Five Years After May 2009: Blues For Sri Lanka
By Dayan Jayatilleka -May 17, 2014 |
Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
I. “And mine is the sling of David” (Jose Marti)
If Germany can celebrate its Reunification Day, when the Berlin Wall fell and the two halves of Germany were reunited, why should Sri Lanka not celebrate the day when the LTTE’s Iron Curtain was destroyed, a radical evil defeated, a monster (a South Asian Hitler) slain and the island reunified after decades?
Not every reunification is peaceful. In most cases the unification or reunification of the national territory and state required civil wars, as we know from Italy’s Risorgimento and the history of Europe, not to mention the military campaigns of Sun Yat Sen and the Kuomintang which reunified China.
Which collective political formation/entity, be it state, nation, community, or peoples, would not celebrate a mere half a decade later, the reunification of its territory; the return and repair of its borders so that its sovereign territory is coextensive with its natural boundaries?
Those who argue that civil wars are not commemorated are ignorant of the historical fact that when there is a liberating aspect to a civil war and when a civil war has ended in victory, it almost always is commemorated. Every revolution including the French and Russian is celebrated and every victorious revolution was preceded or followed by civil war. The defeat of the Tigers was felt to be an emancipation; an authentic liberation from decades-old terror.
