Press release from the International Forum for Peace and Justice in Sri Lanka—August 26, 2008, follows;
Call of the Conscience: An exhibition in pictures, words and documentary films delves into civilian suffering and challenges the trajectory of Tamil politics. Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, August 23, 2008.
(August 26, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) A large poster with the names of Tamil-speaking political and social activists, leaders of militant organizations and members of parliament, among others, who were murdered—with the majority of names attributed to killings by the LTTE—spills over onto the floor of the stage. The names run together, LTTE killings in black text; and killings by Sri Lankan government security forces and Tamil militants in white. At times, men and women step closer to the poster and touch the names; perhaps of people they know.
The poster is one piece of about 25 displays created for Call of the Conscience—a human rights art exhibit—along with six short documentary films playing simultaneously on flat-screen televisions positioned throughout the lobby of Roy Thomson Hall in downtown Toronto. Organized by the International Forum for Peace and Justice in Sri Lanka, this political installation aims to challenge entrenched prejudices and dispel illusions about the forces that maintain the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
Call of the Conscience: An exhibition in pictures, words and documentary films delves into civilian suffering and challenges the trajectory of Tamil politics. Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, August 23, 2008.
(August 26, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) A large poster with the names of Tamil-speaking political and social activists, leaders of militant organizations and members of parliament, among others, who were murdered—with the majority of names attributed to killings by the LTTE—spills over onto the floor of the stage. The names run together, LTTE killings in black text; and killings by Sri Lankan government security forces and Tamil militants in white. At times, men and women step closer to the poster and touch the names; perhaps of people they know.
The poster is one piece of about 25 displays created for Call of the Conscience—a human rights art exhibit—along with six short documentary films playing simultaneously on flat-screen televisions positioned throughout the lobby of Roy Thomson Hall in downtown Toronto. Organized by the International Forum for Peace and Justice in Sri Lanka, this political installation aims to challenge entrenched prejudices and dispel illusions about the forces that maintain the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
The exhibit shows how both sides of the conflict are responsible for the agony of refugees in India and statistics on internally displaced persons, revealed on additional posters. The audience is struck by a three-panel display with testimonies of horror from survivors of LTTE torture camps, laid out against an image of a human body hanging upside down. And attendees are confronted by the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and mosque massacres by the LTTE—facts not well known outside of Sri Lanka.
Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese from the Toronto area come to the exhibit, as well as non-Sri Lankan journalists, activists, union organizers and academics, among others, ranging from those who have very little knowledge about the conflict to those who have been following the political situation for years.
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Call of the Conscience came to life out of a desire to offer an alternative perspective to the war propaganda that dominates the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Canada. It attempts to stimulate the Tamil community to reflect on the trajectory of Tamil politics, its nihilism and the destruction that it has brought upon minorities in Sri Lanka. About 300 people attend the exhibit throughout the day. Journalist Manoranjan Selliah, TULF president Veerasingham Anandasangaree and Kevin Shimmin, a union organizer and national representative for the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, speak during the opening ceremony.
Manoranjan Selliah begins by saying, "Over the last year, many ordinary people have been disappeared, tortured, bombed and massacred by both sides of this senseless war. This exhibition is about such ordinary people and their suffering. It is also about ordinary people who did extraordinary work, who rose to the occasion to challenge the madness of war; who believed in the value of dissent, and often paid the supreme price of their lives. My conscience and I think your conscience demands that we respond to the call to remember such people." He goes on to question and condemn the shadow side of Tamil society: "First, there was the killing of individuals labelled as 'traitors.' And then in 1984, the Anuradhapura massacre of over one hundred Sinhalese pilgrims. And then that horror of April 28, 1986, a pathological killing machine from within our own community was unleashed against our fellow youth, in the form of the LTTE massacre of the other militant group TELO. This is when our broader community witnessed the brutality of Tamil militancy, as Tamil youth hunted down, murdered, tortured and burned alive other Tamil youth on the streets of Jaffna."
Anandasangaree then weighs in on human rights. "As long as refugee camps exist in our country, whether the inmates are Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims or of any other group, we have no moral rights to boast of democratic principles. With one section of our people undergoing untold hardships, being deprived of their democratic fundamental and human rights, we can't boast of our country as one enjoying full democratic rights…. Should our youths, be they Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims or of any other group, continue to shed their blood unnecessarily and die in vain at the battlefront? I am convinced that the time has come for the country to find a solution reasonable enough and acceptable to the minorities and the international community," he said.
As the last speaker for the ceremony, Kevin Shimmin—who has spent the last 16 years of his life intimately involved with Sri Lanka, including working with grassroots activists in Sri Lanka and community activists in the Toronto diaspora—talks about the importance of the diaspora's response to the conflict. "We need to talk about why the Sri Lankan state remains unaccountable today, after more than two decades of war, for an overtly racist agenda of oppression, for the bombing of civilians, for illegal detention and torture. We need to talk about why the LTTE remains unaccountable for an authoritarian regime that silences Tamil voices of dissent, which continues the forcible recruitment of children. And we need to ask ourselves where have we been? What have we been doing right here in Toronto to work for peace and justice in Sri Lanka?"
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After the speeches, guests walk through the history of violence in Sri Lanka by watching six five-minute documentaries written and directed by K.B. Nath. Footage shows attacks on plantation Tamils, the Sinhala Only Act and the rise of Tamil militancy, the brutal anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983, photographs of individuals killed by the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, LTTE graveyards, and haunting images of child soldiers. One film chillingly juxtaposes LTTE boys practicing martial arts and uniformed schoolgirls at a Black Tigers Day celebration against a slow-motion scene of children playing on Prabhakaran's lap. Another film, called "Tit for Tat", has a scene with two scoreboards: one with the Sri Lankan flag, the other with the LTTE flag. As an image of the island of Sri Lanka slowly starts to fill with explosions of red paint, numbers on the scoreboards increase—with details of specific massacres appearing in text. The film ends with this quotation, "Why do people kill to show that it is wrong to kill?"
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