{"id":109654,"date":"2020-12-12T16:08:16","date_gmt":"2020-12-12T23:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=109654"},"modified":"2020-12-13T16:08:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T23:08:21","slug":"erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-18c-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/12\/12\/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-18c-pt-2\/","title":{"rendered":"ERASING THE EELAM VICTORY Part 18C Pt 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The Eelam war\nwas Sri Lanka\u2019s first post- Independence civil war. It was a protracted war\nconducted by a bogus   ethnic group,\ncreated by the British administration, now claiming exclusive rights to\nvaluable coastal territory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ngovernment of Sri Lanka was a formidable enemy, not only militarily, but\nlegally too.  Sri Lanka, real name\nSinhaladvipa, is a recognized sovereign state with clear boundaries, a seat in\nthe UN and a well documented history. The government of Sri Lanka could not be\nshaken easily. It   fought back and won\nthe war. It was a decisive win. The LTTE formally declared defeat. It was an\nunconditional surrender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalists have attempted to diminish the victory. The ending of\nthe three-decade long war in Sri Lanka was unusual, journalists said. It\nresulted from an outright military victory rather than a stalemate or peace\ntreaty. There was no negotiated transition, between the army and the LTTE, just\na crushing victory of one side over the other. This is utter nonsense and is\nprobably said for effect. No treaty was needed. It was an illegal occupation.  The land belonged to the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporters of Tamil Separatism then turned their guns on the   war monuments put up in the north by the\ngovernment. These war memorials are victory memorials, emphasizing the fact\nthat the government of Sri Lanka won the Eelam war.  So it was necessary to launch a war against the\nmonuments as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The monuments were subjected to snide comments and the government\nof Sri Lanka was criticized for crass monumentalism\u201d. Rising from the flat and otherwise featureless\nscrubby northern region, the monuments are impossible to miss, foreign\njournalists said. War monuments, all over the world, are placed where they are\nimpossible to miss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The monuments project a story that is unashamedly heroic, triumphal\nand militaristic, said journalists. So what, said critics. They are heroic\u201d\nbecause of the heroism of those who fought. 6,261 died and\n29,551 of the Sri Lanka armed forces were wounded in Eelam War IV alone.\nThe Eelam war was no picnic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are triumphal\u201d\nbecause they celebrate the defeat of treason, separatism and illegal occupation\nof sovereign land.   They are militaristic\u201d because the wars were\nfought with military weapons and military strategy from the start. The LTTE\nstarted with T 56 and later moved to  \nmulti-barrel rocket launchers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The victory memorial in Puthukkudiyiruppu was\nspecially singled out for criticism. It was described by journalists as a triumphalist\ncelebration of military victory, that is, death and destruction.\u201d The soldier brandishes an automatic weapon\nin one hand and the national flag in another. His mouth is open wide as he\nscreams, presumably a cry of victory. There is no subtlety or nuance.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Such writings bring up the issue of ethics.\nThe code of ethics of journalists say, inter alia, that journalists must be\nobjective and impartial. These writers are not. These seem to be commissioned\npieces, by gullible journalists who believe what they have been told by the Tamil\nSeparatist Movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brigadier Hiran Halangoda wants to see more war monuments. He\nsuggests a granite stone marker as a grim reminder, at the locations in Kiran,\nWellawadi, Kallady, Kalwanchikudy and Kalmunai to honor those soldiers who sacrificed\ntheir lives there. Then there effort would not have been in vain. We must make\nsimilar markers at all such locations so that history will not be erased by\nunpatriotic elements for their own convenience and hidden agendas, Halangoda\nsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another set of \u2018monuments\u2019 also appeared in the rest of the country. Rajika Hettiarachchi pointed out that the country is dotted with bus shelters alongside roads, dedicated to the memory of a dead son, father, or husband, erected by the families and community groups. This is praiseworthy and should receive more recognition. It says something good about the Sinhala Buddhist\u201d culture of Sri Lanka. Most of these bus shelters have gone into disuse said the pro-Eelamists, ungraciously.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A bus shelter in memory of a father and a \u2018Ranaviru\u2019 or war-hero son,\nbuilt by the family of the deceased. Such family or community-led public\nmemorials are a common sight in the South.  Rajika\nHettiarachchi <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers also\nlooked at two other aspects of the Eelam war, War reporting and War tourism.\nWar reporting is nothing new. The public in Europe followed the progress of\nWorld War II, listening to BBC broadcasts and locating the battles on their\nhome maps. Years later, the public in Europe  \nfollowed the end of the Vietnam War in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case\nof Eelam War IV, the information came via television in the daily news\nbroadcasts. Final stages of the war came to the living rooms of most Sri Lanka\ncourtesy of Rupavahini. Government had embedded TV and print media journalists\nto regularly report on the war from the vantage point allowed by the army. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nreporting was criticized by writers  who\nsupported Eelam. They said  journalists\nbrought in news of the war the way  the\naudience in the south wanted it, clean, professional, no civilian  casualties. From the comfort of the living\nrooms they saw the collapse of LTTE bastions one after the other.  They saw LTTE bastions such as Kilinochchi\nfall as if they were watching great battle movies and became familiar with\nprogression of  specific military thrusts\nand the names of some military units, such as   \n57,58, 53, and 55     division\nbecame part of the popular discourse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This  is nonsense. The reporting, made under\ndifficult circumstances was good and  the\npublic watched the progress of the final stage very  intelligently. The public knew what the\ncritical battles were.  The greatest\nexplosion of firecrackers I heard was when Kilinochchi fell, not when the war\nended. War reports were not     watched\nonly in living rooms. One person told me that he, together with some others,\nwatched the last stages of the war on the defence.lk  website \nwhile attending a conference in Sweden. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was\njubilation when war ended, said writers. There were wild day and night parties\nin the streets of Colombo and beyond with crackers, street music, fluttering\nnational flags and the cooking of kiribath in the streets.  This sounds exaggerated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These writers\nthen went on to say these festivities \ndrowned the sighing of the people in the battle zone, surviving\nunder  the most difficult  of conditions..  Most Sinhala\ndid not see the pain , death and destruction of the north east .  In the north, \nsurvivors had nothing to celebrate. The dead  LTTE were their own kith and kin. This was\nnot understood by the Sinhala, said writers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They went\nfurther. They speculated  that the\nBuddhists must feel a  sense of  guilt over the massive destruction that the\nwar had caused. This went against  the Buddhist\nconscience. However, Buddhists could console themselves that these deaths were\ndue to  a war initiated by the LTTE .     (\ncontinued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Eelam war was Sri Lanka\u2019s first post- Independence civil war. It was a protracted war conducted by a bogus   ethnic group, created by the British administration, now claiming exclusive rights to valuable coastal territory. The government of Sri Lanka was a formidable enemy, not only militarily, but legally too.  Sri Lanka, real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}