” Greater love has no one than this..

that he lay down his life for his friends” (Jesus Christ).

@Kumari Janus—You are missing the point of this very humanizing article. The point of the article was to show that both the Sinhalese and the Tamils (and Muslims also) sacrificed for this war and of course both sides committed atrocities. But the problem right now is people like you. A. The Tamil “Diaspora” and former LTTE supporters who call for human rights not for the sake of human rights or justice, but for political gain or for revenge. B. The Sinhala nationalists (a.k.a. MR’s core voters) who gloat over the military defeat of the LTTE and turns a blind eye to atrocities committed by the armed forces of a democratic state. What Sri Lanka needs right now is not this polarized debate on human rights, but the promotion of human rights and justice regardless of ethnicity, because right now there are many rights being violated in this country, and corruption is abound and it affects everyone on the island.

If there were more Sri Lankans like you reconciliation would become that much easier. Unfortunately our education and political systems are churning out people who are intolerant and xenophobic. This, coupled with a autocratic regime does not augur well for this island paradise.

Albeit, at a different level, I know of a close friend whose precious Volkswagen car was burnt while she was trying to save a Tamil friends Mercedes. Not once in the past so many years has she mentioned this incident with regret.

Lets salute all Sri Lankans (be they Sinhala, Tamil, Muslims or Burghers) who risked their lives to protect others and stood up against injustice.

Even though it was about the Civil Rights movement, Toni Morrison’s words in her novel Paradise, seem fitting for this context:

“Twenty, thirty years from now,…all sorts of people will claim pivotal, controlling, defining positions in the rights movement… What would not be gainsaid, but would remain invisible in the newspapers and the books… were the ordinary folks…Yes, twenty, thirty years from now, those people will be dead or forgotten; their own small stories part of no grand record or even its footnotes, although they were the ones who formed the spine on which the televised ones stood.” (p.212)

”Let us not close our eyes to the vast human rights abuses that continue to occur in Sri Lanka just as many average Germans did when they pretended the Holocaust never happened. … What the President did do immediately after the last election was to change the constitution so that he could be President for life and the critical civilian posts such as that of the head of the police, the elections commissioner, etc, would be decided by the President as opposed to an independent body as the Sri Lankan Constitution had mandated till then. ….” – Ruling Rajapaksa dynasty must be held accountable for the atrocities they are responsible for, *Viresh Fernando, 19 March 2012, An Open Letter to Fellow Sinhala, Canadians, http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/4813

After the death of so many of our fellow countrymen haven’t we yet learned a lesson? War brings so much of suffering to the world and still we go on celebrating our victories annually. At least if we get on with reconciliation in a positive manner we can justify all these sacrifices made by heroes. What has happened to the Paradise Isle? And where is the Dharma which is believed to be our foundation?