Journalists and artists in Sri Lanka are being threatened, attacked, and killed. The most notable recent case is the abduction and murder of Dharmeratnam Sivaram, the renowned editor of the online news publication TamilNet. While his killers are still unknown, we do know that threats of violence like this inhibit the flow of accurate information and objective critique.
In this film, we take the story of Sivaram’s life and unsolved murder as the axis around which we explore these questions. With versions in English, Sinhala, and Tamil, we hope to air the piece on Sri Lankan television before offering it to outside audiences.
The film is a collaboration with one of Sri Lanka’s finest filmmakers (who wishes to remain anonymous until production is complete), and includes interviews with prominent Sri Lankan journalists, filmmakers and scholars—many of whom themselves have been threatened.
Sustainable Agriculture in Hambantota: the Struggle Between Local Farmers and Agro-chemical Companies
Sri Lanka has a long tradition of small-scale, organic farming. Many families cultivate rice, fruits, and vegetables as their full-time occupation while others supplement their incomes and diets through small home gardens. Farmers have evolved methods over hundreds of years to suit each of the many climates (from semi-arid to rainforest), across the island; however, when the Green Revolution swept the developing world, it did not spare Sri Lanka, and most remaining organic farmers began to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Despite opposition from international agro-chemical companies, a movement to reclaim and refine the organic methods that have nearly been lost is growing—and research shows that it makes sense.
This film looks at the farmland surrounding Hambantota, a town on Sri Lanka’s southern coast, where an alliance of local organizations have created several education programs that teach farmers alternatives to chemical agriculture and monoculture.
An acre of land planted according to these methods looks a lot like jungle: instead of neat rows and vast, single-crop fields, it is a jumble of different fruit and spice trees with mixed ground-crops below. The heterogeneous plan conserves water and yields a year-round harvest that stretches through the monsoon and dry seasons.
Without buying expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides—and with yield per unit of cultivated land also increasing—farmers see a much higher profit from their work.
We are collaborating with MONLAR (Movement for National Land and Agriculture Reform), who will use the film as they advocate for spreading these cultivation methods.
Sri Lanka and the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS)
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) was one of the 19 trade agreements signed by the signatory nations at the Uruguay Round where the WTO was founded in 1995. It is a framework for negotiating trade in services such as banking, energy, healthcare, and education. The scope of what can fall into the service sector is extremely large; according to the WTO, there are so many potential services that it is impossible to categorize the sector comprehensively. Instead, it defines and regulates service-sector trade on a case-by-case basis.
The results of service-sector liberalization have been mixed, and many worry that without proper research and careful planning, premature opening of any service sector can have harmful consequences for both consumers and producers.
The Reclaim Initiative has just begun research on the potential consequences of trade liberalization in Sri Lanka’s energy sector.
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