Thank you for your comments, but I think the grievances you mentioned no-longer exist.

1. There is no ethnicity based quota system in existence now. The current quota system is region based and affects all ethnicities equally.
2. Both Sinhala and Tamil are now national languages (There are still some implementation issues however)
3. There is no need to be Buddhist to become a politician? Whoever said this? The TNA is actually a well-known LTTE proxy. The assassinated Lakshman Kadirgamar was the foreign minister, tipped to become even prime minister. There are many Tamil politicians in both main political parties.

Please read this analysis by Pradeep Jeganathan, a well known academic, for a much more detailed critique of the current state of grievances: http://www.pjeganathan.org/south-paw/2009/5/17/sri-lankas-conflict-an-interview-with-pact-part-iii.html

Admittedly, there are still a few issues remaining, but I honestly don’t think there are insurmountable issues, certainly nothing worth blowing yourself up over. And please don’t forget that some additional issues (or at least the excuses for them) like extra security checks have been a direct or indirect result of the LTTE.

Tamilan, you may also wish to question the veracity of these claimed kingdoms. I don’t really care whether there was one or not, because either way, each person in this country *must* have equality, but there’s enough fabricated history floating around to make it all rather tiresome.

Please read this article on these post-colonial historical fabrications by Sinhalese and Tamil nationalists: http://www.pjeganathan.org/south-paw/2009/5/4/sri-lankas-conflict-an-interview-with-pact-part-i.html

And I agree with you on your final point, the govt. must provide equality to one and all. No questions there.

This is not a personal attack on you, but from first hand experience, yes there is discrimination in employment and education, today.
To enter university, why is it that Tamils have a quota system?
This leads onto Tamils studying courses that they do not wish to study in order to enter university hence affecting employment.
Why do you need to be Buddhist to become a politician?
Why is singhala the national language?

This all stems from majority status. If we are considered fellow citizens, why should we not be able to enter uni in the same merits? Why can we not become politicians?

If the governments can guarantee equality in everything for all communities, then fine, we can live happily ever after, but if they refuse to do this, then I think we deserve the right to ask for separate state, which I reiterate was a Tamil kingdom in the first place. We are not asking for your state.

Is this appropriate???

First of all, there is a WRONG teaching towards Singhalses youth that Sri Lanka belongs to only Singhalese. If parents even knew their own history properly, they will know that there were 3 kingdoms prior to British Colonisation. 1 Tamil kingdom and 2 Singhalese kingdoms. The British joined the 3 kingdoms for ease of administration and obviously the supremacy of the majority took place leading to suppression of minority! Tamils are only asking for what was theirs in the first place. I don’t anything wrong here!

Secondly, Tamil youths internationally have so much anger only because there is no country to call their own. The suppression that was inflicted on their own family members has caused them to behave this way. It is easy to say, and very attractive to say that everyone can live together peacefully, but that can only happen when we all have equal rights. It has been hard enough for Tamils, and Singhalese, to fit into to the countries that they have not become resident in, but at least the Singhalese can call Sri Lanka their motherland. Tamils, at this point in time, can not, all because of a few extremist politicians who choose to suppress the minority populations. Now over 25,000 Tamils have been killedin the last 5 months, it is impossible to win back the trust of the Tamil community after the 25 year long civil war. This could have all been solved if they were given their own state back, as they have been asking.

It is highly unlikely that things will change until this happens…

List the rights that the violence of the LTTE has gained for you. Now list the rights this same violence has taken away. Now list the right that were gained *before* the rise of the LTTE. What do you observe?

Yes, state violence has always been a problem, but you’re very much mistaken if you think it’s limited to Tamils. Stop thinking of yourself as a different race all the time and think from the context of being a Sri Lankan person, you’ll see that the issue of oppression is common to all. It’s a systemic problem in the govt. You know what happened to Sinhala youth during the JVP uprising. Rather than
thinking everything that happens is racially motivated, join the majority of moderate people and fight with the rest of us to get these issues solved.

The more you bring out your own racialism, the more you ostracize yourself from the rest of the ethnic communities. But many of the problems that remain today have *nothing* to do with race.

Tell me, is there any discrimination in terms of education and employment opportunities today? Who are the people who managed to correct those issues? Wasn’t it the campaigns by moderates in all ethnic groups?

The remaining issue is state violence, which I reiterate, is a common issue to all.
The moderates in all communities cannot fight to correct that issue if the Tamil nationalists are creating a whole new different set of problems and exacerbating the situation. In fact, it’s legitimizing a culture of violence as the govt. claims that there is no other way to protect the security of the average person.

Fight against those in your community who advocate violence for starters, in other words, fight against militant nationalism. Join and integrate with the moderate people in fighting to correct the rest. Don’t expect changes as long as you see the rest of us as your enemy. We are not your enemy!

If there is a even a small change in the structural violence that generated it you may expect a change in the ”idea”.

Had there been indignity and injustice for a few or for a few years it may be possible. If it shows signs of abatement even after sixty one years it may be possible.

TNA members can’t meet Ban Ki-Moon?

The brutally battered IDPs cannot be freely helped by aid agencies?

Northeast has been officially an open prison for three years and unofficially for decades? The people in these open prisons are only slightly better than those in Manik Farm.

No investigations of thousands of abduction-murders in the last few years alone?

Leave alone the tens of thousands of ”disappearances” under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in the last 30yrs?

I shouldn’t even have started to enlist…. it looks like that the indignity and injustice is totally unknown and incomprehensible.

When the politico-socio-economic fabric of a people have severely deteriorated to an inhuman condition ….. …..

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I just wanted to share a similar experience I had a couple of years ago at a Sri Lanka v India match in Canberra Australia. The crowd was mostly Canberran Sri Lankan and Indian expats who were out to have a good time. I was there with my close friends who a multicultural bunch of Sri Lankan Muslims, Sinhalese and Tamils.

Anyway as the match begun several bus loads of Tamil folks who weren’t from Canberra arrived with LTTE flags, wearing red shirts with maps of ‘Eelam’ and political slogans. When they arrived they started identifying local Tamil Sri Lankan’s wearing the Sri Lankan cricket shirts and telling them to remove them and put on the red Eelam shirts they’d brought with them and asking them to go sit with them and away from the “Sri Lankans”. Throughout the day we witnessed them walking around pressuring Tamil youths to do likewise.

They approached us and asked if we were Sinhalese of Tamil and my friend, a Muslim originally from the East, replied in Tamil that we were all sorts and that both he and I were Muslim. They sniggered and went on their way. Later another group of Tamil youth came up to us, they were local Tamil’s who earlier that day had been wearing Sri Lanka shirts but now were wearing the Eelam shirt. They recognized our Tamil friends and in English started asking them “are you Tamil or Sinhalese” and one of my Tamil friends said sarcastically “I don’t know, why don’t you ask my father next time you come around for dinner”. They started getting abusive and telling them not to sit with these Sinhalese so-and-so’s and Muslim Osama’s. Our other Tamil friend asked them to leave us alone and that we just came to watch cricket and they threw a beer on him and called him a traitor. We later laughed when we found out they couldn’t even speak Tamil and had never even been to Sri Lanka.

We were harassed throughout the day by Tamil youths. They threw objects at us as we cheered the Sri Lankan team and when we waved our flags when a wicket fell or boundary was hit, they jostled their way into the Sri Lankan crowd and started waving LTTE flags trying to instigate a response. Thankfully everyone was very calm. A bunch of Sinhalese guys in our area kept everyone calm and told people not to react because it would reflect badly on the Sri Lankan cricket team.

The Tamil Diaspora in my experience is particularly bad in the way they indoctrinate their children against Sinhalese people. Its not just something you can put down to wild emotions that their community is experiencing in the death throws of their militancy – it’s been that way for years. Throughout my 15 years in Australia it’s something I’ve experienced over and over. Sinhalese people are very indifferent to Sri Lankan issues and don’t even want their kids to speak Sinhalese or actively practise institutionalized Buddhism. 90% of Sinhalese people I’ve met in this country as coconuts, brown on the outside and white on the inside – they are totally Australianised and have no interest in Sri Lanka outside cricket. The same can’t be said for the Tamil’s I know.

I believe in my heart that its possible to heal any wound and recover our wholeness. And I am heartened to hear such stories because it reinforces my hope and trust in the resilience of the human spirit. As your example shows, as painful as some experiences can be, we can CHOOSE how to respond to the events of our lives, not have to be forced into reacting in a negative and unhelpful way. Even if the “normal” response might be to close our hearts and turn to thoughts or actions of vengeance or hatred, its possible to choose forgiveness and to let go and move on. We may be victimized at times in our lives but we don’t have to be victims forever. A poet once said that the “Living well is the best revenge” and of course we cannot live well if we carry hatred and anger in our hearts. That harms us more than anyone else.

What those specific people did to your farther (and to countless others) in 1983 is atrocious. What you did to heal and let go instead of holding onto it and perpetuating the suffering is heroic. Thank you for sharing your story. I know there are many such stories that are untold. I look forward to the day when those stories are told more and more.

I will second that. I was rather disgusted to see the anti-Western propaganda being doled out. I do not think the West has any hidden agenda. If Sri Lanka completely rejects the West, for example by adapting JVP economic policies, it will easily become another Zimbabwe. Secondly, the media plays a pivotal role in promoting change. There are many, many changes that need to occur. In particular, the Southern people need to realize the rest of the country (except perhaps Kandy, to some extent) is nothing like Colombo; they are lagging far behind. If the nation is to experience adequate development, power needs to be devolved in order to empower local communities.

You said: “In this way of thinking, if you are hearing more “extreme” nationalist sentiments from Tamils, could it be because the Tamils have been and are in more desperate situation than the Sinhalese?”

Yes. They most certainly were in a more desperate situation.

Karunai, my position is not one of hatred towards the LTTE or the cadres who died for it. Many of the people who died are not people who died thinking they were doing the wrong thing. In fact, it was quite the contrary, the people who died were quite convinced they were fighting for their people and sacrificing themselves for a higher cause. I understand and sympathize with it.

But my point was not that.

My concern is for the “ideas” that are being spread. The “idea” that militancy is the answer is what is costing us dearly. It is this “idea” that must be defeated and it is incumbent upon all of us to defeat it. Similarly, it is the “idea” that Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese that must be defeated.

These ideas *must* be defeated not by killing people, but by highlighting the moral and intellectual poverty of those ideas. The LTTE unfortunately was an idea that could apparently *only* be defeated by military force. Please see the article posted by Jehan a few days back, it should prove most illuminating to the point I’m trying to make.

This is also what I meant by having no sympathy. I have naught but disgust for the “idea”. I have great sympathy for the person who is needlessly dying for it but what good does that do to anyone?

So hence my greater disgust for the Tamil Nationalist “Idea” due to the violent nature it has evolved into. We must defeat this “idea” and get them to a live and let live position. The Sinhalese nationalist has already arrived at such a position as far as I can see. Please don’t interpret it as attempting to assign blame, that’s an entirely counter-productive exercise and my apologies if it came out that way. I hope my point is now clear.

Is this like the sort of ”meetings” in towns and villages several years ago?

I believe the second step of the ”Inter-cultural Dialogue” is taking busloads of the Southerners all over the Northeast( there are camps all over the Northeast0.

This has been my view for a few years. But i find that it’s also the view of at least a few INGOs that have worked in Sri Lanka.

I am NOT angry – I am EXTREMELY sad.

The lump is gone.

What is said about Tamil and Sinhala parents instilling hatred in their children among the diaspora is very sad..

But that very sadly continues to happen inside Sri Lanka too.

One main reason is that there has been so many episodes of press censure at crucial times and the people in the South have not been learning about the suffering of the Tamils as a result of the structural violence of government institutions and under the army of occupation for decades.

So let’s put the dialogue into practice.

Do the people in the South know about the present conditions in the ”holding camps” in Vavuniya?

Actually, I should be the one who shouldn’t be talking to Sinhalese. My dad was burnt alive by Government backed Sinhalese thugs during 1983 riots. I should have vengance. However, I don’t think these few guys who did that don’t represent the community as whole.

The point is, both sides are putting hatred in their kids minds. If I hate you, you made me hate you. In my case, Sinhalese made me hate them. Still, I don’t.