The Observer, 14 June 2009: “Behind the barbed-wire fence at the Pulmoddai camp, tiny children had stared out at us, open-mouthed, their eyes sunken and hollow, the first signs of malnutrition. Around the camps, scarcely functioning mothers and grandmothers waited patiently for brown trickles of water to emerge from the earth. The inmates were surrounded by a cordon of steel: dozens of Sri Lankan soldiers sitting at 10-yard intervals around the perimeter of the compound, their weapons cocked and trained on their captives.”

Amnesty International, 12 June 2009: ‘Twenty Years of Make-Believe: Sri Lanka’s Commissions of Inquiry’, documents the failure of successive Sri Lankan governments to provide accountability for serious human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, killings, and torture.

Justice in retreat: A report on the independence of the legal profession and the rule of law in Sri Lanka(IBAHRI, May 2009):
”’Many of the problems identified in the 2001 IBAHRI Report continue to affect the independence of the legal profession and the rule of law in Sri Lanka and in some respects the situation has deteriorated significantly. …. This deficiency in the provision of legal aid means that some members of Sri Lankan society, particularly those of Tamil ethnicity, are unprotected within the criminal justice system. We are alarmed by these reports, as it is precisely those individuals whose cases fall within the PTA and the ER who are most at risk of a conviction resulting from a trial process that tilts heavily in favour of the prosecution,….. ”

http://www.uthr.org/SpecialReports/spreport32.htm#_Toc232409723 :

”………………………..
Discrimination in Action: No sooner the President abolished the term minority, some old discriminatory habits which caused the Tamils to rebel show signs of returning with a vengeance. ‘Sinhalese’ fishermen have been brought under naval protection to fish in the sea off Mannar Island without any restriction. The local Tamil and Muslim fishermen are allowed only about four days a week on the pretext of security for some minor naval movements. The trawlers with Sinhalese fishermen use large Japanese nets of a kind now banned internationally, which drag the seabed, pulling out coral, the nets of local fishermen and damaging the breeding ground, eggs, weeds and fish fodder.

On 28th May the Tamil fishermen protested and had an argument with a group of Sinhalese trawler fishermen, who using the communication set the Navy provided, informed them of the boat number. When the Tamil fishermen came ashore, naval men who were waiting for them with batons, made the Tamils kneel and beat them up severely.

Re: your white man comment.. that attitude never stopped Sinhalese from buying western military supplies or accepting Special Forces training. You sound ungrateful.

We diaspora are not oblivious to the genuine good deeds that Sinhalese are doing to help IDPs, nor are we oblivious to the callous use of bombs against those same civilians or the pleasure some Sinhalese take from the sight of their defeated enemy. I hope no one views Sinhalese as an evil “race” since any geneticist can tell you Tamils & Sinhalese are the same race. Sinhalese may perhaps have more Bengalese genomic similarities than Sri Lankan Tamils but it’s a negligible difference.

Thank you for explaining how thankful we should be.

Dumb Dravidians like me… we need such things explained to us. Good Aryans like you are always eager to help us out. [sarcasm]

Articles like http://virtualjudah.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/an-epitaph-for-tamil-eelam express the misgivings we diaspora & other Tamils had about Praba that caused us to not support LTTE financially. You want to have it both ways.. diaspora gave money, LTTE fund themselves by criminal enterprises, just so you can have the west equate all diaspora with crime. There are so many visible examples of law abiding Tamil diaspora in so many different countries that your argument seems to just be thinly disguised racism. Jan Jananayagam, ASEAN founder S. Rajaratnam (foreign minister of Singapore), George Alagiah, M.I.A… so many Tamil doctors, lawyers, honor students http://www.excellenceaward.ca/entrance/_e/laureates.php?province=9 around the world. Xenophobia is the negative hallmark of Sinhalese politics and religion in the 20th century & you want this for the 21st as well? How unfortunate that the only lesson some have taken out of the story of Dutugamunu is bigotry. Do you approve of the government propaganda which blames Praba entirely for Black July as well? Living under the Kandyan Lion flag and rulership of “King” Rajapaksa after surviving disease, starvation, rape (is it happening at IDP camps, will you say the victims accepted payment), torture will make for happy Tamils in the north? Revisionist history won’t save Sinhalese pride or Sri Lanka. GoSL following the lead of Anti-NGO book “Rocolonisation” by Susantha Goonatilake will doom that pride.

Of course almost all diaspora were & are approving of Eelam, we democratically created such a mandate http://books.google.ca/books?id=4iA2IoBzXXEC&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=tulf+mandate&source=bl&ots=ZB561ZxNpc&sig=61ZCe4KMicZy2zyPa_YCy1L5k1k&hl=en&ei=YL0qSobmAqGxtgeDtYG7CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6

I lost faith in Eelam via LTTE due to Marxism, child soldiers, suspicion/intolerance to Muslim Tamils, etc. but that does not make me fond of GoSL who to this very day fail to acknowledge wrong doings and want to whitewash the killing of civilian Tamils. You prop up militia leaders, who took and used child soldiers, into government posts and then expect the diaspora to view this as good news for Tamils in the north? What kind of false reconciliation is that? The GoSL is just spinning the same old web of lies.

Any real reconciliation attempt will be impossible due to the need for freedom of the press in Sri Lanka, freedom of speech, safety from white vans & para-military types, all are required before your local Tamils can even speak to what they want. We diaspora will have to speak for them in courts of law around the world, street corners, wherever… TAG you’re it!

Unfortunately for us “Diaspora Tamils”, once we taste freedom, being out in the world, we dare to hope for a better fate for those who are less fortunate and who have no option but to continue living in Sri Lanka.

It is definitely time to forget the past and move on. We would love to. WIthout the recurring nightmares which haunt us when we least expect it, with scenes of running for our lives in ’83 or beingg taken in for questioning on our way to work or receiving death threats on our mobiles in the middle of the night or the police who refuse to do anything when we stupidly lodge an entry.

We have and still on some level continue to forget the past. Despite the horror and disgust we feel at the “rejoicing” of our very close Sinhalese friends at what they consider Sri Lanka’s “victory”, we try to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and meet them for dinner or a movie or some other such thing. But in our heart of hearts, we grieve and we suffer. Because their callous disregard for the suffering of countless people tells us that we could very well be in that situation. Would they care then? would they grieve as well or would they continue to celebrate and tell us its time to “forgive and forget”?

Though unacknowledged publicly, anyone who has been reading the news knows that the catasrophe in Sri Lanka is far from over. And all I see (and incidentally, friends have expressed the same feeling) is that we are being told – “either learn to live with what you have and don’t complain, do not dare to think you can dissent because this is how you will end up.”

I once heard someone in a camp say, “At this point, I’d rather live like a dog than die like one”. I’ve also heard the sentiment “I’d rather die than live like this”. And it is sad that this is what is left for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Thankfully for some others, there is another choice – “never go back to the hell hole” – which is a sentiment I heard many Tamil friends living abroad express. In fact they seem to think I’m crazy to obsess so much about the situation and visit this site and keep track of the news. They have very politely told me not to forward them any mails or links to any stories concerning Sri Lanka as they have a life now, very different from their old life, and they would like to live it, without my constant badgering for someone to do something.

So in short, what I’m trying to say is that, fortunately (or unfortunately) contrary to popular belief, most of the Diaspora want to forget that they ever lived in a place called Sri Lanka.

The people I spoke to also said they had never been contacted by any groups seeking funding other than the Sri Lankan Embassies in their countries.

So my hope is that the Sinhalese people will learn to remember that nobody wakes up one fine morning and decides to blow themselves up. That kind of thinking happens after a long process of frustration and hopelessness. Something like what we witnessed in the last 27 odd years.

God save us all when those who escape death by starvation, rape or torture in the IDP camps manage to make it through. They will most probably need another 30years to vent their frustrations.

Here’s what you said:

“Even more hilarious is – after “saving them” lock them up in camps and go begging to the whole world for alms – typical of Buddhists, isn’t it?”

Here’s what you could have said:

“Even more hilarious is – after ‘saving them’ lock them up in camps and go begging to the whole world for alms – typical of SO-CALLED Buddhists, isn’t it?”

or

“Even more hilarious is – after ‘saving them’ lock them up in camps and go begging to the whole world for alms – THESE PEOPLE CALL THEMSELVES BUDDHISTS?”

You chose to slur the religion and its community. Even your correspondence with the Dalai Lama reveals prejudice:

“…how the Budhhists clergy (not all though) could become so racist and inhuman.”

It’s as if this is some pathology unique to Buddhism and to its clergy. But there are reactionary and ultra-nationalist clergy from every faith in every corner the world. It seems to be a regrettable but universal feature of organized religion.

***

“If it is your belief that raising the plight of innocent civilians being massacred by a reckless and recalcitrant regime that conducted a ‘war without witness’ and thereafter bury the evidence to bluff the whole world, then your citing me as a problem does not bother me at all.”

Well this is pure bluster. That is not my belief at all, and you know it. On the plight of the civilians, I’m mostly in agreement with you, and said so. My issue was with your careless (but revealing) dig at Buddhists.

***

“At least I did that, what did you do?”

Please don’t conceive of yourself as some lonely crusader. There are a multitude of voices who have spoken on the matter, many right here on groundviews. And yes, these include even the reviled Sinhala Buddhists, most notably the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka.

As for me, posting comments on a website is not a priority. I have done, and continue to do, what I think is right and necessary, just like countless other Sri Lankans. Should I do more? This is a question I ask myself all the time. And I’ll admit the answer is always yes.