2019 Easter Massacre in Sri Lanka.

There were plenty of indications that some kind of incident was going to occur.  Some Muslim Leaders/Politicians had warned the govt of possible terror attack, some even naming possible suspects*. The incidents or information were either ignored or worse perpetrators were released.

*This is quite different from main stream Tamil politicians who kept shielding at minimum or encouraging the LTTE who were referred to as our "boys". eg SJV Chelvanayagam, Amirthalingam etc who finally were assassinated by the "boys".

Possible reasons for Inaction by the Govt
a) In fighting within the govt and finger pointing at the previous Rajapakse regime.
b) Current govt and President were elected on a minority vote and reluctance to clamp down on a segment of their constituency.

A simple timeline
a) December 2018.  Buddhist Statues vandalized in Mawanella
b) December 2018: Pattern of denial that radical Muslims exist.  See comments in link below.
     https://twitter.com/azzamameen/status/1078290050498977799?lang=en
c) January 2019:  Two suspects in Mawanella traced to coconut estate in Wanathavilluwa**. 
                              Large quantities of explosives found.
      http://mirrorcitizen.dailymirror.lk/2019/01/23/damaging-buddha-statues-father-of-the-two-accused-arrested/

d) March 2019: Mohamed Razak Taslim,  Minister Kabir Hasims's Coordinating Secretary is shot by muslim extremists.  Taslim had been assisting the CID  in investigating December 2018 vandalizing of Buddhist statutes.
e) April 2019: Easter Sunday Massacre targeting Christians and Westerners: 300+ killed.

**Wanathavilluwa is kind of middle of nowhere, big (for SL) rolling coconut Farms/estates and scrub jungle, but still a center.  10 km from Wilpattu National Park (Jungle).  140 km from the Colombo center.   From nearby Kalpitiya or Karaithivu by  boat approx 100 km to Dhanuskodi or Toothukudi

Mohamed Zahran (Abu Ubaida) also called Moulvi Zahran Hashim

Ancillary Information
a) National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) and leader Mohamed Zahran (Abu Ubaida) also called Moulvi Zahran Hashim were responsible for the massacre.
b) Note there is Sri Lanka Towheeth Jamaath (SLTJ)., Ceylon Towheeth Jamaath (CTJ)and a  Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamaath.
c)  Apparently Moulvi Zahran Hashim and NTJ have/had YouTube videos in Tamil calling for killing of Kafirs (non Muslims) and jihad. The local villagers say those videos were common and had watched at least some of them.

What can be done

a)  Stop teaching of Arabic after school.  All the Muslim children in this village do two hours of Arabic lessons after school. Prevention is better than cure
b) Moulavi/Lebbes visiting Pakistan or Saudi Arabia should be kept under investigation.
c) Madrassas should be investigated.
d) Either heavy military presence in mono ethnic enclaves, including Jaffna. Or change in population composition, if needs be by State intervention, so be it.
e) Foreign Aid, donations cannot be to a single ethnic group or religion.

Some excerpts

http://www.ft.lk/top-story/Blame-game-over-terror-attacks/26-676853
Meanwhile, Highways and Road Development Minister Kabir Hashim claimed that some of the members linked to the NTJ and suspected to be responsible for the terror attacks on Sunday had earlier been arrested over the Wanathawilluwa explosives raid on 18 January but were later released.

“I have been informed that one or two persons that were arrested during Wanathawilluwa explosive haul were released by the Police because of political influence. There is speculation that one person that got released was involved in a suicide attack on Sunday,” he added. However, Hashim said that he could only confirm this information within the next couple of days.

Police also identified the suicide bomber of the Shangri-La Hotel as Imzaan Seelavan. Presenting evidence before the Colombo Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, Police said that Seelavan’s wife, his brother and two children had died in the explosion in Dematagoda on Sunday.

Seelavan, who was an owner of a factory in the Wellmapitiya area, had about 100 people in his employment, Police told courts. Nine of his employees had been arrested during a joint operation by the Colombo Crimes Division and Terrorist Investigation Department (TID). The nine suspects were remanded till 6 May. Court ordered Police to conduct an in-depth investigation and present the findings to Court. The magistrate also gave permission for Police to obtain phone records of the nine suspects.

The three Policemen who died in the Dematagoda blasts were posthumously awarded promotions.

-----------------------------------------------

Video of alleged Sri Lanka suspect moments before blast. Looks a nice peaceful run of the mill guy.
Pats the head of a little child before he walks into the church and detonates the bomb.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/04/22/sri-lanka-attack-new-surveillance-video-kiley-pkg-lead-vpx.cnn

The Norwegian Tamil Diaspora

Life on the Outside: The Tamil Diaspora and Long Distance Nationalism by Øivind Fuglerud (1999).

Not a review of the book, just excerpts.  I found the book unbiased in my opinion.  The first chapters are a background of how the separatist movement evolved. The latter chapters are on the dynamics of the Tamil Diaspora in Norway.  The excerpts are from that part of of the book.

• Link to the pdf of the book at end of post.  
• YouTube video of life in the Tundra at end of post.

Vasanthan, Thank you very much for sending the book link

Excerpts

A more radical change in climate and nature than that between Sri Lanka and Norway is difficult to imagine and if one is going directly the journey may be made in less than twelve hours. One Tamil lady explained to me how, arriving in the middle of winter with the snowdrifts high against the houses, she believed that people in this part of the world lived in underground caves

A refugee counsellor in the northern part of the country told me how a young Tamil boy due to be settled in the township where she worked had desperately clung on to the aeroplane steps, refusing to come with her into town. Seeing the barren, snow-covered environment he was convinced he was being banished to somewhere outside human habitation.

When he was moving to another town I asked Sri, a moderate LTTE supporter, how he would go about getting acquainted if he met a fellow countryman at his new working place. He answered: I will begin by asking him if he has any news from home, that is our standard opening. Then I will ask him what he thinks about this or that of the recent development in Sri Lanka. If I understand he supports the movement I may invite him home. If he criticises the Tigers but is basically neutral, we may keep on talking at work. I am not a fanatic, I don’t mind that. If I understand he is a member of one of the other groups, however, I will break off. I don’t want to socialise with traitors.

In dealing with fellow countrymen there is always the possibility that actions in Norway will have consequences in Sri Lanka. Tamil refugees are not fleeing a common enemy, the violence is within as much as on the outside. ‘They are here, don’t speak’, newcomers will be informed upon arrival. ‘LTTE is here, I cannot speak’

Even Wilson, a founding member of the LTTE who was permitted to leave the organisation after a dramatic escape from Batticaloa prison in the early 1980s, found that after finally obtaining a visitor’s visa for his mother she was being held back byhis former friends in Jaffna. ‘ Theyjust want to remind me that they know where I am’, he said to me. ‘They are afraid that after ten years in Norway I may be tempted to write a book or something.’ In fact, from 1990 this effort to execute control beyond their own borders has been institutionalised through a very strict exit control in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka, which includes the obligatory signing of a ‘contract’ by a guarantor staying behind.

As already indicated, in Norway many Tamil refugees have in fact violated the ‘first-country’ regulation on their way. To remain in Norwaytheymust make up a storyand stick to it.

The idea that Tamils in exile tend to give each other away is part of the current self-understanding, a situation which prevents a communicative sharing of life histories. Most of my informants asked me not to tell their stories to other Tami

Another man asked me to take care of his passport when he was kicked out by his wife and had to staywith friends for some time. ‘You cannot trust Tamils when it comes to passports’, was his laconic comment

When the possibility of sending home Tamil asylum seekers came up for renewed
discussion in 1994, a frenzybroke out in one of the small northern settlements. It incited people to go to the police on their own initiative and provide what little information they had about their neighbours. Within a few days local immigration authorities were able to establish that, of the 120 Tamils resident in the village, more than 40 had been living in Switzerland before coming to Norway.

For example, it is a well-known fact among Tamils that in Norway the local LTTE people were for a number of years allowed to monopolise positions as interpreters for the immigration police.
That interaction between a police officer and a refugee in a situation of interrogation is on unequal terms, defined by the context and scale of Western immigration, is readily understandable. But when the refugee is afraid of telling his story to the police officer because of the interpreter’s connections to the militant opposition in Sri Lanka and this interpreter is employed by the Norwegian police, where do we draw the boundary of the system?


In terms of inter-personal relationships social fragmentation is not readily apparent to outsiders. To a Norwegian the first impression of Tamil life is one of dense sociality.

the divide among Tamils in Norway has been on an LTTE /anti-LTTE basis. LTTE is today the only militant group with a properly working organisation in Norway, keeping offices in the main cities and having more or less official representatives in most Tamil settlements.

Prabhakaran, lacking resources of his own, had temporarily joined the organisation TELO which was then under leadership of two militant leaders called Kuttimani and Thangathurai. Together with them he was supposed to have taken part in a famous armed robbery of the Neervely Bank in Jaffna. The second was that subsequently Prabhakaran had personally tipped off the Sri Lankan police on the whereabouts of Kuttimani and Thangathurai, this information leading to their arrest and, as a result of this arrest, their death in the Wellikade prison massacre.

On 1 May 1994 the writer and publisher, Sabaratnam, was killed by unidentified gunmen at his home in Paris

Critics of the LTTE in Norway pointed out to me that shortly before his death Sabaratnam had written an article in the Canadian magazine Thayagam. In this article Sabaratnam had observed that all who participated in the Neervely Bank robbery, except Prabhakaran himself, were now dead, killed either by the Sri Lankan authorities or by the LTTE. He implied that Prabhakaran saw it in his interest to remove the other participants in the action in order to conceal his own co-operation with TELO.
Sabaratnam had promised to return with another article disclosing the real story behind the robbery and the capture of Kuttimani and Thangathurai, but was killed before this could take place – allegedly by the LTTE itself. By the adherents of the Thayagam version, the killing of Sabaratnam and Prabhakaran’s betrayal in the late 1970s were seen as closely connected events which should make people turn their backs on LTTE activities in exile. Not only did Prabhakaran’s tip-off constitute a collaboration with the enemy, but the killing of Sabaratnam reached the lowest possible level of human baseness. It was claimedby people familiar with the early history of the militant movement that in the mid-1970s, years before the Neervely robbery, when Sabaratnam himself was a political activist in Jaffna, he had taken Prabhakaran into his house while he was wanted by the police and had kept him in hiding for several weeks, putting his own life in danger. Repaying this old debt with murder constituted a breach with the militants’ most fundamental ‘code of arms’ and, by implication, left his organisation, LTTE, without any legitimate claim for support.

Tamils are the group of immigrants with the highest rate of employment and with the lowest level of welfare support in Norway. One reason for this situation is the acceptance of the kind of work which is not in demand. In Oslo, according to a recent statistical survey (Djuve and Hagen 1995), only 1.3 per cent of Tamils’ income comes from welfare, as compared to, for instance, 41.7 per cen among Somalis and 37.5 per cent among Vietnamese. In fact, the Tamil level of welfare support is lower than among Norwegians (2 per cent).

In this rather inhospitable area Sri Lankan Tamils have won a reputation as workers in the factories where fish is cut and packed. Even if the numbers are small, seldom more than 50 to 100 in one village, statistics will show that in several villages Tamils represent 5 to 10 per cent of the total population

In the anthropological literature the dowry has generally been regarded as a pre-mortem inheritance to the daughters of a family (Comaroff 1980). In the prevailing war situation it is normally a chosen son who pre mortem inherits the realisable capital of the family and invests it in migration against taking further responsibility for his native family upon himself. This implies, inter alia, that he must procure his sisters’ dowries before establishing a family on his own.  (my comment: This is one of the biggest differences between Tamil and Sinhalese culture, among the Tamils (and northern muslims) the house goes to the daughters, among the Sinhalese the house goes to the son)


most Tamil asylum seekers arriving in the early 1980s had been granted recognition as refugees while those arriving after 1986 had not. In their understanding this was related to the fact that most of these early applicants had been active LTTE-members, in other words that Norwegian authorities intervene and take sides in internal conflicts, caring less about the killed than about the killers.

from people who have fled to get away from their dictatorship in Sri Lanka and have relatives still suffering under their rule there. It is here, at this precise point, that the spirit of selfsacrifice of the LTTE soldiers becomes important. The actual materiality of death makes it difficult not to believe the LTTE when they say that their fighters die on behalf of the Tamil nation. Even people who in public take upon themselves the burden of speaking against the LTTE may sometimes admit in private conversations that, emotionally, they are not able to free themselves from sympathy for the organisation and its cause.

In 1903, for example, there were 2021 Jaffna-Tamils employed as functionaries in the federated Malay States Railways compared to 84 Sinhalese, 278 Malays and 1084 Chinese (Ramasamy 1988).In 1903, for example, there were 2021 Jaffna-Tamils employed as functionaries in the federated Malay States Railways compared to 84 Sinhalese, 278 Malays and 1084 Chinese (Ramasamy 1988).

The main reasons why Ceylon Tamils were favoured by the British administrators were their recognised industriousness and their fluency in English. As noted in Chapter 2, at the turn of the century the Tamil community already had a long-standing relationship with English speaking missionaries. The acquiring of language proficiency was, however, not a passive process. Education was an asset seized upon by the ambitious, something that aspiring Jaffna families put their minds to without regard for the costs.

Migration to areas like British Malaya was clearly one way of ‘converting . English education into cash’. The Money Order remittances returned to Ceylon in a good year like 1918 totalled 736,652 Ceylon rupees from the Federated Malay States and 289,651 rupees from the Straits Settlements, quite substantial amounts at that time. The importance of these remittances was such that on two occasions, with a twentyseven years’ interval, the government agent in the Northern Province found it necessary to point out that it was the money coming from Malaya which accounted for the relative prosperity of Jaffna (Ceylon Administrative Report 1903 and 1930).https://zodml.org/sites/default/files/%5BIvind_Fuglerud%2C_Oivind_Fuglerud%5D_Life_on_the_Outs.pdf

The Numbers: Ethnic Cleansing and Diaspora of Lankan Tamils

There have been a few comments with accusations of Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing of Tamils by the Sri Lankan Govt.

• 35% Sri Lankan Tamils live in Sinhalese Majority areas..In comparison only 1% Sinhalese live in Tamil majority areas.
• The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora is 22% of the Sri Lankan Tamil Population

Lankan Tamils Living among Sinhalese
35% of the Sri Lankan Tamils live in Sinhalese majority areas. 
The numbers are from the 2012 census.  The third column (in Sinhala) are the Indian/Upcountry Tamils.  In comparison less than 1% Sinhalese live in Tamil majority regions.

Diaspora Sri Lankan Tamils
A number that has been thrown is 30% of Sri Lankan Tamils live outside the country.   The numbers say that it is 22%.
Not all of the Diaspora are refugees
a) Some migrate for economic and education reasons
b) The LTTE one child policy.  The LTTE required one child per family to become cannon fodder.   If the family had money, the LTTE would arrange to smuggle the child out to a Western country as a refugee. Thereafter the refugee would have to make monthly donations too.
 

:

         


Mass expulsion of Muslims from Batticoloa, Mannar and Jaffna
http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/26412

Another view of the Rohingya issue in Myanmar.

Another view of the Rohingya issue in Myanmar.

Apparently Ata Ullah the leader of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)  possibly had training under the Taliban.

excerpts from Moon of Alabama

While the ethnic conflict in Rankine state is very old, it has over the last years morphed into an Jihadist guerilla war financed and led from Saudi Arabia. The area is of geo-strategic interest:

Pipelines from the western coast of Myanmar eastwards to China allow hydrocarbon imports from the Persian Gulf to China while avoiding the bottleneck of the Strait of Malacca and disputed parts of the South China Sea.  It is in "Western interest" to hinder China's projects in Myanmar. Inciting Jihad in Rakhine could help to achieve that. There is historic precedence for such a proxy war in Burma. During World War II British imperial forces incited the Rohingya Muslim in Rakhine to fight Burmese nationalist Buddhists allied with Japanese imperialists.

There is no question that Rohingya have suffered discrimination.

However, it has now morphed into a Jihad. The jihad, fueled and funded by interested parties (US thru proxy Saudi Arabia) in order to destabilize Myanmar which getting into the Chinese Orbit.

The playbook is very similar to the LTTE and Tamils. India funded and trained the LTTE, to destabilize Sri Lanka which was coming into the US orbit. Of course the SL govt compounded the problem e.g. 83 riots authored by JR.

The current violence started in  October 2016. Atta Ullah's  group started to attack police and other government forces in the area. On August 25 2017 Ata Ullah's  group attacked 30 police stations and military outposts and killed some 12 policemen. The army and police responded, as is usual in this conflict, by burning down Rohingya townships suspected of hiding guerilla forces. To escape the growing violence many local Arakanese Buddhist flee their towns towards the capitol of Rankine. Local Rohingya Muslim flee across the border to Bangladesh.

Many say There is ample evidence of ethnic cleansing with impunity, perpetrated by the military government, which amounts to genocide.
So by the same logic, the  SL govt would be guilty of ethnic cleansing and genocide of Tamils ?. Really, thats a very serious allegation.

As Razib Kahn says " In the short-term the killing of infants and raping of women (if  true) has to stop. But these simple answers have behind them lurking deeper complexities. While agreeing upon the urgency of action now, we need to be very careful to not turn complex human beings into angels and demons. We have enough history in the recent past that that sort of model only leads to tragedy down the line, as those who we put utmost faith in fail us due to their ultimate humanity".

I would suggest a little more back ground reading on a complex issue without making statements based on a black or white view.

Also read

• Rohingya unmasking complexity in a world we want simple
  https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/09/03/rohingya-unmasking-complexity-in-a-world-we-want-simple/

• https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/09/06/burma-can-thank-the-british-for-its-current-mess/
• False News and Photos
  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41123878

Ex-LTTE cadres protest NPC takeover of Army-managed farms and pre-schools

Ex-LTTE cadres,  carrying placards went in the procession, chanting slogans demanding that their livelihood not be hampered by handing over the agricultural farms, managed by the Army, to the Northern Provincial Council.

The participants at the demonstration pointed out that more than 10,000 ex-LTTE cadres would be jobless if the farms run by the Army are taken over by the NPC and they would also be mismanaged. According to the participants, each person employed at the agricultural farms managed by the Army, earns nearly Rs 30,000 and the payment is made by the Ministry Defence.

They also pointed out that a large number of rehabilitated ex-women cadres and women from the families living below the poverty line have also been employed by the Civil Security Department (CSD) as pre-school teachers.

The demonstrators pointed out that the CDS trained pre-school teachers would also be in dilemma if the NPC takes over the pre-schools. A petition, urging the government not to get rid of the Army managed agricultural farms and the pre-schools, run by the CDS, was handed over to the District Secretary of Kilinochchi by the protestors yesterday.

from
http://www.ceylontoday.lk/article20170401CT20170930.php? by  Ananth Palakidnar
http://srilankamirror.com/news/2839-ex-ltte-members-stage-protest-pictures 

Who was worse JR or MR

I am a Sri Lankan and part Tamil.  One who did not even bother getting a green card after living and working for  22 years in the US (Student Visa and 3 H1B Visas).

Everyone else conveniently has forgotten JR Jayawardena the architect of the 1978 Executive Presidency.

I have not forgotten.

JR The one who after the 1983 riots said in Daily Telegraph," Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy.

There has been nothing worse than the 83 riots in Sri Lankas modern history. It was state sponsored and the goons had a list of tamil houses. They came to our house and it was the "singhe" ending and my sisters and mothers fluent Sinhalese and light skin that spared us.

You could not travel around the country, if you had a tamil name (I have a very tamil middle name) you were harassed at every check point.

My mother and father were traditionally UNP ers except for once my mother voted for Mrs Bandaranayake.  Woman support.

My mother and sisters still support Mahinda Rajapakse because of the peace he brought to the country.  And we dont have even a remote connection to the Rajapakse corriodors.

Even at lesser level we can keep our windows and doors open because there are almost no drug addicts (kudu karayas) ready to steal the smallest thing,

On the ethnic question, Jayewardene's legacy is bitterly divisive. When he took office, ethnic tensions were present but the country as a whole was at peace. By the end of his tenure, Sri Lanka was facing not one but two civil wars, both featuring unprecedented levels of violence and brutality.

MR has done nothing even close and the country is at peace.

Though Jayewardene indeed did not take measures to stop the attack on Tamils, he was not opposed to them personally, only politically. One of his most esteemed friends was a supreme court judge of Tamil ethnicity, a member of an elite family and raised in Colombo, but who was strongly linked to his Jaffna Tamil heritage. This is but one close Tamil friend of the president's, and it is quite clear that he was not a racist but rather a man who knew how to exploit racism to win the majority.

Jayewardene moved to crack down on the growing activity of Tamil militant groups. He passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1979, giving police sweeping powers of arrest and detention. This only escalated the ethnic tensions. Jayewardene claimed he needed overwhelming power to deal with the militants. He had likely SLFP presidential nominee Sirimavo Bandaranaike stripped of her civic rights and barred from running for office for six years, based her decision in 1976 to extend the life of parliament. This ensured that the SLFP would be unable to field a strong candidate against him in
the 1982 election, leaving his path to victory clear. This election was held under the 3rd amendment to the constitution which empowered the president to hold a Presidential Election anytime after the expiration of 4 years of his first term.

Forced Migration by own Militia

Does this excerpt sound familiar.

The FDLR understood how to win over the do-gooders: You win by putting your people in misery, not by standing up for yourselves. Leftist victim-rhetoric has a lot to answer for in the pro-Hutu tilt of European opinion. In fact, Europeans raised on victim-rhetoric, like Georges Ruggiu, actually served as mouthpieces for the genocide while it was happening.

So the Hutu militias turned their guns on their own people and led a forced migration, out of Rwanda into Kivu in Eastern Congo..

More at
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/all-the-creeps-are-cheering/

Sri Lanka: still difficult to ‘bell the cat’

In all a reasonable assessment of the situation in Sri Lanka by Dr Alexander (Sandy) Gordon.  Dr Gordon has a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has worked as an academic and senior public servant. He retired from the Australian National University in 2011, where he was a professor in he College of Asia and the Pacific. He is the author of a number of books on India and the Indian Ocean region.

The Article

Sri Lanka is a small country of about the population of Australia. Its location astride the major energy sea lanes of communication (SLOCS) of the Indian Ocean and just south of behemoth India, however, puts it in a strategic box seat for the forthcoming struggle for influence over the liquid energy requirements of the East Asian economic giants, including China.

Until about a decade ago, the island was a Western-leaning democracy, but one with a generational civil war involving human rights violations on both side. The denouement of the war in May 2009 saw the death of the head of the Tamil Tigers, Vellupillai Prabhakaran. Few who were not Tamil Tiger loyalists would have mourned the passing of the homicidal head of the feared organisation. Fewer still would have regretted the ending of a civil war that had lasted since 1983 and caused an estimated 80,000 deaths.

But the war ended amidst concerns about serious human rights violations involving deaths of civilian Tamils that the Tigers had used as a ‘human shield’ against the final onslaught of the Sri Lankan army. The US and other Western powers sought a pause in the fighting, threatening to withhold a much-needed IMF loan. But President Rajapaksa was able to cock a snook at Washington because of support from China, Iran and Pakistan. China is also involved in developing a massive port at strategically-located Hambantota, on the southern tip of the island. The ability of the Rajapaksa government to withstand Western blandishments signalled an important game-change, in which the West could no longer use its financial clout for human rights objectives.

But the human rights issues won’t go away. Channel Four, which had levelled the initial charges of a civilian massacre, recently published footage that seemed to suggest that the Sri Lankan army had executed Brabharakaran’s twelve year old son. The Financial Times also reports that at least 39 media workers have been killed or disappeared over the last seven years and that Reporters without Borders places Sri Lanka 163 of 179 countries assessed in terms of press freedom.

After the war, the head of the armed forces, General Sareth Fonseka, split from Rajapaksa and fought him in presidential elections. He lost heavily to the popular President, who was riding a wave of economic and military success and who had assumed many of the levers of democratic power. Fonseka was subsequently jailed but has now been released.

Recently Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice was also removed on alleged grounds of impropriety. She had challenged an important law designed to increase the hold of the central government over the provinces and seemingly entrench military rule of the Tamil areas. The new Chief Justice, a former Attorney General, is being boycotted by the Bar Association.

More seriously for the long-term, the government has shunned any peace and reconciliation process or any move toward autonomy for the Tamil minority, arguing that the best way forward is to reintegrate the Tamil majority areas into the Island’s general pattern of strong growth and development.

President Rajapaksa is meanwhile forging ahead to turn Sri Lanka into an ‘Asian tiger’ – a model that is not only being emulated on the economic front but also on the democratic, given the emerging authoritarian overtones. After a sharp fall during the GFC, economic growth, which had typically been in the region of 6% throughout the 2000s, rose to about 8% over 2010-11 (but has fallen to 4.8% in the latest quarter of 2012).

Sri Lanka’s human rights issues and its forthright approach to the Tamils have triggered a range of reactions.

India is struggling to contain China’s growing influence in the Indian Ocean Region and New Delhi’s predilection would be to go soft on human rights. But it is also facing a national election, and the plight of the Tamils has triggered a political response in Tamil Nadu. This has caused India to vote against Sri Lanka on the human rights at the UNHCR.

The West, while its media might continue to seek to expose abuses, can do little, for reasons stated above. Australia’s dilemma is acute. Already in receipt of Tamil boat people fleeing alleged persecution, the last thing Canberra would want is a recrudescence of the guerrilla campaign, which would see rising human rights abuses and larger numbers of asylum seekers. On the other hand, Australia needs the Sri Lankan government’s assistance to ensure that boats do not leave the Island. So here we have it: the old Asian dilemma. How is growth and stability to be set against human rights and fully functioning democratic institutions? How should an ever-weakening West (at least in comparative terms) intervene in what has become the new great game – one in which it is no longer necessarily the central player?

Sri Lanka encapsulates all these issues and provides a fascinating glimpse into an otherwise opaque future.

One of the comments

James Smith - April 7, 2013 “excruciating human rights abuses of Tamils” sounds like an exaggeration given that it has been proven by a number of international agencies that the situation in the north and east of Sri Lanka has stabilised and is peaceful. Sorry, I cannot agree with such a sweeping statement on a number of levels.
It is also the responsibility of the Tamil political parties, as much it is Sinhalese parties, to engage in meaningful dialogue and not lobby for a separate state. Australia will thankfully not endorse any movement that will endanger India’s internal stability, nor endorse a movement that aims to undermine the region’s cohesion. South Asia is not South Sudan. Its important this be understood very clearly.

From http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/blogs/southasiamasala/2013/02/23/sri-lanka-still-difficult-to-bell-the-cat

DBS Jeyaraj: Being Selective with Links, Credits and Titles

DBS Jeyaraj is a great journalist with a lot of insight, connections and knowledge of history. A fantastic combination. In very recent past, with the advent of online journalism he used to edit transCurrents,com and continues maintain and write to dbsjeyaraj.com.
  
I have just one gripe he does not credit online sources with a link even though he reproduces the article verbatim.  So if you want to see the original source, links comments and all, you better be a good google searcher and also have some time on your hands.  I assumed that this might be because DBSJ did not know how to make links, i.e. give him the benefit of the doubt.

Then I saw that article about a Tamil in Australia Tortured and Raped. That had the proper link to the Australian source at the bottom of the page.

Not having a proper link to the original source may appear trivial. However often there is a lot of ancillary information in the form of links, comments and authors background that gives a larger perspective.

Say for example this article at dbsjeyaraj.com titled
    Canada May be Alone Among Commonwealth Leaders in Adopting a Decision to Boycott CHOGM Summit in Sri Lanka"

However the orginal article by Natalie Brender is titled
    Stephen Harper government ‘pandering to diasporas’? Not so fast, pundits: Brender
    Obviously the original title is is quite different from the title given by DBSJ to the same article he reproduces verbatim.

Natalie Brenders article is a reply to  Huffpost Article written by Althia Raj

Stephen Harper To Skip Commonwealth Meeting In Sri Lanka, Citing Human Rights Abuses
The article basically implies that political needs have made PM Harper decide to boycott  Commonwealth Meeting. To quote
David Carment, a professor of international affairs and a fellow at the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, said Harper’s decision to boycott the event is an effort to get the Tamil community — which has historically voted Liberal — on side.
“I don’t think it has much to do with a principled foreign policy that the government claims to be advancing here,” Carment said. “This is pretty much pandering to a domestic audience.”

Then there is the Comment from disillusioned 2010
Back in Opposition in 2005, Minister Jason Kenney stood in Beijing and called China a “totalitarian one-party state, he criticized Paul Martin for soft-pedaling human rights abuses in favour of trade. Stephen Harper promised he would not “sell-out to the almighty dollar” by allowing human rights cases to be overshadowed by the prospect of improved trade... Who believes these jokers anymore...Commonwealth values, does this government even know what that means.... Once they find something to trade with Sri Lanka it will all go out the window.

So I think DBSJ is being disingenuous at best when he changes title and does not link to article he reproduces.

2004 Trip to Jaffna thru then LTTE territory: Part 2

See here for 2004 Trip to Jaffna thru then LTTE territory: Part 1
 
Day 3: Invitation to LTTE exhibition. Locate place to stay in Jaffna

Hotel Jaffna Town

Day 4:  Kayts to Pungutivu:  Nagadipa (Nainathivu), Kobbekaduwa Memorial. Beer Dinner, 
Day 5:  Dry Fish at Check Point:  LTTE exhibition. A9 Restaurant.

Day 3:
We get the invitation to the LTTE exhibition   Say we will have a look on the way back,
Leave early morning as in 6:00 pm.  There is no real food around.  I was hoping to get thosai.

Get to Pallai (I think)  check point.  Long lines, its around 7:00 am in the morning. The bus crowd was the reason for the lines.  Got thru the lines in about 45 minutes.  Then drove to Jaffna town.  Drove around checking out various places for quite a while.  There was this place on the KKS road, old house, attached outdoor bathroom all what I would like but for whatever reason decided against. Finally checked into place. I cant remember the name. It was just north of the Bus stand, on one of the cross streets off Kasturiya or KKS Road.  If anyone recognizes the place from the photo please comment.

Hotel Jaffna Town

Cant recall much of the rest of the day, and no photos to jog the memory either.


Day 4:
After breakfast left to go to Nagadipa (Nainathivu). Basically drove thru Kayts, and in Pungutivu (Punkudutivu) stuck to the southern coast roads and on the return journey the northern coast roads. Went thru very small villages and ended up at Kurikadduwan.  I am surprised I dont have photos, probably a combination of having to drive, and the gallery comments from companion, who knows.

Pungutivi and Nainativu (Nagadipa)

Anyway end up at the jetty to Nagadipa.  Just beautiful , reminds me of Greece/Mediterranean photos I have seen.  Why go to Greece when you can go to Jaffna/Pungutivu. Windsurfing, Kite surfing, flat water I would have put down money to buy beach front property in Pungutivu if was not scared about land mines (remember this was 2004)

Inside Ferry to Nagadipa

The ferry ride was fantastic, just wondered when it would sink.  There was a something that looked like a cannon on the top of the of boat. Walked to the Nagadipa Buddhist Temple, 0.5 km or so.  The Head of the temple was not there, so no real historical viewpoint. The Buddhist temple appeared to be very modern (rebuilt).  Reminded me of Catalina Island (off LA).  (Note to self: Do Delft by Bus some day)

Approach to Nagadipa

Spent a hour or two. Then headed back to the ferry.  We had to wait a hour or so for the ferry to arrive.  Back at Kurikadduwan/Pungutivu.  Just off the ferry landing, there were a couple of stalls selling dried fish.  Got to chatting, and one stall owner said he was from Matara originally, married locally and was considered a Tamil.  Apparently the pilgrimage ("Vandana") buses would also arrive on the way to Nagadipa and on return and buy dried fish.  I think it was around LKR 100/kg r and we bought about 10-20 kg.   Spent a pleasant half hour  or more chatting.

Drove back on the northern side of Pungutivu and stopped at Denzil Kokkekaduwa memorial.  Arrived back at the place we were staying. Had a shower and inquired about a place to have a beer or two.

Located this place about a kilometer from where we were staying.  Dont know the name of the hotel (again if someone recognizes from photo please comment). Had dinner, a couple of beers and apparently the locals had never seen a woman before, at least the way they behaved (That outlook seems to have changed when I went around in 2011).  Normally dont drink and drive but somehow managed to find my way back.

Nagadipa Temple

Day 5:
Left after breakfast. I think we got to the Pallai (?)  LTTE checkpoint/immigration.  Had to deal with why we had 5-10 kg of Dry Fish, were we doing business.  Convinced immig that this was to be distributed to friends and family. Was given the ok and headed  toward Kilinochi.
Went and had a look at the LTTE exhibition.  Various arms, simplistic figures showing tactics as to how positions had been won.  I think Elephant Pass was a big one. Most were happy/proud to see we were even interested in looking at the exhibits.  I asked if we could take photos and they were happy, no different from any other Sri Lankan.  Then a supervisor (or something like that) said they needed to check and it turned out I we were not allowed to take photos within the exhibition.   Walked back to the gate and asked again if I take photos.  I was told that I could take photos out of the grounds. I hope those whom I spoke to have survived. They were normal average people living in a time and space that was beyond their control.

Headed to the A9 restaurant. The front was parked with UN etc SUV's.  Many tables full of people, including some female Tiger cadre in uniform.  Now that I think about it, there were no male Tiger cadre in uniform to be seen during the whole trip.  Managed to take a photo while pretending it was a photo of someone I was talking to.  The food was good, cant recall if it was vegetarian. What I recall was no tip was accepted. Headed back to Apura around 2 pm.

Nagadipa Temple	Causeway Nagadipa to Pungutivu
Approach to Ferry, Nagadipa	Approach to Ferry, Pungutivu
Denzil Kobbekaduwa Memorial, Pungutivu	Denzil Kobbekaduwa Memorial, Pungutivu
Restaurant in Jaffna Town
LTTE Exhibition	LTTE Exhibition
A9 Restaurant Kilinochi. Note Tiger cadre	A9 Restaurant, Kilinochi

2004 Trip to Jaffna thru then LTTE territory: Part 1

Day 1: Anuradhapura, Tissawewa Resthouse, Nightmares
Day 2:  Omanthai Check Point. No Vehicle book.  Trouble at LTTE "immigration". Kilinochi Bar
 .

Tissawewa Resthouse

This a story of a trip to Jaffna in 2004 during the ceasefire.  Went thru the LTTE "immigration", visited a LTTE exhibition and visited Nagadipa.  The trip was done in a rental car, which becomes relevant to one of the incidents of the trip.

Day 1: Arrived in Anuradhapura and stayed at the Tissawewa Resthouse an Old colonial building, Some  reviews of the place are not flattering, but I loved the place and seemed reasonably priced in 2004. The one unusual thing for me was that I had some rather nasty vivid dreams.  I normally dont dream, specially at night when I am asleep.  When awake, I dream or more like wishful thinking.  Anyway the dream was really scary. I hear people being chased around, screaming outside the resthouse. Then many footsteps running up the stairs and starting to batter down my room. As the door gets knocked down I scream and woken up.   I wonder whether it was the many beers and lots

Tissawewa Resthouse

of meat/bites in the evening that triggered these dreams. Or were there memories of gory deeds of a two thousand year history lingering in the area.

Day 2: Left Anuradhapura, stopped over at the Army war memorial just in the outskirts of town. Arrived at Omantahi checkpoint at 3:00 p.m. The Army guys said if I needed to go thru I had to have a "Vahane  Potha", i.e Vehicle book.  This is in effect the title registration in the US, but differs in being a book with a history of the owners of the vehicle owners being recorded.  Obviously being a rental car  there was no "Book".  Explained to the Army guy as such and they were very corteous and said that if I got a waiver from the SP (Superintendent of Police) in Vavuniya I could go thru. Another bombshell, was that the checkpoint closes at 5:00 pm, apparently common knowledge, but not for me.

Army Memorial

Raced back to Vavuniya, but the SP had gone out and was due around 4:00 p.m. He was back and was able to see me at around 4:10 pm. The SP asked questions as to why I wanted to go to Jaffna?, just see the place etc.  I explained about the rental car issue and the SP asked if the car owner would mind me taking the car to Jaffna. Replied I dont think Prassanna would mind. The SP asked for the phone number and luckily I had it with me. The SP calls and Prassanna say its fine with him and for me to be safe.  The SP calls the checkpoint and asks them to allow me to pass thru. As I am about to leave I give him a visiting card of place in Dodanduwa/Berathuduwa I wanted to run as cottages and eventually retire (Remember the dreaming, wish full thinking while I am awake).   It turned out the SP's hometown was from the next village, Pinkanda and his father had been in the Police force and the two sons were both SP's.

Drive like crazy to Omanthai Checkpoint.  I am no fan of driving fast on Sri Lankan roads.  You are more likely to collide with organic entities like people on bicycles, people/dogs/cats/cows crossing roads. Colliding with a another metal conveyance other than a three wheeler/tuk tuk is to some extent a match of equals.
Anyway get to the Army checkpoint.  Its about 4:55 pm and they are kind of reluctant to allow me thru. Do a bit of pleading and am allowed to go thru.

The fun (in retrospect) begins.  I had to drive very slowly from the Sri Lankan check point to the LTTE checkpoint. Probably separated by about 200 meters, the width of two school (Sri Lankan) grounds.  Sandbags, sentry posts on either side.  Reminds me (now) of World War II movies.  Too bad I couldn't do the Tourist photos.

Drive very slowly and arrive at the LTTE barricade, I think there were two one for buses and the other for vans cars  and the like.  Get to the "Immigration" counter and have to fill in some forms. Move to the next counter, a table in a Cadjan shed.  As an aside I think cadjan sheds are better places to wait compared to a cement block, asbestos roofed oven.

The next table was when the trouble began. I was questioned as to why I was allowed to go thru the checkpoint just before closing and not having a "vehicle book". My companion was taken to a separate place and questioned as well. Then they found I had a laptop and CD's.  The CD's were empty and were back up in case I ran out of digital camera space, 1GB or less.  LTTE immigration had got into their head I was planning to sell porno in their territory.  I am sure there was "questionable" stuff on my laptop.
When against the wall, self preservation kicks in. So dropped my last name, which was well known  in Jaffna apparently in the last century.  This was a name no longer recognizable among the current Tamil generation. Anyway after two hours we were allowed to leave.

It was around 7:00 pm when we left the LTTE immigration point.  It was dark drove up slowly for about half mile and there was a small store on the right side of the road.  On the left side of the road was row of lorrys (trucks).  I was dying for a cigarette and  had started smoking again in 2003 after stopping in 1990; divorce and all that kind of thing.  Walked into the store, bought a 20 pack or two of Gold Leaf, which used to be one of the best cigarettes.  Better than the Dunhills of the past, and no question better than the Dunhill of the last decade..

Just as I paid for the cigarettes, this young guy walks in and asks me in fluent Sinhalese to have a chat with him in back shop.  I have seen too many southern smooth talking con artists to be caught in that trap.  This had to be someone from the trucks parked on the side of the road. I used to be sent at times Galle for my school holidays, against the protestations of my father who wanted me sent to the more structured northern relatives who lived/worked in Chilaw, Beruwala, China Bay.  So knew the con artists of the south personally.

The guides would take the tourist who had made arrangements to stay Beatrice House in Galle Fort.  A co-conspirator would travel fast and  stand in front of Beatrice House and pretend to be the owner, and that say the place is full. End result, Tourist is sent to another guest house where the guide gets a kick back.  Beatrice House gets a bad name for over booking and looses a guest.

So now I have a smooth talking young Sinhalese trying get me to chat to him in at the back of a dubious shop. Plus I have about 30K in my pocket. I get my cigarettes and get into the car.  Young guy follows me to the car, says I should talk to him.  He adds if I dont speak to him he will stop me at the next check point.  Really, and I say "Puluvannam Karanna", (If you can, do it).

I drive up and at the next barrier stopped and the young guy comes up on an trail motor bike. He gets into the back of the car. Asks me for ID.  I give him my Sri Lankan ID the NIC (National Identiy Card).  Young guy asks, how were you allowed to go thru without a "vehicle book".  All this conversation is in fluent Sinhalese  My companion and I are really scared. Then Mr. Young Guy says what is your purpose traveling to Jaffna (note its Mr. now).  Mr. Young Guy keeps on questioning and threatening as to our reasons to traveling without having a "vehicle book".  Mr. Young Guy points out he is LTTE by pointing out his suicide necklace.  Mr. Young Guy asks why didnt I talk to him in the shop.  Mr. Young Guy, puts his hands into his pants into his pants and pulls out a metal object. I am frozen, thinking its the end of the line, thats a gun.  Thats when the companion kicked in, she said I had just returned from the the US. Then asked why I didnt stop, she volunteered that I had lot of money in my pocket and I was scared.  The object pulled turns out to be flashlight, and Mr. Young Guy uses it to look at my US Driving license.  Mr. Young Guy says I have nothing to worry about and if I have any trouble I should say to contact Anbu at Omanthai checkpoint. As he leaves he says "Take Care now". Thats not common SL salutation, but very common in the US.

Bar in Kilinochi 2004

Get in the car and drive to Kilinochi at around 8 pm in the night.  the roads are wide, people walking around the sides.  The original plan was to get to Kilinochi and stay in the A9 (more on that later) hotel.  When we get to Kilinochi the place is crowded.  No vacancies in A9.   Find accommodation in place of a side street,  Then we go looking for a place to have a beer.  Found that place.  Plain front end, the interior was say run of the mill for middle class Sri Lanka. i.e. Fountain, small pond. That said they had booze, Old Arrack and above, beer, wine. No tips excepted.  I think there were a couple of Europeans as well.

Next day morning, while looking for breakfast we (more like my companion)  was invited to visit the LTTE exhibition in Kilinochi. Promised we would have a look on our way back.

See here for 2004 Trip to Jaffna thru then LTTE territory: Part 2

Humanitarian Crisis and Genocide: In India or Sri Lanka

This article was written in response to many writers from India (specially Tamil Nadu) who comment about genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.  Approximately half of the North East Tamil population lives in the South, specially in and around the capital Colombo.  I, the blog author am a Tamil too, my fathers ancestry being from the North.    So my apologies to the rest of India.

India has a humanitarian crisis and genocide that targets the Sudra and Dalit population.

a) The  highest illiteracy in the world, child labor/slavery, infant mortality, child abuse, lack of sanitation for more than half the population is a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.

b) These humanitarian crisis targets the Sudra and Dalit population and result in deaths of children in genocidal rates (2 million per year).
c) The government of India has had 60 years to rectify this humanitarian crisis and genocide.
d) There should be a UN resolution, and independent observers to ensure Indian govt compliance to control the humanitarian crisis and genocide of the Sudra and Dalit populations.

It is hypocritical not to consider what is happening in India as genocide and a humanitarian crisis.

The Numbers:
* 2 million children die each year: 27 million children are born each year in India of which 2 million of them do not live to the age of five. (120K (lakhs) in Tamil Nadu)

*12-60 million child workers in India: (700K (lakhs) to 3.5 million in Tamil Nadu)
*Two thirds of children are victims of physical abuse. The majority are beaten in school, and over half have to work seven days a week.
*200 million people in hunger, and over 40% of the children
*60% public defecation. (I am not joking 60% shit in the streets and open).

* The numbers for Tamil Nadu are based on population being 6%  of total Indian population.

Related:
Tamil Nadu and the Govt of India do not allow UNHCR (among others) access to the refugee camps in TN
The lack of direct access to the camps in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu affects UNHCR’s efforts to support the voluntary repatriation of Sri Lankan refugees, though it now conducts repatriation interviews outside the camps, while relying on civil-society groups to monitor the situation within them.
About Sri Lanka the report says
Efforts will continue towards preserving asylum space for refugees according to the country’s positive practice in the past.

Gibson Bateman: Prolific Author on Sri Lanka Human Rights Issues

On and off you find these prolific apparently objective unbiased authors who write "scholarly" articles on controversial subjects such as Sri Lanka's Economy and Human Rights.

Arjuna Sivanathan was one such predicting the dire straits and collapse of the Sri Lankan economy. His pronouncements were given quite a good hearing based on his PhD and Masters in economics from the University of Glasgow and experience Trading Corporate and Sovereign bonds and credit derivatives.  Then it turned out Arjuna no longer worked in Investment Banking and was also a Executive member British Tamil Conservatives and had called for "Sri Lanka must be subject to a regime of punitive economic sanctions".  Suddenly his unbiased "scholarly" predictions were in question.

New on the scene is Gibson Bateman who focuses on Sri Lankan Human Rights issues with many "scholarly" articles in the International Policy Digest,  Foreign Policy Journal and GroundViews (Clicking on the links will list the articles. Foreign Policy Journal calls them "stories")

Gibson Bateman's has written 15 articles over a period of 14 months (Oct 2011 to Dec 2012) makes one starts to wonder what motivates the man to this prolific authorship.

So, lets start with what we know.  According to Gibson Bateman's LinkedIn profile he is a former Peace Corps volunteer (2001-2003) and a Independent Management Consulting Professional.  The blurb heading his articles is that

Gibson Bateman is an International Consultant based in New York City. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Bateman has worked for leading NGOs in Latin America, Africa and South Asia.

 All well and good and impressive. However this does not answer the question what motivates Gibson Bateman to write 15 articles over a 14 month period and also visit Sri Lanka on a Tourist Visa from April 2012 to Jan 2013 (see these articles; Immigration Anxiety and Dengue Fever).  To put it more crudely where is the money.

The International Policy Digest and Foreign Policy Journal are online Journals that accept unsolicited submissions, are not peer reviewed and no compensation provided.  So, these two publications are not really Main Stream Media (MSM) where you get paid for your journalistic efforts. Neither are they peer reviewed Journal.  Truth be told International Policy Digest and Foreign Policy Journal are no different from GroundViews (but fancier names and US based) or a blog with multiple authors (but fancier website).

Now we know that Gibson Bateman is very busy writing for a blog that calls itself a journal and provides no compensation.  Real peer reviewed journal articles requires you to provide funding sources.  International Policy Digest and Foreign Policy Journal are no better than glorified blog and requires no such disclosure.

So how does Gibson Bateman fund his writing and travel to Sri Lanka. I doubt Gibson is going to give us full or for that matter partial disclosure. Given the tenor of Gibson Bateman's articles I am sure your suspicions are no different from mine.

I guess its a case of "Reader Beware" and "Beware of False Prophets".

In My Mother's House: Civil War in Sri Lanka By Sharika Thiranagama

Google Books Preview: Has the Foreword (by Gananath Obeyesekere), Introduction and Acknowledgements. Amazon: Books: USD 23 to 60

Background of Sharika Thiranagama:

Sharika Thiranagama

Normally the parents are not that relevant for the background of an author. In this case it does play a large factor.  Daughter of Dayapala Thirangama. and Dr. Ranjani Thiranagama.  Dayapala Thirangama was a left oriented political activist (I dont know if he was ever affiliated with the JVP) and still writes to Groundviews (List of Dayapala Thirangama's articles at Groundviews).  Ranjani Thiranagama (nee Rajasingham), onetime LTTE member,  head of the Department of Anatomy, University of Jaffna and allegedly shot dead at the age of 35 by Tamil Tigers cadres after she criticized them for their atrocities. Ranjani Thiranagama was a co author of Broken Palmyra

Sharika Thiranagama:

Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Stanford
.

Anyway excerpts from Introduction and Acknowledgements.

Diasporic Tamils in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom mounted campaigns calling for the end of bombing by the Sri Lankan government. Increasingly, the LTTE abroad took over the management of those campaigns, and turned them into massed displays of LTTE flags and demands for the LTTE to be recognized and rescued by foreign governments. The gulf between internally displaced Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka and those in the diaspora who rallied around the LTTE was all too apparent to those of us who had done fieldwork in Sri Lanka. The, support of expatriate Tamils for an increasingly delegitimized and violent LTTE meant that the protests became ineffective and the international community did not hold the Sri Lankan state to account and make it halt its use of heavy weaponry.

described through bombing  forced displacement, rape, recruitment, and so on, events that "happened" "to one," was also, as people frequently described as something that "happened inside one" One common way of describing the war by Tamils in Sri Lanka was to tell me of the fear that they felt toward other Tamils, unsure of who was LTTE and who was not. "There is no trust (nambikkai) among Tamils any more" was a frequent phrase. LTTE's often forcible recruitment of ordinary Tamils from families, and its widespread intelligence network and seeming pervasive presence in the Tamil community had led to a situation where networks of trust among Tamils were shrinking. The battlefields of the war were not only the frontlines where LTTK. cadres and Sri Lankan soldiers died, but were also the internal lives of Tamil communities and families.

Because the conflict has centered on the relationship between the Sri Lankan state ( as "acting for" the Sinhalese majority community) and Sri Lankan Tamils, representations of the ethnic conflict have often neglected the perspectives of Sri Lankan Muslims whose lives have also been indelibly marked by ongoing war. The Northern Muslims I worked with were all forcibly expelled from the north by the LTTE and have lived as collectively displaced people ever since. However, the north became a mono-cultural— if not mono-religious given the large proportion of Christian Tamils— Tamil region only after the expulsion of Muslims. Muslims remain, I argue, the unspoken void of the Tamil nationalist project- The breakdown of Tamil and Muslim relations in violence in the east, and in forcible eviction in the north, has been the major fissure of the 1990s war. Any possible peaceful future in northern and eastern Sri Lanka has to contend with Tamil-Muslim relations (McGilvray 2008).

Furthermore, that this book is about northern Tamils and Muslims is to highlight another contested assumption of pan-regional Tamil and Muslim Identity The pan-regional Tamil identity enshrined at the heart of contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism is historically problematic and regionally contested—most evidently in the schism in the LTTE on regional (north versus east) lines in 2004. Sivathamby (1984) identities three distinct Sri Lankan Tamil regions: the "North," " East," and "Vanni" districts of the North Central province. This regionalization is also important for Sri Lankan Muslims, who can also be subdivided regionally into "Eastern," "Northern" and "Southwest" blocs, though Muslim dispersal across the island, especially in highland Randy, makes the southwest bloc more permeable. Northern and eastern Tamils and Muslims differ in the ways they reckon caste, mosque membership, folk dialects, and family structure (Pfaffcnbergcr 1982; McGil-vray 1982, 1998). Despite national ethnic identities, at a local level northern Tamils and northern Muslims are more alike in social and familial structures, as Tamils and Muslims are in the east.

Jaffna has not stood still for over two hundred years, if ever. For Jaffna Tamils, becoming displaced (idam peyrntha) with little control over ones movement was played out against a longer history of migration as a means of economic and social mobility. The Jaffna peninsula is notable for consistently high rates of out-migration throughout the colonial and post colonial period. Economically marginal to the emerging Sri Lankan plantation economy, and overpopulated (Arasaratnam 1994), the area remained largely rural and underdeveloped, while its highly educated young men and (later) women became salaried labor within the colonial administration in the rest of the island and in the wider British empire of South and South-East Asia (Bastin 1997)" and to a lesser extent Africa. The economy was heavily dependent on remittances, with over 600,000 rupees remitted from outside the island in 1903 (Bastin 1997). By the twentieth century "a sprit of migration mostly by middleclass Tamils, became built into Tamil cultural aspirations" (McDowell 1996: 69). Within the island, Colombo, the capital city, was the favored site of internal migration flows from Jatfna for those seeking salaried work, the flow between Jatfna and Colombo being one of the most consistent migratory flows into Colombo throughout the twentieth century (Don Arachchige 1994: 30). Thus what I describe is not a largely sedentary group of people. Jaffna Tamils to whom movement was unknown, but a people for whom the possibility for chosen migration was always valued. In contrast, until their eviction in Northern Muslims were far more sedentary and less migratory.

Kumaraguru Kugamoorthy, my favorite uncle, a journalist who helped so many And who I remember for his kindness, his big smiles, explosive laughter, and his many stories, disappeared in Colombo on September 13, 1990, falsely accused as an LTTE supporter and taken into an army camp. We have never heard from him again. He leaves behind Thenmoli, his widow who searched for him for years, and Manoujitha, his daughter born in Jaffna days before he disappeared in Colombo, who has never seen him. Their lives are the lives of so many in Sri Lanka—for whom this book is ultimately written.