankalla connected to the wired telephone world.

In response to our appeals, the DIALOG phone company showed its heart and worth and stepped in. A couple of years ago, they built a giant tower about 400 metres from the school, hoping reception signals would improve. But the school was still out of luck as for some unknown reason, the signals were not strong enough to have a reliable and viable Internet connection to the school.

A Pensioner’s Crusade

Then, in 2018, I and my brother T. A. M. B. Thilakarathna, a retired special education teacher, took it upon us and wrote to SLT-MOBITEL in Anuradhapura for help to get a landline rolled out to the village. We knew it was a gargantuan task, probably a request that would easily end up in the waste-paper basket. That year when I came home on vacation, I also went to the Telecom office and repeated our request.

We knew the thought of rolling out six kilometres of coir rope was irrational and testing enough, thinking of a fibre-optic phone line even half that length connecting us to satellites many stratospheres above was beyond insane. But my brother, amiable, persistent and with an infectious smile at every turn, began to visit government offices in Anuradhapura looking for a solution to this problem. His milk-white fluffy beard resembling that of a Himalayan Rishi and matching moustache of a Ravana mirrored his determination for success. The unkept white band of hair in the back of his bald head danced like tail feathers of a messenger pigeon in flight.

Sure enough, as weeks and months passed behind him, the message he carried resonated enough, this unassuming retiree’s frequent visits to the telecom offices must have made its administrators’ hearts soften. They listened and decided to do something about his plight. Soon, the machinery of the bureaucracy came to life, loosened their joints and Maradankalla got the ticket to its wish – a phone landline to join the Internet.

(I must note with appreciation that our efforts on this project were boosted by the encouragement, advice and inordinate support we received from Themiya Hurulle, a patron with deep ancestral roots and affinity to the region.)

For a span of three weeks last month, the SLT-MOBITEL technicians and engineers worked on the construction of the phone lines. Showing his own hospitality and dedication, my brother spent a good portion of his monthly retirement deposit to buy food packets daily for about half a dozen workers.

Finally, the parents, their children and teachers got their desideratum granted. The school is now in the Internet brotherhood. I am paying its monthly Internet bills and my wife Niranjala, and daughter Mihiri have teamed up to design some ZOOM activities with the students. These gestures are not as grandiose as a parent buying a bus for a school, a new cricket pitch in the playground, all embarrassing and shameful but commonplace now in most schools in populous areas. But at least on paper, this school seems like it is on a level playing field on the Internet. A round-the-clock air-conditioned room with new computers will complete the curve. That is another educational infrastructure matter the school must work on.

Finally, my brother successfully persuaded 20 households out of 53 in the village to have landphone connections! He even paid half of some villagers’ application fees. That is evidence of how much interest these villagers have given a chance to better their lives.

Last month, when I came home with my family to Maradankalla on vacation, I found myself having to deal with another pressing problem in the village. This time it was another arm of the government bureaucracy.

Every time I come home on vacation, early in the next morning usually, almost as a ritual, we take a stroll on the tank bund in front of our home to listen to the songs of water birds, feel the warmth of the cold air blowing across the tank bed and watch the breathtaking sight of the morning sun radiating off dewy rice paddies spotted with peacocks pacing with glitter and swank.

However, on this day what we saw on the bund dampened our spirits. The two sluice gates, (horowwa) were mournfully open to the dry tank bed where sandbags covered their openings. They were cracked, and chunks of concrete were falling apart. Then at the end of Medieval-like Sluice gate. Note the cracks and sandbag used to open and close it.

The bund, the spillway had fallen apart due to shoddy construction and being part of an elephant crossing. I took 27 photos and decided to go and meet someone at the Provincial Irrigation Office about this potential calamity looming ahead in the coming Maha season.

Medieval-Age Sluice Gates Replaced

It is not an embellishment to say that villagers treat water in their irrigation tank as thicker than blood. How could one not agree?

Paddy cultivation is the only source of living for nearly all of these villagers.

So, I spoke to the village Govi Sanvidhana members, wrote a letter about this issue and with them went to Anuradhapura to meet the Provincial Irrigation Director Jayantha Herath and his area Engineering staff. I had little hope that day of turning the wheels of bureaucracy.

But the magnanimous response of the Director and his office was instant and remarkable. It proved their worth and being. The Provincial Irrigation leadership worked hard to get the sluice gates and spillway repaired. It went further and determined that the Provincial RDA with its expertise, ready machinery and labour would expeditiously finish the project before the Maha rains. They are working on the sluices and the spillway as I write this.

Other Attempts in the Past

In order to draw the attention of the government to the needs of the community, this is not the first time I have written to government officials.

In the early 1990s, President Premadasa decided to have an Udagama to be held in Mihintale. Immediately, word got out that villages in the vicinity of Mihintale were going to be linked to the electrical grid of the country as part of the celebrations. This news electrified the villagers in Maradankalla. Immediately, I wrote a letter to the then President and posted it hoping we might hit the jackpot. ‘What is there to lose,’ I thought at the time.

By writing the letter, I wanted to feel good about doing something, but never expected it would get anywhere. That is how these things usually work in big offices – if the letter didn’t get lost in transmission, there is a better chance it will get lost in translation. But the Good President made sure my letter ended up on the desk of the Electrical Engineering folks in Anuradhapura. Surprisingly, within weeks they came to Maradankalla looking for me. My brother met them, and the Engineer gave an update about the project that was going to follow. I won’t deny it, I was surprised and equally exhilarated to hear of this development.

Consequently, the villagers in and around Maradankalla got their illuminating moment. To optimize dwindling funding resources, we banded together to help out and cut trees along the route to clear space for the power lines. Although Maradankalla is eight kilometres from Udagama, now the home to the bustling Raja Rata University, it now has electricity. Life there with oil lamps and kerosene carts is long gone history. Unfortunately, President Premadasa’s untimely death prevented him from enjoying the Udagama and consequential fruits it brought to the area.

Allegory of the Stories

The allegory of these pleasant stories is if someone writes to the bureaucracy asking for help, not for personal but about an issue in your community, hold on to some hope. A godly person, and a mighty unusual one you didn’t know that existed sitting somewhere behind a desk in an office would read it. I am not naïve here to give a pass to all bureaucrats. But this official you write to is different – utterly decent, courteous and if you go to meet that person, he or she will shake your hand or close the palms together and say “Ayubowan,” offer you a seat and listen to your problem eagerly and earnestly as if it is that person’s own. He or she is sure to treat you like an equal and a friend, and in the middle of the conversation even offer you a cup of tea. That person is honourable and good, lives up to his or her responsibility and is kind enough to take up the issue and do something in their power.

Then villagers may not have to worry about Maha season water, thanks, in this case, to the Provincial Irrigation folks and Provincial RDA and its technicians and Engineer, or the folks who brought the Internet to their village school.

With the new sluice gates and the spillway, thankful Maradankalla villagers will be eager to start the Maha season work and look forward to the Yala season with water saved with air-tight sluice gates. With the Internet, village school students will have more ways to learn about homework assignments. Villagers will have the opportunity to listen to ubiquitous religious talks on YouTube and keep up with the Teledrama parade. These stories perhaps will no doubt become yesterday’s newspaper to many. But in my village, these are tales of life-changing moments, which they will talk about for many years to come. Each time the story is told, they will solemnly reminisce about the experience and thank those who made it happen.

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Thilina Walpola

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Features

Easter truth can be the beginning

Published

7 hours ago

2025/07/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

Bimal Rathnayake

There has long been speculation that the Easter bombing of April 2019 had a relationship to Sri Lankan politics. The near simultaneous bombings of three Christian churches and three luxury hotels, with a death toll of 270 and over 500 injured, by Muslim suicide bombers made no sense in Sri Lanka where there has been no history of conflict between the two religions. But a political motivation was suspected on the basis of who would be the beneficiary of an otherwise senseless crime. The bombing immediately discredited the government in power at that time, saw the nomination of the opposition presidential candidate soon after, and paved the way for the crushing defeat of the government at the national elections that followed in a few months.

In Parliament last week, Leader of the House Bimal Ratnayake revealed a political strategy to create the conditions for the change of government that took place. His remarks corresponded to suspicions that the attack was not just a failure of intelligence, but the result of deliberate manipulation by those in the political sphere. What is new is that these suspicions are now being stated clearly and officially at the highest level of government. Minister Ratnayake said, “They started this in 2013 by creating and maintaining Sinhala and Muslim extremist groups through intelligence agencies. The culmination of this was similar to the Cambridge Analytica incident.”

The Cambridge Analytica scandal involved the unauthorised harvesting of personal data from millions of Facebook users to build psychological profiles and micro-target voters for political purposes. The data harvested by Cambridge Analytica was used primarily to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favour of Donald Trump and the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK. The company also allegedly worked on elections in Kenya, Nigeria, India, Trinidad and Tobago, and several other countries, using psychographic profiling and targeted digital ads to manipulate voter behaviour.

Cardinal’s Consistency

If the allegations about the Easter attacks prove true, they would constitute one of the most unprincipled examples of violence being used for political purposes in Sri Lanka’s post-war period. To use fear, death, and destruction to pave the way for a political return is totally unacceptable and without conscience. What makes the current moment different from earlier efforts to deal with such unacceptable actions is that there now appears to be political will. There is a sense that the present government is committed to follow through with investigations, even if the implications reach to the highest levels of power.

It is significant that the government has taken the controversial step of reappointing retired officers Shani Abeysekera and Ravi Seneviratne, both of whom were known to be top class police investigators who were removed from the investigation process by previous governments, to once again lead the investigations. They are both controversial in that they briefly joined the government side’s political stage during the last presidential election campaign. Minister Ratnayake justified their reappointment on the grounds that Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith made the request. It is in this context that the current government’s willingness to act gains it credibility with the Catholic community, which bore the brunt of the attacks.

The role of the Catholic Church and Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith in consistently pushing for accountability in the Easter Sunday case is commendable. From the outset, the Cardinal was a vocal advocate for justice for the victims of the bombing. His calls for transparency, a credible investigation, and the identification of those truly responsible have been persistent and unwavering. Over the years, previous government leaders made promises to find the culprits and masterminds in response to this pressure which the Cardinal publicly welcomed. But those assurances, like many others before them, did not materialise in the form of tangible outcomes.

Ending Impunity

Progress in the investigation of the Easter bombings comes at a time when the government has already made forward movement in pursuing economic accountability. High-profile arrests and legal actions against formerly powerful politicians for corruption are being carried out in a way never witnessed before. For many decades, impunity has been the practice in government at the highest levels. Economic crimes and political violence in which the protagonists were suspected to be of government-origin were pursued only half-heartedly in the past. Charges were often framed, suspects were taken into custody, but invariably the process broke down mid-way and the suspects were released. This time around those who have been charged have had their cases taken to court where they have been given exemplary sentences.

In the case of the Easter bombing, the testimony of survivors and the documentation of intelligence failures are now being brought back into the spotlight. Investigations into key actors, including the alleged role of former paramilitaries turned politicians like Pillayan show that this is no longer a nominal exercise. The challenge for the government is to ensure that this momentum does not wane. The legal and institutional frameworks need to be allowed to function without interference. No matter how politically sensitive, the Sri Lankan people need answers, and more importantly, justice.

Sri Lanka has suffered for decades from a culture of impunity that has bred cynicism and mistrust. The present government has taken early steps to reverse that trend. It is too early to say whether this will lead to full justice. There are indications that the government is sequencing its priorities: first, economic crimes and now political crimes like the Easter attacks; later, possibly, war crimes. The wounds of the war years are deep and divisive. Pursuing accountability for wartime abuses may demand more political capital than the government currently possesses or wishes to expend, and it is likely that such steps will be undertaken more cautiously—and later.

In the case of the Chemmani mass graves the government seems to be allowing the judicial investigations to proceed independently, unlike in the case of the Mannar and Matale mass graves by previous governments. Permitting the Chemmani probe to proceed signals that the era of blanket impunity might finally be drawing to a close and the integrity of Sri Lanka’s democratic institutions is being secured. If a crime like the Easter bombing, which has defied a satisfactory conclusion for over six years is successfully investigated and prosecuted, it may open the space for deeper scrutiny of the past, including the war years. It is up to the independent institutions, judiciary and civil society to push this process forward.

by Jehan Perera

Features

Reflections on Cuba, BRICS and geopolitics

Published

7 hours ago

2025/07/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

Cubans marching in Havana against the blockade and the State Sponsors of Terrorism designation in December 2024. (Handout picture)

I returned to the US, from Cuba, just a few hours before Donald Trump signed a memorandum on 30 June, 2025, tightening the long-standing US economic blockade against Cuba. The memorandum includes a statutory ban on US tourism to the neighbouring island.

Despite a long fascination for the island nation, I did not volunteer for the Venceremos Brigade to Cuba during my college years. Finally, my wish to see the legendary island of anti-imperialist revolution—the so-called ‘last bastion of socialism in the western hemisphere’—came true.

I enjoyed Cuba’s resplendent land and waters, the vibrancy of its music and dance, and the warm hospitality of its racially integrated people. I visited the impressive places and monuments of its colonial and modern history, receiving a wealth of interesting and intriguing information from my wonderful Cuban guides and other sources.

The history of Cuba is one of struggle and transformation. The original Taino people were extinct due to the Spanish conquest. The Revolution of 1898 brought liberation under scholar-poet Jose Marti, only to be followed by US neocolonial rule from 1902 to 1959. During the latter part of this period, the Batista dictatorship and his American business and Mafia connections dominated the island.

The armed struggle, culminating in the 1959 Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara and others, transformed the nation. The Cuban Communist Party, under Fidel Castro’s rule (1959-2008), implemented widespread confiscation and wealth redistribution. Throughout this period and up to date, the US has maintained occupation of Guantanamo Bay (the first US overseas military base) under a 1903 perpetual lease agreement, following the Spanish-American War.

Cuba’s Present Crisis

Unfortunately, what I encountered in my homestays and travel around the island was far from the thriving socialist society I had hoped to see. The once magnificent buildings in Havana and other cities are dilapidated and the streets strewn with litter. Lacking reliable public transportation, people stand on streets around the island patiently waiting to catch rides from any vehicle that will stop—among them, the still widely used pre-Revolution American cars and horse-drawn carriages.

The island is currently facing its worst economic crisis, since the 1959 revolution. Long and daily power cuts, scarce internet connection, food and medicine shortages, and high prices, are the realities of present-day Cuba. Some staple items like beans are nowhere to be found; rice production has declined and much is now imported. Sugar, too, has become an import in Cuba, which, until recently, was the leading sugar exporter in the world.

People cannot make ends meet with their meager incomes—a doctor’s monthly salary is approximately US$50. Even by conservative World Bank estimates, 72% of all Cubans live below the poverty line. Beggars seem to be everywhere, with the African community descendant from slavery being the most economically victimised.

Young professionals, products of the island’s renowned free education and healthcare systems, are emigrating to the US, Europe, and elsewhere, leaving mostly the elderly behind. Cuba reportedly lost some 13% of its 11 million population between 2020 and 2024, due largely to emigration. Financial remittances from emigrants are essential for their families’ survival at home.

In private, people complain bitterly about government mismanagement and corruption, expressing concern about the island’s future and people’s survival. Given state authoritarianism and repression, there is no independent media, visible organised resistance, or public demonstrations.

The Cuban government blames US sanctions and blockade, operative since the early 1960s, for the island’s economic strangulation. In contrast, the US and its Cuban-American supporters blame socialism for Cuba’s failures.

Notwithstanding claims to be a leader of the international Non-Aligned Movement, Cuba withstood the 1961 CIA-backed Cuban-American Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis by aligning itself with the Soviet Union, eventually becoming its client state. The dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1992 and the recent Covid crisis have dealt severe blows to the Cuban economy and society. The decline in tourism, one of the most important sectors of the Cuban economy, will be further impacted by Donald Trump’s recent statutory ban on US tourism.

Is the opening of Cuba to neo-liberal capitalism—including global finance capital, the IMF, international intervention by the US (and its Cuban-American supporters awaiting return of land and business confiscated by the Cuban Revolution)—the solution to Cuba’s current economic crisis?

The Path Forward

Government mismanagement, corruption, repression and authoritarianism, economic collapse, agricultural decline, lack of employment, shortages of fuel and food, rising prices, powerlessness, despair and labour emigration characterise much of the world following neoliberal policies today. These countries also face the threats of international intervention, regime change, sanctions and blockades if they attempt to strike out on independent paths of economic and political development outside western-dominated neoliberalism.

Is BRICS the alternative to both authoritarian socialism and neoliberal capitalism, the path to resolving the crisis in Cuba and much of the world?

The Global South-led BRICS constitutes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as 10 partner countries, including Cuba, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Today, the BRICS countries together are estimated to account for 56% of world population, 44% of global GDP.

The BRICS alliance provides a much-needed platform to explore alternative mechanisms, like the New Development Bank and bilateral trade agreements, to reduce reliance on Western financial institutions, such as the IMF and currencies, specifically the US dollar. While BRICS rejects certain aspects of Western dominated geopolitics and hierarchical North-South relations, it upholds neoliberal economic principles: competition, free trade, open markets, export-led growth and globalisation, unfettered technological expansion.

BRICS aims to advance its members within the existing global capitalist order, rather than create a fundamental alternative to the capitalist paradigm which prioritizes profit-led growth before environmental sustainability and human well-being. As such, corporate hegemony, concentration of wealth by a global elite spanning the North and the South, as well technological and military domination, are not challenged. Neither does BRICS challenge political authoritarianism within its member countries or the possibility of the emergence of forms of authoritarian capitalism. Composed of countries unequal in size, economic and military power, BRICS may also easily reproduce unequal exchange and new forms of colonialism in south-south relations.

False Alternative

Although barely noticeable to a visitor, China is quietly replacing the former Soviet Union as Cuba’s benefactor, expanding its economic activities on the island. Since 2018, Cuba has joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the massive infrastructural project connecting some 150 countries around the world. While the US is tightening its trade blockade, China has become Cuba’s largest trading partner and the primary provider of technology for infrastructure, telecommunications, renewable energy sources, the tourism industry, and other important areas of Cuba’s development.

Some critics of US imperialism tend to see China as a benevolent alternative to US and western domination. There are claims that certain media outlets, promoting such perspectives, may be linked to a funding source, associated with China. Even if it is true, the political and military intentions of Chinese economic expansion can only be known in the future.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China has increased its nuclear arsenal by 20% from an estimated 500 to over 600 warheads in 2025. According to US government sources, China has also established satellite intelligence infrastructure or ‘spy bases’ in Cuba that can target the United States commercial and military operations. Cuba, located only some 90 miles from the Florida coastline, could well be drawn into the geopolitical confrontation between the United States and China as it was during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the Cuban Missile Crisis being a case in point.

Even though the world is moving towards an inexorable market and technologically controlled reality, the rationality of this trajectory must be questioned. The need for balanced ecological and social frameworks upholding bioregionalism, local control of resources, food self-sufficiency need to be considered. Freedom of expression, right to dissent, and collective organising undermined by both neoliberal capitalism and socialist authoritarianism must be upheld. This requires the awakening of consciousness to create a human society founded on wisdom and generosity over competition and exploitation.

The words of the great nineteenth century Cuban patriot, Jose Marti (1853-1895) are still applicable to the transformation needed in both Cuba and the world:

“Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.”(Courtesy IDN in-depth News)

(Dr. Bandarage has served on the faculties of Brandeis, Mount Holyoke and Georgetown and is the author of books, including Colonialism in Sri Lanka; The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka, Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy, Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World and numerous other publications on global political economy and related subjects. www.bandarage.com)

Features

Multi-faceted Sri Lankan celebrity … checking out land of birth

Published

7 hours ago

2025/07/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

With Mirage in Dubai as a guest artiste

I was sent a video of Noeline Honter doing the song ‘Beauty and the Beast’, with Maxi Rosairo, live on stage.

The clip, I was told, was from The Island Music Awards, held in the late ‘90s … probably 1994.

Believe me, their performance was simply awesome … the vocals, the voices, the passion, the expression, the enthusiasm. Yes, that is what singing is all about. And no lyric-stands, planted in front, for guidance.

Well, the good news I have for you is that Noeline Honter will be in our midst next month (August) and she will be seen in action at three events, in Colombo.

Noeline will be featured at Gatz, Cinnamon Life, on Sunday, 24th August, and again on 20th of September.

Her first date at Gatz will be with the group Terry & The Big Spenders, while her 20th September performance will be with Mirage.

Noeline will also be performing at the BMICH, on the 30th of August, at a concert, ‘Vibes of Yesterday.’

The show, which is in aid of the Apeksha Hospital, Maharagama, will also feature several other artistes. The band in attendance will be the ‘Expressions.’

Noeline indicated to us that she is very much looking forward to her date with Mirage.

Noeline’s first band … her very own Galaxy

“It will be really exciting as I’ve performed with this wonderful outfit several times, as a guest artiste, touring the Middle East and other parts of the world, and also joining them on stage at their regular gigs in Dubai.”

In Sri Lanka, Noeline was not only known for her singing, she was also immensely popular as a TV presenter … winning several awards in both categories – singing and TV presenter.

In addition, she had her own Academy of Training, and she continues with her English training, Down Under, conducting several training programmes online to students, in many countries.

Noeline’s contribution to the field of television news, in Australia, commenced in 2008, in the role of Executive Producer and Presenter of ‘Sri Lanka News weekly,’ a news programme telecast on Channel 31, in Melbourne.

This multi-faceted Sri Lankan celebrity now presents interview programmes on Channel 31, where she features a gamut of mainly Sri Lankan musicians, resident in Sri Lanka and around the world. This is a chat show with musical clips by the featured artistes.

Noeline had her own band in the scene here … Galaxy, comprising Mohan Sabaratnam (drums), Kamal Perera (guitar), Joe Thambimuttu (bass/keyboards/vocals), Kumar Pieris (keyboards), and Ricky Senn (sax/trumpet /brass).

Noeline Honter: Three events in Colombo

Her trip to Sri Lanka, in August, she says, is mainly to be with her family, and to visit some of her favourite places, like Yala, Trincomalee, etc

“When I come over in August, it will be nearly three and a half years since I left the beloved land of my birth.”

Noeline is now based in Australia and says she is absolutely delighted to have the opportunity of sharing time with her son, Ryan, in Adelaide, and her daughter, Jaimee, in Melbourne.

Yes, a name that will never ever be forgotten, especially in the local Western music scene – Noeline Honter.

Go check her out at Gatz, Cinnamon Life, on 24th August and 20th September, 2025.