CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Sri Lanka Watch: Sharing my Thoughts with the Tamil Diaspora

Asoka Weerasinghe Ottawa, Canada

February 2, 2008

The Editor:
Sri Lanka Watch:

Dear Editor:

The eloquently crafted essay by an unnamed Tamil woman from Ottawa,
'Sharing my thoughts with Tamil Diaspora' was interesting reading.
I too am from Ottawa, but a Sinhalese who has always refused to be anonymous
in my reflections on the Tamil dispute in Sri Lanka, so I will make it absolutely sure
that I will sign my name at the end of this letter.

This Tamil woman's letter had several aspects to it. It was spiritual at times, bias
through out, showed her bitterness towards the Sinhalese most of the time, a dreamer
with a penchant for hope, and foolish in part.

She says, she was a kid living in Chavakachcheri when the 1983 riots happened, and she blames it on the Sinhalese. It is not only the Sinhalese who should be ashamed of this riot, so should the Tamils as instigators of this riot. And I believe in the Cosmic law of 'Cause and Effect'.

She obviously was too young to remember incidents of the 70s and perhaps not yet born to know that between 1971 and 1981 how the Tamils chased 27,000 Sinhalese by terrorizing and murdering them from the Jaffna peninsula, who had been living there for generations.

She was too young or perhaps not even born to know that the Tamils stoned and chased 400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers on August 17, 1977 from the Jaffna campus and they had to be taken South escorted by the army and police in buses lying on the floor as rocks and stones came hailing like meteors at the buses. And I don't think this woman knew that while the Sinhalese were chased from the Jaffna campus, not a single Tamil student was harmed at the Southern University campuses and were guarded by their Sinhalese colleagues from harms way. That is what friendship is all about. And how could she be so bitter with the Sinhalese?

I don't think she knew that during the 1983 riots hundreds of Sinhalese families housed their Tamil neighbours out of harms way, and so did my family. We had the front Tamil boutique owners as well as the Tamil Laundry people hidden in our house in Colombo 9. Her bitterness doesn't hold water.

This morning we were told that the Tamil Tigers detonated a bomb in a bus at the Dambulla Bus Station which were taking Buddhist pilgrims to Anuradhapura from Kandy. Twenty were killed and 50 were injured. Those victims were Sinhalese killed by Tamils. And it was a double whammy on the Sinhalese community as the victims were all Buddhist pilgrims. So this Tamil Ottawan should take a deep breath and stop playing the 'I am a victim' role.

That 1983 riot in which the Tamils got the brunt of it was bound to happen at some point as the Tamils challenged the patience of the Sinhalese community since the early 70s and they were certainly not Bodhisattvas to be patient day in and day out while their kith and kin were harassed, stoned, hacked, shot and bombed to death, and ethnic cleansing of the Sinhalese and also of the Muslims by the separatist Tamils were the acts of the day. That is a reality check for her.

To get at the Sinhalese which she seems to be quite bitter of, she wants the Tamils to boycott Sri Lankan foods, like 'stop buying MD food', she advocates. That is where the foolishness comes into play.

Does she not realize that the Tamil grocery stores in Ottawa, like Thana Stores on Bank Street which carries shelves full of the MD and other Sri Lankan products for its patrons who also happens to be from the Sinhalese community, will suffer immensely and even might go under because of this foolishness. She certainly will be hurting the Tamil entrepreneurs, her own Diaspora, mainly, while believing that she is shooting an arrow at the Sinhalese.

She speaks to the Tamil Diaspora asking them to think collectively and truly identify witch the North-East as the Tamil Eelam. I don't think this Tamil woman had lived long enough in Sri Lanka to understand the ethnographic dynamic of the Jaffna Tamil and the Batticaloa Tamil. The strong caste system plays a major part of this dynamic. The last thing that the Batticaloa Tamil would want is to see that it is the high caste Jaffna Tamil who would push them around in any walk of life. She should ask the Batticaloa Tamil Col. Karuna why he pulled away from the Jaffna Tamil Prabhakaran's Tamil Tiger terrorist outfit. That is a reality check for her and the merger of the North and East provinces will be the crucible to bring dissension among the two Tamil communities. So the myth that the merger of the North and East provinces is the panacea for the northern Tamils is just a fluffy fairy tale.

I am immensely disturbed that she had difficulty to introduce the Sri Lanka flag as the National Flag of her daughter's heritage at her school. Perhaps, I should let her know the pride that I had in the early 90s when I was invited to talk about Sri Lanka to children in seven primary schools in the National Capital region. How I described the significance of all the colours and symbols in the flag and quite proudly told them that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world that has acknowledged with immense pride the minority groups of a country in its national flag. In our case the Tamil and Muslim minorities were represented with green and orange colour stripes in the National Flag. I bought a stock of large Sri Lankan flags from Laksala with my own funds and presented one to each Principal of the school that invited me to speak. It is obvious that this Tamil woman from Ottawa has a disconnect with her motherland, and the Sri Lankan flag is meaningless to her. That is unfortunate.

However, I'd like to make one request of her. Knowing her bittness towards the Sinhalese, please don't poison your two children against the Sinhalese. I take it that they were born in Canada and thus Canadians by birth-right and being brought up in Canada's global village which prides in our immense diversity. Please don't poison the friendships of these young growing hearts, as standing at the entrance of any school at three o'clock in the afternoon and watching all the youngsters streaming out of the school of all colours and shades, all colours of hair, blonde, brunets, black, straight hair and crinkly hair, shows that Ottawa is a mini-United Nations. So please don't spoil it for your kids who if I am right, Sri Lanka is quite remote to them and so would Chavakachcheri.

Asoka Weerasinghe
Ottawa, Canada

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