Are we a country of collapsed consciousness?

"LTTE was fathered and brought into existence by Sinhala racism; nothing else. The Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people of Sri Lanka are also victims of the LTTE with the minority communities forced to choose between either the devil that is Sinhala racism or the beast of horror and that obviously is the LTTE. After all terrorism had its first roots among the Sinhalese in the south and literally thousands of Sinhala youth were massacred as a result of it."
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by Satchi Sithanandan from Frankfurt, Germany

(March 13, Frankfurt, Germany, Sri Lanka Guardian) Very disturbing indeed are some of the political observations and claims that are being made these days as to when the Tamils came to Sri Lanka, why, how and a numerous other challenging remarks as if the community is most unwelcome to be in Sri Lanka and it is better they go back to wherever they came from; immaterial from which nook and corner of the world!

These very assertions indicate there is still prevailing like a terrible cancer a serious racial problem in Sri Lanka and on which politicians have feasted and fattened themselves for over half a century and reduced the nation to utter chaos in the process. A beautiful island where every citizen could have co-existed splendidly and made Sri Lanka a role model multicultural nation has been consigned to the ashes.

And now there seems a new emergence of the very kind of political pundits and intellectually confused experts of various kinds very much akin to the Rajaratne-Mettananda brands appearing on our horizons. They raised the communal cry in the 1950s. What is emerging now seems even more vicious and they have begun to ring the same kind of discordant notes but louder and extremely shrill. What more harm can these people do to Sri Lanka?

All because of the country’s preoccupation with racist politics, two most destructive factors have overwhelmed Sri Lanka and undermined its credibility as a nation. Firstly the terrorism that it unleashed and the various forms it took as a consequence beginning from the south where the majority Sinhala predominate to the north, the home of the Tamils. Secondly, the country spent so much on arms and ammunitions that it neglected the economic development of the country. As a result thousands of young Sinhala women were forced to take to slave labour under the most atrocious conditions that one can imagine in the Middle East countries. They bring to the country the second highest foreign exchange earnings and even this is gobbled up by more arms purchase and corruption all around.

In the wake of such foreign labour involvement, hundreds of families, literally all of them from already impoverished and utterly neglected rural areas, have been ravaged of their stability and children exposed to terrible risks. Has the government and decision makers no heart?

Are we not ashamed of ourselves? Is Sri Lanka really a country and communities of collapsed consciousness?

In Canada even the first generation immigrants enjoy full rights as citizens. It is so with any civilized nation. But it is not so in countries that are determined to search the rotting garbage of racial intolerance and in this, Sri Lanka seems to lead the way. Are some of these advocates taking cues from their hopes and believe that the LTTE is on the way out in the mistaken concept that the LTTE is Tamil and Tamil is LTTE?

LTTE was fathered and brought into existence by Sinhala racism; nothing else. The Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people of Sri Lanka are also victims of the LTTE with the minority communities forced to choose between either the devil that is Sinhala racism or the beast of horror and that obviously is the LTTE. After all terrorism had its first roots among the Sinhalese in the south and literally thousands of Sinhala youth were massacred as a result of it. Colombo governments let loose terrorism against the Tamils and encouraged goondas to loot Tamils homes, commit arson and even murder on several occasions when communal fires were stirred and stoked.

Why is it difficult to recognize the principle of traditional homelands of the Tamils and work out some kind of a federal solution instead of talking about Tamilnadu and the original home of the Tamils and even to claim that migrations of the minorities occurred even more recently than has been historically documented and established as long before such evil contentions?

All that matter now are that the Sinhalese, Tamils ad Muslims and of course the Malays and Burghers are all Sri Lankans and every citizen must be equal to the other whether he is of one particular race or a follower of a faith that is different from the other. Why do people want to hold the country to ransom and deny generations to come a country like Sri Lanka so well endowed by nature’s loveliness and where everyone can live peacefully?

- Sri Lanka Guardian