Honesty vital for peace in Sri Lanka
By JENNIFER GNANA , Posted on » Friday, October 12, 2012
LAST week UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that a political solution had to be reached to resolve the conflict in Sri Lanka.
What he said would mean nothing to the thousands of Tamils scattered around the world, who are too afraid to return to their homeland.
The long-running civil war in the South Asian island nation concluded two years ago, but the deep wounds it left are yet to heal.
Among the Sri Lankan Tamil community in Bahrain, there is still an unsettling feeling about the prospect of sending children home.
Many who fled the civil war sought asylum in Scandinavia or the UK, but others chose to come to the Middle East and there will come a time when they have to return.
The fear is not misplaced as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) once recruited children and women to wage war against the Sri Lankan army to secure a separate Tamil state.
For many years, this beautiful island - inhabited by predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese, Tamils and various ethnic groups such as Malays, Burghers of European descent and Tamil Muslims - was divided by conflict.
Sri Lanka's Tamils allege discrimination by their own government and the scattered Tamil diaspora, which spreads from the Caribbean to Fiji, has over time been successfully integrated into foreign countries.
They have made several political and economic contributions to these states without standing apart and asking for their own country, with little to unite them except the ancient language they still speak.
Which is why, as a Tamil myself, the situation in Sri Lanka has always surprised me.
It is true that the Sri Lankan government has been unfair to the aspirations of some of its minorities, but the path that the LTTE chose - carrying out suicide bombings - did nothing to serve their cause.
The assassination of a former Indian prime minister on Indian soil in the early 90s is just one example.
But the worst atrocities, committed by the Sri Lankan army against Tamils during the last stages of the civil war in 2009, have been forgotten in the name of peace.
The UN estimates that more than 40,000 Tamils were massacred in a demilitarised zone when they were encircled by the oncoming army.
The media was banned and the UN pulled out of the country, making it difficult to estimate accurately and charge the government with war crimes.
The documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, produced by Channel 4 last year, showed gruesome war footage - but was denounced as fake by the Sri Lankan government.
While the LTTE were no angels - allegedly positioning their own people in strategic places to slight the government - the atrocities committed by the army against women and children were horrific.
The fact that this took place in a safe zone and hospitals catered to the wounded makes it all the more unforgivable.
On the surface, everything seems back to normal in Sri Lanka, but it is still astonishing that the international community has yet to condemn the government and start criminal proceedings.
Even a neighbouring country like India, which has a significant Tamil population, has been reluctant to condemn the brutality.
If the Sri Lankan government is really committed to lasting peace in future, it is time it came clean about its own violent past.
