Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

18 May  2019

Picture courtesy Wikipedia

True Remembrance

Today is the Anniversary of the final stage of the armed war between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan Official armed forces in 2009.  If we remember and attribute credit to the side that was positive to us – that Energy will be with us. On May 18 the true Tamil will pay respects to all those who fought for Independence of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka. This is not limited to those who died in the last stages of the war nor to the LTTE. If the date is taken as common – then it excludes those Tamils killed by the LTTE itself. If we are truly mourning the death of civilians then we should not politicize it in any way. If we do – then we inherit the quality   that gave them the win which may be negative for us in our current environment. Mr Tony Abbott paid his respects for Mr Bob Hawk said about Mr Hawk that he:

‘had a Labor heart but a Liberal head’ . Mr Abbott was criticized by the media over this. The parallel of LTTE would be that they had ‘militant heart but a political head’.

The picture above confirms that New Zealand’s then Opposition Labour Party paying tribute to LTTE and the civilians led by LTTE. Now the same individual is with the United Nations Development Programme and it is difficult to reconcile the two given that the LTTE has been blamed strongly by the UN for its human rights violations. The question needs to be asked as to whether the said participation in the memorial of an anti-political group had any influence on the Christchurch massacre. As per Vox report:

[On Wednesday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled the “Christchurch call,” a push to combat online extremism in the wake of the March 15 mass shooting in two mosques in New Zealand that left 51 people dead. Billed as a commitment by governments and tech companies to “eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online,” the call expresses clear support for freedom of expression while acknowledging that the darkest and most dangerous corners of the internet need to be addressed. ]

Is the New Zealand Prime Minister conscious of the fact that the LTTE is blamed by majority Muslims of Sri Lanka for the 1990 Kattankudy Mosque massacre in which 147 Muslims were killed while praying? Has the New Zealand Prime Minister inquired into the karma of celebrating the LTTE instead of the civilian victims who died in the conflict?

Rights and wrongs are applicable only where one is responsible in common to both sides. A politician celebrating a militant group has no such common measure. Hence we need to inquire the connection between cause and effect. To be effective in this path we need to NOT judge on the way. We need to keep going until we can go no more. The discovery at that point is our true knowledge of the connection between what happened (effect)  and what caused it to happen. (Cause). The LTTE should not be marked right because the Government was wrong. Once we know the reasons why as per their measures, we must use only the experience of discovering it and not use the outcomes or causes directly for our purposes. When we do – we invoke the mutated form of that group’s governance in our home environment.

Where we do not have common measures with the opposition, we need to use the one-way road to discover why something happened to us. This applies equally to nations that have suffered due to extremism. Extremism is not new to Sri Lanka. Sri Lankans who do not seek and find why they suffered when they did not directly participate with either side, are likely to find that their pain was due to using the measure of ‘convenience’ at that time. Once we know why something happened to us – we may find that we need to change the laws to be applicable to our current environment.  Where the process involves those who have physically moved on – and we do not attribute credit to them, and we take ‘credit’ for their work and/or the common work – but enjoy benefits from using their work – we inherit their weaknesses.

Hence let us mourn genuinely for the common victims known to us – without giving any public form as to which group we are mourning for.