With each passing day, more reports of atrocities emerge from
With customary contempt for international humanitarian and human rights norms, the Sri Lankan state has rejected all criticism of its 'welfare camps' and instead blamed the international community for the suffering of the Tamils. That the Tamil detainees are starving is the fault of the United Nations agencies'. So, apparently, is the revolting sanitary conditions that inevitably came about when hundreds of thousands were crammed into the tented camps.
An increasing number of international observers and scholars have begun taking a close look at ongoing events in
None of this international criticism is going to make an iota of difference to
More importantly, the Rajapakse government has set about transforming
The point here is that Sri Lanka's actions towards the Tamils are not merely the result of weak state capacity, indifference, corruption or the peculiarities of a particular Sinhala leadership, but the consequences of the pursuit - the 'making real' - of a particular ordering of ethnic value inherent to Sinhala mytho-narrative. Amidst a logic that places the Sinhala - the 'rightful' inheritors of the island - at the top of a hierarchy of ethnicities, no amount of 'engagement', 'capacity-building' or otherwise cajoling the Sinhala state is going to produce any change in its conduct. If the international community is going to stand by its humanitarian and human rights norms, then it is going to have to confront the Sinhala state head on. The Tamil Diaspora, settled mainly in the liberal democracies of the West, must continue to engage with these states and the associated international organizations and agencies. Whilst the Sri Lankan state can murder, threaten and block access to Tamil voices in the island, it cannot silence their fellow Tamils overseas. In the coming months and years, the Sinhalese will make it clear why 'reconciliation' is impossible in
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