This Adiga character (White Tiger author) has been round in Sri Lanka and he’s smart. He wrote an accurate if somewhat repetitive summary of what’s going on the Daily Beast. I personally think you can get the basic history from Wikipedia, but all good. Except at the end. He closes with basically an ultimatum from the mythical ‘international community’ and threatens some sort of action against the Sri Lankan government on its behalf. This is both impotent and ineffective and, IMHO, on those grounds wrong. At this point I believe the ‘IC’ should condemn the LTTE soundly and offer to support the Sri Lankan government in relief and rebuilding.
The international community is, frankly, not involved in furthering some utopia where everyone has democracy and fights clinical wars. It’s about nations that generally look out for their own interests and are governed more by internal political pressures than external threats. Most of the international commentary on SL ignores the internal politics here which, frankly, makes them look stupid.
The international cavalry is not coming. They’ll forget us as soon as we stop dying and get off their TV screens. We have had to live with constant LTTE terrorism and we have to secure and rebuild our own country. Anyways, this is the comment I left, in response largely to the quoted para below:
The world has issued the Sri Lankan government a blank check in its fight against the LTTE, and it is time now to tear up that check. President Rajapakse must immediately end the climate of fear in which journalists in his country operate; he must free reporters who have been falsely arrested; and must find and prosecute the killers of Lasantha Wickrematunge. He must allow reporters, Sri Lankan and foreign, full access to the northern end of the island, so they can verify for themselves that Tamil civilians caught in the warfare there are living in humane, secure conditions. If he does not do so, the rest of the world has no choice but to assume that the worst of the charges leveled against his government are true—and act accordingly. (Adiga, Daily Beast)
“Cool article, except for the last para. Where do all these ‘musts’ come in? Do you really have to close with a threat, and an impotent one at that?
According to the Hindu and Times Online China gave about $1 billion to Sri Lanka last year compared to $7.4 million from the US (I read about $24 mil in a State Dept PDF). The $1.9 IMF loan is in the air, but I’m not sure how letting our economy crater helps any human beings on this island. The ‘international community’ simply isn’t in the same position to dictate terms.
Furthermore, this active and just ‘international community’ and these pristine monitored wars don’t exist. There is no international community in that sense and wars are goddamn dirty. Innocent people die, rights are abused and laws are suspended. Hopefully, you are able to rebuild better after the sacrifice and suffering.
Most Sri Lankans view this as similar to the crushing of the JVP insurrections in which over 65,000 people died, including many innocents and writers like Richard De Soyza. Yet the alternative there was a Khmer Rouge type insurrection which would have been much worse. Were there other ways to do it, probably, but it got done. Most people view the Late President Premadasa as a hero, even many who were almost killed by him.
In the same way the LTTE has been killing and terrorizing and holding Sri Lanka back for my entire lifetime. Yes this war is unbelievably dirty and messy. It is war. But the LTTE is an existential threat to Sri Lanka. I’m not sure that people understand that. A President, countless ministers, the Indian Prime Minister, almost every moderate Tamil and militant leader and countless civilians have been killed. This threat more than anything has been what’s crushing our democracy, just as one terrorist attack caused the US to close in on itself.
Yet our democracy survives. I voted two weeks ago and my guy lost, but we’ll try again. You must understand that this war has public support in Sri Lanka, and we are not a stupid or genocidal people. I have personally been to Vavuniya and government hospitals in Colombo and seen young children without limbs and parents. Sri Lankans citizens know the terror and misery and the north and we are organizing to support our fellow citizens there. I encourage anyone to visit savevanni.blogspot.com to see how they can help.
However, most Sri Lankans believe we will be able to rebuild better without a terrorist army occupying our land, killing our leaders and civilians, conscripting our children and preventing people from voting. Most believe that these terrible costs are worth it. That is the terrible calculus of war.
This better future is not guaranteed, but without the LTTE we at least have a chance without it getting blown up like Neelan (the last real Tamil moderate) or without voters being disenfranchised as in the election that Ranil lost. Sri Lankans understand the heartbreaking costs of war and they are willing to pay. To finally be free of this terror.
‘The world’ can’t come in and say ‘must’ this and ‘must’ that. First off, there’s no money where your mouth is nor is there much respect for our elected government and the people that elected it.
You talk about democracy and the press, but in your last paragraph there is no reference to Sri Lanka or Sri Lankans. It is simply some magic internationals that are going to come in and fix us, but punish us. You’ve got the wrong guys. You should support and encourage the best of our government and punish and condemn the LTTE.
I may not agree with this government, but it is still my government and I can change it. Our democracy can use international support, but impotent and antagonizing threats don’t actually help me or anybody else living here and trying to change the place.”
I read your responses on Daily Beast. Very good. The focus should be people who are suffering and I loud your valiant efforts, with other similar minded people, to bring that about.
About the lager, I prefer the right one :)
you’re picking off low-hanging fruit again: arundhati roy, MIA, Aravind Adiga are essayists, artists and novelists respectively–creatures of emotion, passion and often living the life of the mind (rather than the very concrete realities of an SL citizen) Simply because their star status mandates coverage does not mean they are the driving the dialog at the level of opinion journalism or just hard news reporting.
Matthew Lee at Inner City Press has done a fantastic job of covering the UN inside-story–he like most westerners is of course unreasonably biased by “international community” prejudices and places the safety of IDPs above all other considerations without regard for strategic or tactical goals held by GOSL.
http://www.innercitypress.org/
Mark Leon Goldberg recently wrote an article at the TNR site highlighting the obama admin’s recent actions:
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/06/obama-s-first-humanitarian-crisis.aspx
try targeting an actual journalist next time–the product is sweeter and not tainted by “candy from a baby” approach.
Nayagan,
There is no blog to direct this Mathew Lee guy to what an actual Tamil Journalist writes .
Here is what DBS wrote. http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/461
I usually check the Blogging heads for these two guys .Mathew Lee and MarK Leon Goldberg seems to me like the low hanging fruit when it comes to convincing western liberal elite .
According to Mathew one protestester at NY UN protestor made an argument from the left.
According the the protestor ,LTTE is the ultimate revolutionary left force which has brought gender equality .Females are fighting alongside males and they are also commanding fighting units.If you take the same argument little bit further then they are the ultimate force to remove age discrimination from earth.Conscripted Children and forced old people(in Makkalai Paddai army ) are fighting side by side the regular forces of LTTE.What an achivement!
I do not know about Mathew or Mark but what about you Nayagan?Did you check the photos in MOD from Prabakaran family album?Here is a man who abducted and married a young female medical student.She had to abandon her studies and start making babies for the future king .Do you see a freedom fighter or tin-pot dictator embezzeling money from tamil diapora for his dream life?
I know you have been to SL several times.I suppose you have been to north and east.Looking at photos ,tell me that they are not absolute luxury in Sri Lanka terms.I have relatives toiling in dry lands in Sri Lanka .The damning picture for me was the one where the fat bastard was enjoying a bath in the inflatable pool in his backyard.I have lived in this area .During the dry season ,you do not have water even to wash your backside.Here is this Rush Limbaugh size guy doing watersport!
C’mon Nayagan ,I know you are from “good stock” .It is time to realize The Tamil Diaspora is taken for a ride by these crooks.
Chandare
http://www.army.lk/detailed.php?NewsId=369
chandare,
wow, all the way from Sepia Mutiny to Indi’s crib? You must come by sometime IRL and you can hang with real live members of the diaspora and see, perhaps, that it is you who are mistaken about popular opinion in that population.
Indi, I don’t understand you anymore.
Just because the government IS, it does not make the things it has done right or OK under any circumstances. You can’t keep saying ‘whatever, they’re the guys in power so I support them’. This argument is really illogical. You’re just placing your bet on the winning horse, basically. Which is kind of callous and irresponsible. I don’t understand where some of the things you say come from. Sometimes it sounds like you are directly parroting government propaganda. You say we have a chance without the LTTE, a chance of not being blown up or killed for our opinions or disenfranchised. Do we really, Indi? These guys have done exactly those very things. They have literally killed and blown up and disfranchised at gun point. And it’s worse because they’re a GOVERNMENT, not a bunch of terrorists. It sounds as though you’re taking this side (and it definitely sounds like you ARE taking this side) because it’s just easy. It’s easy to hate the terrorists. Not so easy to hate the guys that have the power and authority. Democracy has not survived! You may have voted and gotten away with it, but a young man was shot from Duminda Silva’s own gun and he died. Younger than you, I think. Hospitals in the Vanni WERE bombed. There WERE bits of babies and women hanging off trees because of SLA shelling. Journalists WERE killed, detained and banned from entering this country. You cannot take these truths away. It’s hard because the propaganda from both sides is very powerful in this war. It’s hard to say anything or think anything without thinking just for a second, “Am I just falling for propaganda?”. But those people’s stories aren’t propaganda, Indi. They don’t care who they convince and who they don’t. Their stories are very real.
What Electra said. You’re a flip-flopper, Indi! A FLIP-FLOPPER! When will you stop throwing your money away on the horses?
‘Most believe that these terrible costs are worth it. That is the terrible calculus of war.’
The ones who do not have to deal with the cost believe that it is worth it. You have not borne any cost because of this war and therefore you believe it’s a price worth paying. Perhaps you should ask those who pay the price for their opinion.
To just say it’s unavoidable is naive and irresponsible. To be ok with the idea that others must die in their hundreds that you may enjoy your life, is just plain sick.
this one has better photos
http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20090506_10
perhaps the next “we can sort out our problems despite thousands of Tamils being butchered” post will come in the form of “TIME is irresponsible and naive” for calling for intervention and sanctions. pretty soon, the whole world will be irresponsible and naive save the conscientious, human rights loving, uber responsible Chinese, Russians, Libyans and Sudanese.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1897632-1,00.html
Most believe that these terrible costs are worth it.
Most Sri Lankans? Probably. Most Sinhalese? Almost certainly. But are you sure that most Sri Lankan Tamils believe these terrible costs are worth it?
Because, you see, otherwise what you’re really saying is that it’s a cost worth imposing, not a cost worth bearing.
I generally agree with Obama’s statement
and the UN Security Council Statement:
Note that both say the LTTE should lay down arms, release the people and that the government should allow much more humanitarian relief in. Note that it’s not in the context of ‘intervention’ or sanctions. It’s about working with the Sri Lankan people. I agree with that.
I just looked at that article, Time is irresponsible and naive for running a photo from a pro-Tiger group, Vanni Mercy Mission. Do they run Al Qaeda sourced photographs? I’m not even calling them pro-Tiger, that’s from the photo caption itself.
Eh? The only photo I see on the article is credited to “vannimission.org / Reuters”. Reuters regularly supply photographs from partisan organisations – during the Israel-Lebanon conflict, for example, they supplied photographs from Hezbollah-affiliated entities. They have editorial processes in place to ensure that these images accurately represent the situation on the ground, and news media use these images because they take the view that Reuters’ editorial controls can be trusted. You are, of course, free to take the view that Reuters’ editorial controls cannot be trusted, but that’s the sort of position I’d expect to see in the right-wing Anglo-blogosphere, not on your blog.
I don’t see anything irresponsible about this, they’ve labelled the source correctly. & it’s not even an inflamattory photo.
would you prefer that Time only ran photos which had GoSL approval?
What do you really expect the media to do?.. when there are no other sources except for groups such as vannimission or warwithoutwitnesses…. only show the things that the GoSL allows them to?
you’re intolerance for anything that doesn’t agree with your worldview is saddening… considering that people like you are meant (at least believe yourselves) to be moderates.
sorry… that should have read “Your intolerance…”
this is pathetic. the government does not allow media access to the safe zone. does not allow. despite calls for media access for months from various governments and agencies. if photograph’s from sources that are not linked to the ltte are not going to be used, no images from the safe zone will be seen by the world. you’d love that wouldn’t you? would make the intervention/sanctions debate a lot easier for the government to win. the fact that you take this position, is franly, sick.
obama’s statement comes in the light of the US basically saying that there’s no IMF loan for the government for now. hope you agree with that position too, though I kind of know you prolly think Obama is being naive and irresposible for sanctioning the Sri Lankan government, albeit soft sanctioning. obama’s request to the SL govt comes with that threat. considering that, i kind of agree with his statement too. if you don’t like the sanction however, you’re basically happy with what was happening a while ago, which was that the intl community was saying all these things which the govt was free to ignore, without facing the consequences for its atrocities.
the SC press statement had the blessings of China as well. ’nuff said.