Hey Mr President, did you plant 7,000 saplings in Wanni?

 "The LLRC sittings are being conducted in a way that gives the notion those who suffered in the war also suffer from total amnesia. A whole team of forensic experts have been summoned to investigate the remains of 50 soldiers in Mullaithivu. Yet there is no accounting for the mountains of bodies in Wanni in such a short time as three months. Hey Mr President, did you allocate 7,000 saplings out of the 1.1 million to be planted over the bodies which are buried in Wanni? And if you did, you could monitor their growth as a mark of victory and your birthday present every year and continue your celebration."

by Pearl Thevanayagam

(November 27, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Knife crime among the Tamil youth in the West where they were given refugee status is the end product of relegating a whole generation of children and youth to take up arms in the face of rising discontent over the marginalisation and polarization of Tamils. This entire generation grew up with no proper education due to being uprooted umpteen times fleeing for their dear lives.

This may be trivia but they also never tasted ice-cream like other children did in the South since for the major part of their lives they had no electricity ergo they did not have refrigerators. The Sinhala leaders time and again pushed them to this sorry state. While the LTTE chose to take up arms, those who caused this sad and tragic mess that befell Tamils are comfortably ensconced in power and the country is celebrating the victory over the vanquished.

There is much gloating in the air and there is deep frustration among the displaced and how this frustration would evolve only time will tell. The current leadership has bought over the entire media including independent ones; those dissenting voices have been suppressed. North South dialogue is all but dead apart from lip-service from platforms.

While there is much work to be done amongst displaced civilians in the North and East the ICRC has been ordered to pack up its bags and curtail its activities to Colombo alone where there is no necessity for its presence. Rehabilitation work is taking place at a tremendous pace in the North and East with businesses in the South descending like vultures procuring huge building contracts, hotel development projects to cater to visiting tourists and banks to take care of remittances from the Tamil diaspora. Once more capitalism is trampling on the rights of Tamils obscuring them out of their own development and initiative towards which a massive amount of international aid has been allocated.

LTTE guns along with Tamil voices have been silenced; at least for now. Is this the calm before the storm? It looks that way when the government insists that it had no part in the killing of even one civilian during the last stages of the war. Burying the truth during war times is not uncommon as we have seen from the behaviour of the US, UK, India, Pakistan and Koreas but truth emerges in far more virulent forms having been fertilized by years of suppression, slavery and injustice and when it happens whole nations tremble.

The LLRC sittings are being conducted in a way that gives the notion those who suffered in the war also suffer from total amnesia. A whole team of forensic experts have been summoned to investigate the remains of 50 soldiers in Mullaithivu. Yet there is no accounting for the mountains of bodies in Wanni in such a short time as three months. Hey Mr President, did you allocate 7,000 saplings out of the 1.1 million to be planted over the bodies which are buried in Wanni? And if you did, you could monitor their growth as a mark of victory and your birthday present every year and continue your celebration.

The collective conscience of the majority South has been blunted through lies, deception and propaganda and continues to this day. Prof. G.L. Peiris who is the ultimate master spinner of a web of lies has been exposed by the Government of Nepal for claiming that it sought Sri Lanka’s help in containing its own rebellion.

Yalpanam (Jaffna) was born out of a very patient and enduring blind musician who put up with the goading of his contentious wife who regularly bullied him that he was no good. But one fine day he got up and set forth to meet the king who awarded him the peninsula mesmerized by his music. The Jaffnites too are inheritors of his patience and the time will come when their pent-up feelings and frustration could no longer be contained.

When I went back to my house which was looted in the July pogrom 1983 I did not take away anything of material value. I took the only thing that mattered to me; the partially burnt family album which I subsequently brought with me to UK in 2001. And when I came to UK I also brought my newspaper clippings of my reports from the war zone and other articles which could some day help me record the most crucial period in Tamils’ history.

There are thousands of Tamils in the diaspora who have sentimental memorabilia of the most gruesome years but during gatherings they hardly talk about those years. It is much too painful to evoke those memories.

The slain LTTE leader Velupillai Pirabakaran still lives in the minds of the majority Tamils despite the government portraying him as a murderous megalomaniac and even going as far as to show videos of swimming pool and luxuries such as imported liquor in his abode. Once the Sri Lankan populace tire of the President’s exhortations as liberator of its people from the clutches of terrorism what with the rising cost of living, nepotism in the government, massive corruption as recently stated by deputy UNP leader Dr Karu Jayasuriya, grandiose celebrations and royal insignia in every new structure, there is every reason to believe his presidency would not last to test the time of endurance.

His descent to oblivion would be met with greater celebration across the nation.