Tuesday 26 May 2009

A new day dawning

In light of the war in Sri Lanka reaching a historic end, I have been incredibly surprised by the shocking number of ill-informed, rather ignorant, negative and miscalculated articles produced by the British media we have revered so much in the past. Their blatant support for what seems to be the Tamil Tigers and the irrational percentage of the diaspora is frighteningly twisted and ill-timed. Below, an excerpt from the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/srilanka/5382676/Sri-Lanka-accused-of-ethnic-cleansing-of-Tamil-areas.html



The article states some pretty incredibly mis-informed facts, some funny like Polonnaruwa being a Tamil village and some, more serious like the Sinhalese deliberately resettling themselves in the east of the island when that area was predominantly Tamil. Now, this was a tactic of a previous govt, but at this stage - the east is in the hands of the Tamil people under Pilliyalan, true that there are some issues with the Provincial council not receiving enough devolution of power from the central govt but essentially they are in control. Also, the Tamils were never the majority of the east, they shared that title with the Muslim community who often get sidelined.

Read my friend Indi's take on it here - he researched the facts with much greater fervour than I:

http://indi.ca/2009/05/fact-checking-the-telegraph-with-google/

Friday 1 May 2009

Some interesting posters

I was sent these - think they make an interesting point - it is just refreshing to know that there are other Sri Lankan voices that are not the Governments and not the Tamil Tiger supporters. We need to give those voices a bigger megaphone.