Altered Image: A Bystander’s View

S. M. Owens posted a photo:

Altered Image Abstract Bystanders View

This will not be here long; it was written after my visit to Sri Lanka in September 2009: edit:

The war was over – thank goodness. Eleswhere I predicted: “…eventually their diplomacy paid off.” I couldn’t have got it more wrong. It started in 1983, the first year I visited the country. When I visited Jaffna then, there was a political demonstration around the clock tower in the centre of town, an indication perhaps of the trouble to come. It was a long and bloody war. There was a time when the rebels appeared to be invincible. They made substantial gains; they were better trained and equipped, and much more motivated than the country’s military.
The war was variously and oddly reported through to its conclusion, and I found this troubling. Many of the things I saw or read seemed unduly sympathetic to the cause of the rebels – communist insurgents determined to divide the indivisible, in order then to perhaps start a larger conflict in the larger country to the north. This is not how most fly-in reporters saw it. Many reported that the long-suffering Tamil community was discriminated against by the Sinhalese majority. Many reported it as a religious conflict – Hindu against Buddhist; but it was never this; nor was it ever an ethnic war. It was a political, ideological war, perpetrated and perpetuated on the people by a cerebral elite. Like all wars, it was about power: who holds it, and what they can do with it.
They called themselves Tigers, perhaps to gain sympathy or support. People like tigers; but perhaps forgotten or not known by many people is that native Sri Lankans refer to themselves as Sin[g]halese; and of course singh means lion in Sanskrit. There’s a lion on the Sri Lankan national flag. Thus, the conflict was polarized between lions and tigers. They also called themselves Tamil Tigers, inferring that all Tamils supported them and their cause: but this is untrue. Within Sri Lanka, they were often referred to as the Hindu-Christian alliance; the Tamil Muslims did not support them at all, and as a consequence suffered pogroms and other acts of persecution at their hands. Many other, high profile Tamils did not support them – look at the national cricket team (today includes Angelo Mathews and then included Muttiah Muralitharan and maybe Russel Arnold); and check the cabinet minister assassinated by them in 2005. (Foreign Minister Mr. Latchman Kadirgama was a Tamil.) They also used the word Liberation in their title, inferring they were liberating something: land, country, or people; this was patently untrue. They turned the area they controlled into something resembling a prison camp – a no go area. LTTE; the E was for Elam, maybe to give the conflict a Biblical context, and again illicit sympathy from a knowledgeable few. However, this was spurious and totally misleading, and yet likely to be attractive to those who would believe that Sri Lanka is the Garden of Eden, and the home of Adam – Adam’s Peak. Elam was to the east of Eden.
I have no reason or need to catalogue the insurgents misdeeds here, although it would be easy to do so; a quick sample perhaps: their brainwashing, their fund raising scams, their money laundering, their use of suicide bombers, their use of child soldiers, their assassinations, and various other horror techniques which virtually held the country hostage to their barbarity. Somebody once said they lost the war the day they killed Rajiv Gandhi; somebody else said they lost the war the day Anton Balasingham died. But no, it was neither of these events. They lost the war the day they started it….. their cause was flawed – their ideology…. unsound….
As the conflict approached its final conclusion the political shenanigans gathered pace. Internationally, Sri Lanka was pilloried; people asked naively: “You’re not going to kill them all are you?”
And they did, and an untold number of civilians. They turned a beautiful beach and lagoon into a slaughterhouse. Whether the civilians were innocent human shields held against their will or brainwashed sympathizers unable to abandon their tormentor, is not known. But what is known is that there are now thousands of deeply traumatized people held in ‘refugee’ camps, some of whom may be determined to visit some revenge upon the victors.
And, what of and who are the victors? It is true that certain politicians seem to have gloried, overly, in their military success. This is somewhat unattractive to behold. The graphic billboards around the country appear to be almost whipping up a nationalistic frenzy. This would be a difficult genie to put back in the bottle; many people seem to have already forgotten the problems caused by the JVP in the 90’s. Politically, debts have to be paid – most worryingly, to China, for its financial support and for supplying the arsenal; and for their diplomatic manoeuvrings, outflanking the more self-righteous, principled [?] nations. The President does appear, surprisingly, to be a fighter; he’ll need to be, he most certainly has more battles to come.
It is wrong to over complicate that which is simple; it is also wrong to over simplify that which is complicated. If I’ve got anything wrong, I apologize. I do not wish to add to the plethora of misinformation which has confused this conflict. But Sri Lanka is a very complicated country: a society riddled with divisions: religious, ethnic, class, caste; prejudice and discrimination, positive and negative, are commonplace; unbelievably, people still refer to the decedents of the Dutch colonialists as Burghers. And, it should not be forgotten that the country is still poor, and politically divided. The people have a natural, ingrained, small island complex – they fear outsiders, and rightly. They’ve been invaded often. But now, they feel they are the outsiders: victorious but increasingly isolated; such a strange position. They need help of the right type, something they will be reluctant to accept; and the worry is that the country is now going to be plundered by its new ally, for the few treasures it still possesses.
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The full name of the country is: the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.
The above is the middle part of a much longer piece; the intro was run through here earlier. The final part is unsuitable for publication here without a considerable re-edit, which I have little appetite to do: it is largely auto-bio, referencing things written elsewhere..

Photo & Text:
S. Owens
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