{"id":116166,"date":"2021-07-15T17:32:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T00:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=116166"},"modified":"2021-07-15T17:32:55","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T00:32:55","slug":"erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-21-d1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/07\/15\/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-21-d1\/","title":{"rendered":"ERASING THE EELAM VICTORY Part 21 D1"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>When Eelam war IV started in 2006, Tamil\ncivilians had followed the retreating LTTE across the Northern Province, to\ntheir shrinking area of control in Mullaitivu and became trapped between the\ntwo armies.&nbsp;&nbsp; They went voluntarily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The map given below shows the movement of\nVanni population from September 2007- September 2008.&nbsp;&nbsp; They are moving <strong>towards<\/strong> the war zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"624\" height=\"442\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607211.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-116167\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607211.jpg 624w, https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607211-300x213.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>hpsl.lk\nstands for Humanitarian Portal \u2013 Sri Lanka (UNOCHA).<\/li><li>ONOCHA means\nUnited Nations Office for the\nCoordination of Humanitarian Affairs. <\/li><li>the map was\ndownloaded from&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/132499266\/The-Numbers-Game-Politics-of-Retributive-Justice\">https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/132499266\/The-Numbers-Game-Politics-of-Retributive-Justice<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>When Eelam War IV started, Tamil\ncivilians&nbsp;&nbsp; left their villages and\ntrekked to the east thinking that eventually LTTE would win and they could\nreturn home, said Kusal Perera.&nbsp;&nbsp; LTTE\nhad instructed them to remove roofs, doors and windows of their houses, when\nthey left. They did so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kusal Perera met such\na family in Menik Farm. This family had been travelling from west to east for\nthree years. They were from Adampan in\nMannar. Adampan was under the LTTE for the past 20 years. The daughter told Kusal, whenever the &nbsp;&nbsp;Sri Lanka army started firing shells and\nmortar and entered our village we have to leave the village. &nbsp;Then after a month or two we come back. Tiger\narmy takes over and announces that we can return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In July 2006,\nafter the Mavil Aru closure, the army started shelling Adampan. The shelling\nwas intense. People moved out and army came in. Her family packed everything\nand left in a tractor. they thought they would return in a month or two as\nbefore. Some even took their livestock with them said the daughter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They settled\nfirst in Palliyaru. That was shelled, so they moved east with the whole\nvillage. Next stop Jeyapuram. Then east again. Kusal\u2019s informant, the daughter\nsaid they still believed the LTTE would&nbsp;\nfight the army &nbsp;and regain lost territory\nfor them to return home.&nbsp; Instead they\nkept moving east all the time .They eventually got to Dharmapuram near\nVisvamadu in August 2008. Kilinochchi was still under LTTE so they thought that\nwould be the limit for advancing forces. This\nstatement by the daughter shows that these civilians were alertly watching the\nprogress of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>LTTE then told them to move&nbsp; further east and they shifted to Mungil Aru\nsouth with&nbsp; the rest of the exodus. they\nwere forced to keep moving, Kusal\u2019s informant told him.&nbsp;\nThey&nbsp; kept walking toward\nMullaitivu ,&nbsp; then to Pudumathalan,\narriving there&nbsp; on 19 April, 2009&nbsp;&nbsp; with the rest of the massive crowd. They seem to have travelled on A35 road. For a\nweek they had shared a sandy bunker with 12 other families, &nbsp;the daughter said. The army too reported that civilians had&nbsp;\nmoved into Mungil Aru, Sudthanithirapuram, Devipuram and Irrittumadu\nareas located north of the Paranthan-Mullaitivu Road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2019, Bejamin Dix produced a&nbsp; cartoon book&nbsp;\non Tamil refugees,&nbsp; which included\nthe last stages of the Eelam War. the book followed the fortunes of one fictionalized\nTamil family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book &nbsp;was titled, \u2018<strong>Vanni, a family\u2019s struggle through the Sri Lanka&nbsp;&nbsp; conflict<\/strong>, by Bejamin Dix&nbsp; illustrated by&nbsp;&nbsp; Lindsay Pollock,( Penguin Random House,\n2018.) It was funded by Arts Council of England. &nbsp;it was thereafter issued by<a href=\"https:\/\/ethicalshop.org\/vanni-caught-between-lions-and-tigers-by-benjamin-dix-and-lindsay-pollock-pb.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> New Internationalist<\/a> (UK &amp; Europe), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psupress.org\/books\/titles\/978-0-271-08497-8.html\">Penn State University Press<\/a> (USA and Canada), and <a href=\"https:\/\/penguin.co.in\/book\/graphic-novel\/vanni\/\">Penguin India<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"687\" height=\"297\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607212A.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-116168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607212A.jpg 687w, https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607212A-300x130.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 687px) 100vw, 687px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Dix and\nPollock decided on&nbsp; telling the story through\na \u2018comic book\u2019. they thought it a good way&nbsp;\nreach the public. Comics reach a different readership than journalism.\nCartoon books&nbsp; connect with people in a\ndifferent way. The initial impulse for the book was publicity, to alert the\ngeneral public to the injustice which had befallen the Tamils. It was intended\nto educate and campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"562\" height=\"431\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607213A.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-116169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607213A.jpg 562w, https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607213A-300x230.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 562px) 100vw, 562px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Benjamin Dix told&nbsp; the newspaper <em>Indian Express<\/em>, I left Vanni with a huge collection of interviews,\nphotographs and reports, along with my own lived experiences and relationships\nwithin the Tamil community. A deep sense of shame and guilt engulfed me as I\ndrove out of Kilinochchi in the last UN convoy on 16 September 2008.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wanted to\nturn what I was seeing in Vanni into a graphic novel, depicting the displaced\npeople, the carnage, our impotence at the UN and the many stories of human\nsuffering,\u201d he&nbsp; told the interviewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"585\" height=\"454\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607214A.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-116170\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607214A.jpg 585w, https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/kamalika1607214A-300x233.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 585px) 100vw, 585px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>For the\ninternational media, the war remained largely a story of freedom\u201d from a\nterrorist organization. But that did not take into account the hundreds of\ndisplaced Tamilians, on the move, dying as shelling continued, or of the many\nothers who were disappearing\u201d into internment camps. Sri Lanka is especially\nimportant, because, Dix said,&nbsp; 10 years\non, there still has not been any credible sense of closure and justice for the\nvictims. (continued in&nbsp; D2)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KAMALIKA PIERIS When Eelam war IV started in 2006, Tamil civilians had followed the retreating LTTE across the Northern Province, to their shrinking area of control in Mullaitivu and became trapped between the two armies.&nbsp;&nbsp; They went voluntarily. The map given below shows the movement of Vanni population from September 2007- September 2008.&nbsp;&nbsp; They are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116166","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=116166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}