ICSS 2018

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Going beyond ‘Reconciliation’: A Buddhist Approach to ‘Healing Wounded Minds
(4th International Conference on Social Sciences 2018, Research Centre for Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Ven.Dhammananda, G.
‘Reconciliation’ is a new term that came in to the vocabularies of Sri Lankan local languages with different translations and adaptations after 2009 when the armed conflict between government forces and the LTTE came to its end with the defeat of the LTTE. However, not only the term ‘Reconciliation’ is new but the meaning and approaches of the reconciliation as well seems obscure to the mass of the society even after 9 years from the end of the armed conflict. One of the basic problems pertaining to this is the failure to find deep rooted local traditions, knowledge, and the approaches towards reconciliation and connect those practices with the present reconciliation efforts. In this paper Buddhist approach of Healing of the Mind of all the parties connected with the conflict is discussed without identifying them as ‘Oppressor’, ‘Oppressed’ or ‘By standers’. Particularly, it is highlighted here the need of understanding the so called oppressor, as well, as an ‘oppressed’ person in different levels and in different conditions to develop the healing model that include all the parties into a liberation model. This approach supports to see what happen in a conflict situation is a process of ‘wounding’ and then what need is ‘Healing’. It is argued here this paradigm shift helps to avoid further wounding that can happen even in the ‘reconciliation’ processes
From reconciliation to National Development through PModel Tourist Zone in Eastern Province of Sri Lanka
(4th International Conference on Social Sciences 2018, Research Centre for Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Liyanage, A.; Seneratne, P.; Herath, B.
After experiencing an ethnic based civil war for 30 years and unfulfilled promises by authorities after that, Eastern province of Sri Lanka is still far behind the national development efforts. While being forced back by inadequate infrastructure facilities, lack of service industry oriented vocational training and underemployment, the province consist of enormous amount of historic and natural tourist attractions. The main problem identified for this research evolved in this back ground of having no sustainable model to reap the benefits from tourist attractions in the war affected areas in eastern province. The primary objective was to address the aforesaid issue by developing a Model Tourist Zone; a self-sufficient supply chain model with resources supplied from and within the region and minimized negative aspects related to tourism industry in Ampara district mainly Pothuvil, Lahugala and surrounding areas, which can be implemented in the other parts of the country as well. The secondary objective was finding out circumstances of tourism industry in this area. A group of 25 Tamils who were former rebel groups’ members who have entered into small scale tourism and/or politics, 15 Sinhala and/or Muslim tourism related business owners, local government members and government officials were considered for a series of focus group discussions and key informant interviews to gather information for the research. The key findings are distrust among majority of participants regarding government related development & reconciliation initiatives, inadequate infrastructure facilities, lack of tourism oriented vocational training facilities and favouritism towards corporate giants and maltreatments for small scale entrepreneurs in tourism. In conclusion, it is necessary to regain the trust of the underemployed former rebel members by skilling them on tourism and channelling their unity and strengths combined with the natural tourist attractions in the area towards national development through making them stakeholders of Model Tourist Zone.
Effective understanding; attempt of using motion pictures to direct Sri Lankans towards Post-war Reconciliation with Reference of “Him. Her.The other” and “Demons in Paradise”
(4th International Conference on Social Sciences 2018, Research Centre for Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Senarath, S.; Jayasekara, S.; Boteju, I.; Gunathilaka, D.
Visual media is a universal language. It addresses almost every living species on the world. The two films “Him. Her. The other” by Prasanna Vitanage, Vimukthi Jayasundera and Asoka Handagama, and “Demons in the Paradise” by Jude Ratnum can be identified as an effort they made to picturize the unseen, unidentified and unrevealed corners of the aftermaths and consequences of the 30 years of war in Sri Lanka. These films were given different messages, backgrounds and they had shown different insights of war that victims had to face. From the two motion pictures and their contents, the way they address the concept of reconciliation, it is fair to assume that the visual media is one of the best medium to address the social consciousness of lay people especially with reference to key elements of reconciliation like replacing fear, coexistence, empathy and non-violence. The aim of this study was to understand whether these two selected films address the conscious of the spectators, originated due to an unsolved question which resulted in 30 years of war and if so how they address them. This was a case study conducted through forums among spectators of the two selected motion pictures and the sample selection had been limited to the age group of below 45 years from both Tamils and Sinhalese who were not directly affected by the 30 years of civil war. The forums conducted with the spectators did not show any aggressive or negative perspective therefore, it was likely possible to anticipate a better attitudinal change from them in near future. The findings might not be representative of the study population due to the fact that the number of screenings completed so far, do not represent the majority viewership of both Sinhalese and Tamils. With the limited number of screenings and with the received mindful and positive responses it endured the hint that even in public screenings there were no any negative or aggressive responses and certainly these two films can attract the minds of the majority of the Sri Lankans to the path of reconciliation.

ICSS 2018

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