I am preoccupied with the state of my research proposal, trying to establish a framework which unites feminist theory with post-colonial discourse. I ponder about packing up my belongings for the summer amidst end of year exams. 6000 miles away I feel hypocrisy percolating into the distance of my own existence. I read the news each day, and each day I grow more and more ashamed of what Sri Lankans are capable of doing to one other. The blood we are willing to spill to end a war, which in reality we know is only beginning. The ethnic conflict in the island has little to do with the LTTE and more to do with the ignorance and fear with which we treat those we cannot understand.
Last weekend, 430 civilians were killed in indiscriminate bombardments in the North of Sri Lanka. A 100 of them were children. I see images of wounded infants and weeping mothers and my heart breaks a little everyday, as I glance over the news pages guiltily. My distance breathing hypocrisy into my own existence, my own actions of words which are read by a handful. I feel like I should be doing more than talk about this crisis. Yet, every death, every bombing, every child who lost a parent, and every parent who lost a child, I am ashamed to claim kinship to my countrymen whose blood lust astounds and horrifies me.
My predicaments of a 4000 word count and expressing a nature-culture dichotomy seem childishly trivial in the grander scheme of things. Everyday, I read the news my mortification of being associated with my fellow countrymen swells, as I am angered by the sheer immensity of violence and brutality which has eclipsed my country. I blame the government, as much as I blame the LTTE. They seem to be in contest to prove who can claim more civilian lives, to determine who makes the deepest scar upon the face of humanity itself. The UN estimates at least 50,000 people still trapped in the 3 km strip of land, in goodness knows what conditions. I shudder at the thought of it, as I ponder how people can resort to such animosity in committing terrifying atrocities to one another.
I blame the LTTE for their cowardice. For slaughtering thousands of civilians over the years, civilians whose ethnicity they claim to represent as they so selfishly use flesh and blood as a human shield. For rendering so many thousands dead, injured, homeless and abandoned in-limbo tipping towards worse fates.
I blame the government for its inability to acknowledge the human cost of this war. Its ignorance and belief that the only means of creating peace is to wage war, more specifically bombing civilians who have no escape. For rendering so many thousands dead, injured, homeless and abandoned in-limbo tipping towards worse fates.
I blame those who remain in silence forgetting we are indeed a democracy, who refuse to take a stand against the crimes being committed against fellow Sri Lankans. Who quietly live their lives, never speaking of the stench of death which has now drifted to the corners of the world but remains an afterthought in Colombo havens.
I blame those who believe that we are winning a war. Those who devalue the lives of Tamils over the lives of Sinhalese because all terrorists are Tamils afterall.
The 430 people who were slaughtered by aerial bombings this weekend were Sri Lankans too- or don’t those from the war zone qualify? Did they think we Sri Lankans were winning this dastardly war that has claimed thousands of lives in the past three decades.
I maybe incoherent but I am mostly ashamed. Be mindful of death, the thousands being murdered as we choose to close our eyes. Death like bombs don’t discriminate.
Image (c) AFP
Memento Mori.
