That’s not something I would have usually published on Groundviews. However, I asked both Sunanda and Nalaka to respond to this comment – and while Sunanda has already, Nalaka assures me that he will do so presently.

“This is yet another western-funded, western-inspired attempt to tarnish Sri Lanka’s good image.”

Of the many ways that one can respond to this, I think the best is that this government and the incumbent President do far more to tarnish the “good name” of Sri Lanka, and with more panache to boot. They do it openly, and in calling for extra-judicial means to deal with anyone who they feel is even remotely a “threat to national security”, clearly, Groundviews is lagging far behind if our objectives were the same.

I also think it is a bit rich to accuse us of Western bias when you are resident in the US, enjoying all that it has to offer, with no responsibility towards that which you espouse – a mindless violence against the Tamil and the LTTE (tragically conflated into one lump by you) based on the assumption, callous and despicable, that only through their annihilation lies our path to peace and prosperity.

I was the commissioner and publisher of Children of Tsunami, an empathetic effort to track the recovery stories of eight survivor families in four countries. We chose two statistically average families each in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand and engaged locally-based camera crews to visit and film with these families from early to end 2005, on a monthly basis. The overall experience is summed up in an essay I wrote in early 2006, found at: http://www.tveap.org/feat/0605cot.html

When we started filming with them in early 2005, we had no idea how our eight chosen families will fare. This kind of unscripted, uncontrolled video documentation worried many journalists who cautioned against us not to venture into the unknown. We were foolhardy enough to do so, and have no regrets. Our process was incrementally documented and reported at a dedicated website, http://www.childrenoftsunami.info, which also streams 5-minute video reports on each child/family produced and uploaded each month as we went along. (We didn’t want to just gather footage to produce a documentary at the end; we published as we filmed, and importantly, our camera crews took the monthly video reports back to each family – theirs and others’ – and played back to the very families whose stories we were filming, with their informed consent and with no material rewards to them.

In Sri Lanka, we carefully chose two families: that of Theeban in Karaitivu in the east, and of Heshani in Suduwella, Matara, in the South. You can see their original profiles at:
http://www.childrenoftsunami.info/heshani/bio.htm
http://www.childrenoftsunami.info/theeban/bio.htm

If you have access to broadband internet, their monthly video reports are all online, for free access. Watching these will help compare and contrast how the two families recovered very differently. We are not drawing any sweeping conclusions from this, but the contrast is striking all the same. Heshani’s family had largely bounced back by end 2005; Theeban’s family has still not recovered even in March 2007, and Theeban is now gone – consumed by a violence that does not discriminate between grown-ups and children, between Sinhala and Tamil, and between the combatant and non-combatant.

And how sad that we didn’t learn the lesson of Tsunami, as some other conflict-ridden Asian couhtries did. My personal reaction to the Tsunami was a rare verse, When the Waves Came, which has appeared online from a US-based website, see:
http://www.lightmillennium.org/2005_15th/ngunawardene_the_waves.html

Throughout the verse, I keep repeating the words of William Makepeace Thackeray, which I hope Weera Sinha and his clan will appreciate: “Good or bad, guilty or innocent — they are all equal now.”

For me Teeban’s death reminded the death of my “half- adopted” son Faushan Mohamed (21) some 18 months ago. He was shot dead on his way to see his fiancée who was studying at South Eastern university. He was full of life, and looking forward to start a new life. He was shot dead, while negotiating a bend some where close to Kalmunei one early morning. Memory of his death – is something that I haven’t been able to set aside and move forward. I ask always my self why? We still do not know why he was killed and by whom? All our efforts to find out why he was killed have reached a blank. That’s the impulse which made me write his story n Sinhala..

Teeban for me is not just a youth or a Tamil but a generation.

I write in my name, and defend what I say. My only hope that persons who wants whole Eastern province to be wiped out will do the same, instead of hiding behind pseudo names!

I hate Martians.

Give me a Venetian any day.