Whether you like it or not, there were many in the Tamil community who DID scream like banshees and who continue to have a heart attack over non-Tamils (read Sinhalese) daring to step foot in the north of the country. This while Tamils freely move about, live in, build their religious edifices, have their Tamil language schools etc in the south of the country. They can’t hack the fact that today, non-Tamils are free to move about from Dondra Head to Point Pedro and visit parts of their own country that have been out of bounds because of Tamil racism and violence. The Tamil extremist dream of creating a mono-ethnic Tamil-only country out of Sri Lankan territory has been shattered and it certainly must be agonizing for those who supported the “Tamil cause.”

Before preaching to others, you should practice what you preach. You want an “open discussion” and to “see both persepctives.” Well, why don’t you go back and look at your first response in this thread and honestly ask yourself whether you should fix yourself first.

Refering to the Tamil population as screaming banshees and etc, is very derogatory and completely false. Clearly your perspective is one sided, try to step back and see both perspectives. Having open discourse about one way or another should be done with an eye towards solutions, not name calling. If this population on the blog is anything representative of our actual population then it’s clear how warped things are. It’s a waste of time, totally unproductive to comment.

My suggestion? Go visit Uganda! It’s one of the safest, friendliest countries you would ever visit (yes, they rival Sri Lanka in this category!). It certainly was for me – especially as a single woman travelling alone. Most visitors I spoke to felt that way too. Northern Uganda where Kony used to be active is safe too!

Eat millet porridge for breakfast, some matooke (plantains) with g-nut (peanut) sauce (all organically grown and picked fresh from a family farm), or malewa (a dish made from bamboo shoots picked from the slopes of Mount Elgon) for lunch, and finish the evening off drinking the local brew enjoying the incredible hospitality of the Ugandans (English is widely spoken – even in rural areas).

Ride the public transport and hop on a boda-boda (motorbike or bicycle “taxis”). Visit a club in Kampala, talk to the young laptop toting IT guys and gals in the coffee shops. Drop in at a school. Along the way, you will find out much more than you would by ever reading or watching anything. And you would come away feeling like most of the people who wrote or made the videos you had seen, have somehow betrayed you.

PS: one night, I happened to share a taxi ride with a couple of young, good looking Americans from California who had come to Uganda for a couple of weeks to work on a project for Invisible Children. They were well meaning, full of energy and enthusiasm. But, it soon became clear that they knew nothing about the country or where exactly they were even headed (their itinerary had been planned for them). They didn’t even know that the war was no longer taking place in Uganda. So, I spent the better part of the taxi ride giving them a bit of a primer.

So, I’m not surprised that the organisation has produced a video that has stirred up the kind of debate that is brings a lot of attention (and profit?) to those outside Uganda and has the potential to actually harm Uganda.

Who wants to invest in a country or even travel there when there is a war going on? Except that there is no war going on in Uganda. It’s challenges are entirely different.

“Simultaneously, as the 70′s produced the first pangs of militancy, Pirabaharan began preparing for the battles that he perceived lay ahead. he would tie himself up, get into a sack and lie under the sun the whole day. He would also go and spread himself on chilli bags. He even inserted pins into his nails.”

– M.R.Narayan Swamy’s “Tigers of Lanka From Boys to Guerrillas”

Yes both Joseph Kony and Prabhakaran are/were bat shit crazy.

It’s funny how you seem to have a bee in your bonnet because Prabhakaran was compared to Joseph Kony. Obviously it’s because you have a soft spot for the Tamil pol pot. Well, there is one BIG difference between the two – Prabhakaran is dead as a dodo while Joseph Kony is still alive.

here’s a little excerpt form wiki:

” He reportedly made annual trips to the Ato Hills in Uganda. He would allegedly ascend to the highest of the hills and lie down in the hot sun for days. He would be covered by a blanket of red termites that bit deeply into his skin. Oil from the Yao plant was spread over his body. Then he would enter a cave and stay in seclusion for weeks.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony

In any case, @OMR, what you say, is…..gaah, what’s the point.

http://tinyurl.com/7j2eooo

“King Prabhakaran is alive!”

http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/gTiSkCxY3wU/0.jpg

Secondly, those were not sob stories, that’s quite possibly one of the only times I have eluded to my own circumstances, it is merely to say that a lot of people’s identification with the LTTE comes from an identification for the cause. When there is a lot of hurt that is unjustified there is a lot of hurt and it’s difficult to remove. Plain and simple. Kony and the LRA’s underlying cause is ‘purification’ as was Hitler’s! The tamil cause was a claim for a separate state due to unjust treatment of minorities. Pray tell, what problems do you have?

@dodo, I think there was an existing apartheid against Tamil people, and not vice versa, that was the root of the problem. How about the mass evictions of Tamils from Sri Lanka (not just the district)?

Want to talk solutions? How about generic national ID cards to begin with or some other numeric identification system? Not the ones where if you are Tamil yours is written in tamil etc…..that sounds a lot like apartheid to me.