{"id":109714,"date":"2020-12-14T16:38:30","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T23:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=109714"},"modified":"2020-12-14T16:38:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T23:38:30","slug":"erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-18c-pt-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/12\/14\/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-18c-pt-4\/","title":{"rendered":"ERASING THE EELAM VICTORY Part 18C Pt 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

LTTE burial\ngrounds, cemeteries and memorials have been razed, complained the Tamil\nSeparatist Movement. Tiger memorials, monuments constructed in honor of noted\nTiger soldiers   were torn down as the Sri Lankan military\nadvanced. Any sites that might build\nthe legacy of the LTTE, cemeteries, the childhood home of Prabhakaran, Thileepan\u2019s\nmemorial were bulldozed and destroyed. All\nformal LTTE monuments scattered in and around Jaffna and beyond had been\ndemolished by 2013. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tamil Tigers had\nconstructed vast gravesites known as Maaveerar thuyilum illam<\/em> (great heroes\u2019 resting places)\nthat contained the bodies of former LTTE cadres killed in combat. these gravesites were regarded with a\ncertain level of sacredness by Tiger supporters and  every year pilgrimages were conducted to\nhonour the dead. Sri Lankan military\nsystematically bulldozed these Tiger cemeteries. At first, army did not demolish the\ncemeteries properly, and LTTE was able to rebuild. The army then demolished the\ncemeteries thoroughly. Sinhalese meantime,\nwondered aloud why dedicated military cemeteries had not taken root in their\npart of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civil society\nactivists   said the army built their new\ncamps on top of these cemeteries. The\nnew headquarters of the army\u2019s 51st division stands on a large LTTE memorial\/burial\nground in Jaffna said the BBC in 2016.These\nutterances would have impressed gullible westerners. But it seems unlikely. Army\ncamps are built in strategic locations, a cemetery will not be in a strategic\nlocation. Also the many highly publicized requests for the handing over of land\nused by army camps never spoke of LTTE cemeteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the\nwar these cemeteries were one of the few places where families could remember\nand honour their dead and missing. Their obliteration \u2018deprives the kin of the\ndead a place to commune with their lost loved ones\u2019\u2019, said supporters. These\ncemeteries were spaces for mourning and remembrance for ordinary people. Interestingly,\ncaste, so rigidly enforced in Jaffna, is forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tamil\nSeparatist Movement is agitating over the cemeteries. The Chavakachcheri Pradeshiya\nsabha had passed a   resolution on\n14.10.2013 calling for a reconstruction of LTTE cemeteries in the area coming\nunder the NPC. It also decided to commemorate those who died fighting for the\nLTTE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reader\ncritiqued Shanie (Lanka Nesiah) for expressing her concern over the demolition\nof LTTE cemeteries that is a sensitive issue which will hurt the feelings of\nthe families of those killed. He says LTTE was a terrorist organization which\nhas no concern for human life. The tombstones of the slain LTTE cadres were not\nerected by their family members. Also it is interesting that those who now talk\nof these cemeteries kept mum when the LTTE blew to pieces hundreds of people.\nThose persons have no tombstone to commemorate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The LTTE cemetery at Kanakapuram, near Kilinochchi was totally\ndestroyed. The concrete gravestones and broken plaques with the details of the\ndead fighters are piled in a mound several metres high. Activists re-erected a\nfew of the least damaged gravestones, but otherwise the site is unrecognizable\nas a cemetery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, in\nthe weeks leading up to May 18, members of civil society who were attempting to\nbuild a memorial for those who died at Mullivaikkaal were harassed by security\nforces. The community had submitted names of their loved ones who had been\nkilled in Mullivaikkaal to be carved on the memorial. The police claimed that\nsome of these names belonged to former LTTE combatants and that, as a result,\nthe memorial was illegal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police\nobtained an injunction that prohibited the community from going forward with\nthe memorial event. Civil society challenged the order in the Magistrate Court\nand was reported at the time to be pursuing a revision petition in the Vavuniya\nHigh Court on multiple grounds, including that: (1) it is legal to commemorate\nformer combatants as individuals, and (2) the police should not determine what\nis considered an appropriate commemoration activity.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Northern Tamils, who were denied memorialisation and\ngrieving, post-war, physical memorialisation was necessary, not only as\nsymbolic reparations, but also as a public space to grieve, said commentators. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 During public consultations\nof memorialisation held in the North during the Community Memorialisation\nProject, most participants cited the need for physical memorials as a reminder\nto future generations of the specific experiences of violent conflict as a\nminority community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, civil\nsociety invented a new form of celebration, for the Mullivaikal ceremony on 18th<\/sup>\nof May, Mullivaikal kanji<\/em> (porridge).  This simple rice porridge, they said, was\nconsumed by hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war in the north\nduring its final few months. For some, it was all they had to eat. Over time,\nthe kanji<\/em>\nbecame increasingly watery and was often eaten without salt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 On 18 May 2019 elderly mothers cooked and\ncollectively ate Mullivaikal kanji<\/em> with their families and local communities. Young\npeople travelled by truck with kanji<\/em> pots to serve the porridge in the streets and in\npublic places in the Northern Province. Civil society groups asked people\nacross Sri Lanka to eat Mullivaikal kanji<\/em> for one meal on 18 May as an act of solidarity\nwith the war dead, missing and disappeared, and their families, reported a\nforeign journalist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem of what to do with the memorials to defeated armies,\nwho were the originators of wars, is not confined to Sri Lanka. Nazi Germany\nand southern USA also had to face this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May 1946\nonce World War II had ended in defeat for the Nazis, the Allies jointly issued De-Nazification\nDirective 30, stating exactly what to do with Nazi monuments and memorials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 It said: after the date of this directive, the\nplanning, designing, erection, installation, posting or other display of any\nmonument, memorial, poster, statue, edifice, street or highway name marker,\nemblem, tablet, or insignia which tends to \ncommemorate the Nazi Party, will be prohibited and declared illegal;\nalso the reopening of military museums and exhibitions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every   such item must be completely destroyed and\nliquidated by 1 January 1947. All Nazi military museums and exhibitions must be\nclosed and liquidated by 1 January 1947 throughout the entire German territory.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)\ncriminalized the display of swastikas; the symbol was also scraped and\nsometimes blown off of buildings. The federal state systematically destroyed\nstatues and monuments, razed many Nazi architectural structures and buried\nexecuted military and civilian officials in mass, unmarked graves so that their\nresting grounds would not become Nazi shrines. Libraries were stripped of Nazi\nbooks and periodicals, fascist newspapers shuttered, and all physical vestiges\nof the old regime removed and destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the USA the story was different. When the American Civil War of 1861-65\nended the southern states were allowed\nto retain the memorials of their side of the war. These included statues of\nConfederate leaders and the Confederate flag.  Additional statues were put up between 1890s\nto 1930s, and again in the 1950s. They were placed prominently in town\nsquares or courthouses  and became part\nof the landscape. Some Southern states passed state laws<\/a> prohibiting the removal of these\nmonuments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 This is most unusual,\nobserved analysts in 2017.  When armies\nare defeated on their own soil, particularly when those armies were fighting on\nracial grounds, they usually don\u2019t get to keep their symbols and material\nculture.  But it was allowed in Southern US\nbecause there was a strong white supremacy, anti-Negro bias all over the country,\nnorth as well as south. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But from the 1960s, attitudes changed in the US and these statues\nstarted to come down. Either the Municipalities took them down or they were\npulled down by the public. They said these monuments glorify white\nsupremacy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Charleston\nchurch shooting<\/a> (2015), and the killing of\nGeorge Floyd<\/a> (2020) led to a greater removal of Confederate memorials. There\nwas also the Unite the\nRight rally<\/a>  at Charlottesville, Virginia,\nin 2017. This   was the largest white\nnationalist rally in decades, following a plan to remove a statue of\nConfederate General Robert E Lee. Neo-Nazis and white nationalists protested.  It turned violent, one person died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the George Floyd killing<\/a> of May 2020,\nthere was a wave of removal of Confederate monuments. In Baltimore, Maryland, they\nwere removed in the night, on the orders of the Mayor. An Alabama law\nprohibiting the removal of historical monuments was deliberately broken by the Mayor\nof Birmingham, Alabama<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US\ngovernment also responded. The U.S. Navy<\/a> and U.S.\nMarines<\/a> prohibited the display of the Confederate\nflag<\/a>. In 2020, Pentagon   said that Confederate flag cannot be flown\non US military properties. The U.S. Army<\/a> said it\nwould rename Fort Bragg<\/a> and its\nother military bases named for Confederate heroes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wave of removals\nexpanded beyond the United States to the removal of statues in England<\/a>, Belgium<\/a> and New\nZealand<\/a>. The public wanted statues of those who promoted the slave trade\npulled down, also statues of Christopher Columbus, seen as a symbol of European colonialist<\/a>\nexploitation. In London they wanted to pull down the statue of Winston Churchill.\nThe statue was quickly wrapped up and barricaded, with police on standby. (Continued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS LTTE burial grounds, cemeteries and memorials have been razed, complained the Tamil Separatist Movement. Tiger memorials, monuments constructed in honor of noted Tiger soldiers   were torn down as the Sri Lankan military advanced. Any sites that might build the legacy of the LTTE, cemeteries, the childhood home of Prabhakaran, Thileepan\u2019s memorial were bulldozed […]<\/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-109714","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\/109714","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=109714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}