As the restaurant cleared, a Singhalese woman approached me. Her fury was palpable. She had read a piece I had written on Sri Lanka and was outraged by it. Why was I writing only about Sinhalese hatred and not about Tamil terrorism? How dare I take the side of those murderous Tamils who milked the media for all it was worth? Before I could speak, she began a tirade on the misrepresentation of the Sri Lankan government by the British press. The British, she told me, were taken in by Tamil propaganda. The government merely wanted peace.
Having, as it were, a foot in both camps, my mother was Sinhalese, my father Tamil, I have frequently come up against the grievances of both groups. To a westerner, the difference is negligible. The west knows of Prabhakaran’s cruel recruitment of child soldiers and his suicide bombers. It knows of the stubborn refusal of the government to allow international help to civilians in the war zone. The west has little patience for what appears a hopelessly confused scenario.
Lest we forget the shameful fact, Sri Lanka was the first country that managed to turn suicide into a weapon of war. What developed in that distant coral-rimmed island was a microcosm of what goes on around the globe today. Other wars have been modelled on this same tactic; nowhere is safe from its frightening, nihilist impact. By neglecting what was going on in Sri Lanka, the global community simultaneously turned a blind eye to the causes that lie behind suicide terror in other places. Thus it spread, silent as a deadly virus, ignored until it was too late. While Sri Lanka, first let down by the British who ruled it so wantonly (denying the Buddhist majority their religion, while favouring the Tamils), was let down once again. Like Israel and Palestine, like parts of Africa, like India and Pakistan, both sides in the conflict suffered a deep sense of injustice.
Meanwhile, as early as the 1960s, those who could began leaving the country. Desperately hounded Tamils were ready to go anywhere that might offer them peace, while richer, less desperate Sinhalese, looked for the quiet life away from political controversy.
Now, at last, the west is listening. Unicef and Amnesty are sending out clear messages, but these are being ignored by the Sri Lankan government. Damilvany Gnanakumar’s eye witness story, told to Gethin Chamberlain in the Guardian today is a further shocking indictment.
The Singhalese are mainly Buddhist; once a gentle people, charged with the preservation of life. That they have failed so completely is a measure of how far the collective hysteria of war has led them astray. Without a doubt, the Sri Lankan Tamils have suffered terribly. Led by a man who took his people to the brink of annihilation, persecuted by a barbaric government, they have suffered twice over.
Today, denial and rage walk hand in hand, both at home and abroad, in the Sri Lankan community. These emotions need desperately to be addressed. Expatriates should throw off their complacency. What is happening in our homeland is our collective responsibility. We should demand that the government clear our name of this terrible stain and allow the international community into the country.
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