I understand your frustrations and they are justified.

Only when you leave the shores of your motherland and realise there is a pot of gold waiting for you then you realise these ar e but illusions.

We have had suicide bombers, hapless civilians enmeshed in detention camps but you are always home when you set foot in that golden soil you call Mother Lanka.

It is incumbent on all the people of this nation to work together for unity and peace; you will still encounter racism but not to the extent that you will encounter in the wilderness of a foreign clime.

Every one of us has security concerns, whether we live in SL or not. You are no safer, for the most part, in any other country than you are in SL. Most migrants are living under the false delusion that things are better off abroad, although they are now living in a crappy one bedroom apartment, have taken out a 100 year mortgage, and are up to their eyes in debt, working 90 hours a week just to keep the family afloat. Unless you’re a journalist or a rival-politician in Sri Lanka, you don’t have a whole lot to fear if you’re willing to work with the system to change the system, instead of thinking you’re the best in the world and everything you want should happen immediately.

And what have these migrants achieved beyond an apartment and a crappy car, and bragging rights about “life abroad?” I can think of perhaps a handful of academics and Raj Rajaratnam who have achieved more as immigrants than they could have with hard work and perseverance in SL. I am especially saddened by those members of the medical profession who have milked the Lankan system for all it’s worth, got a free education, and then gotten out to make money abroad, blaming it on the “corrupt medical system” in SL, which is only corrupt because migration is one aspect that has also stifled our economy, leading to that corruption in the first place.

This attitude of “we’d come back if things got better” is not going to MAKE things better. For as long as those who can make a change keep leaving the country, there WILL BE NO CHANGE. I came to this realization during my current stint in the USA, and plan to come back for good in 3 months and make something of myself.

If you want change, then work from within the system to change it.

[Edited out]

Whenever somebody decides to write something as that person sees it , he or she is exercising his /her freedom to view things and form their own opinions. If you don’t agree with what Pearl says here, argue with her on the points of disagreement. What you have done by calling her a “govt paid beneficiary” shows your depth of intelligence. If you can’t argue with someone in an respectful and intelligent manner, just shut up.

This attitude to call anyone who differs with our opinion as “Sl govt paid agents” is hilarious and frankly stupid. Maybe some are, who knows, but you can’t generalise and hide behind that argument.

One more thing, I don’t care what the hypocrtiical Western govts has to say about SL, I’m glad, REALLY glad that the LTTE with it’s manic and idiot leader was annihilated and and erased from the face of the earth.

Those who take up violence and/or condone it (whether it is the now DEFUNCT LTTE or the SL govt) will have a day of reckoning. There is proof of that, as the LTTE who lived by the sword (in this age, guns, bombs, machetes, etc.) also perished by those same tools.

I was also accused of breaching the censorship for starting Missing Persons Bureau in Weekend Express andIi had to go into hiding in the hills before migrating to UK with a death threat hanging over me from the Eastern Commander.

These aside I always remain a journalist seeking truth and justice. I do not care for narrow political agenda be they Tamil or Sinhala and I do not condone killing either by the state or rebels.

It was with great interest that I read your article. I feel sorry for the kids who have to suffer due to the entrenched, bad notions of the elders of a society.
I understand the pain and betrayal the Tamils would have felt, especially after the 1983 riots. As a Sinhalese I’m terribly ashamed of that, but yet I know that my feelings about it is not going to do any justice to the ones who suffered that day.
However, I could not understand how a part of the Tamil Diaspora went on sponsoring a brutal terror machine that killed so indiscriminately. That was not “hit back in pain” at the point of infliction of pain, but methodical, well-planned and never-ceasing revenge.
I always wondered how a human being (in this case a whole group) could go on hanging to that self-defeating revengeful attitude for so long.
What motivates such callous indifference to the murders of children and women (men too) and simply innocent by-standers for 30 odd years?
Why is it that the Tamils (not just them but most humans) never take look back at history and see the end of violent movements and people?

Yes, I have this experience about Tamils not mixing well with the Sinhalese. Why again?
Not all Sinhalese have done them wrong.
I attended a private Christian school in Colombo. Sadly, even there we had a separate Tamil medium class. So we had 3 classes in the Sinhala medium, and 1 class in the Tamil medium. There were just one or two students with Tamil names who were with us in the Sinhala medium class. We had a nodding acquaintance with most of the Tamil students and even had few conversations with some of them, but I don’t think any of us managed to make lifelong friends with any of the Tamil medium students. I look at my facebook account now and see almost all of my classmates (Sinhala, Musilm and the couple of Tamil students) from school days in correspondence with me. Sadly, I have no idea where any of the students from the Tamil medium class are living now. I don’t think any of us do.
So this weird separation goes on.
Are adults to be blamed? I know that my parents had no part in this. They never uttered a word against the Tamils and hence I was not prejudiced. Was the school system to be blamed for this separation? Whose idea was it to separate us at even that stage? Why not mixed classes (all races) with English the common language of instruction?
Were the Tamil parents biased against the Sinhala students and so cultivated such an attitude in their offspring? I don’t know. I hope that things will change and students will get a chance to study, play and have arguments together in school, rather than be separated into different classes.

What a great artical. Its nice to here from a Sri lankan about the fellow tamils who live in the UK. Well Life is so different in Australia for the people who had migrated weather you are Tamil or Sinhalese. My best friend was a Tamil who came from Jaffna and I was from Colombo and a Sinhalese. We studied together at the same University. he left Sri Lanka during the trouble times. We are still good friends still keep in contac since he left to Canada.
Well most of the Sinhalese and the Tamils who had migrated Australia came with nothing. But Its so nice to see most of them own 2 or 3 houses. There children are intergrated very well and having a very bright future. So People who read this article should not be discarraged by this facts. Well Come to Australia. Sinhalese the Tamils if you are living in UK why not live in Australia Insted. Well I know not every one can migrate to Astralia but for the students who are thinking of studing in UK think towise. There are worlds leading Universies here. Live is rated as one of the best in the world. So forget UK come to Australa.
I still eat Murunga and Pol sambol yammy Australia.