My colleague Prof Sisira Jayasuriya made some sensible and balanced remarks on the current disasterous situation facing the Tamils in Sri Lanka in this YouTube. The LTT currently face a significant defeat but, according to Sisira, will stage a recovery - the civil war will not end. In the meantime hundreds of civilians have died and hundreds of thousands from both sides are the 'meat in the sandwich' of this ongoing conflict.
Sisira is Sinhalese but recognises systematic discrimination against the Tamils who have responded with random acts of terror.
BTW the response to this YouTube here in Melbourne has been a daily outpouring of hateful, unbalanced emails and mail directed at Sisira and sent to his university colleagues - myself included. It is an extraordinary stream of bile that does not convey much information but which does show the depths of feeling that drive this conflict and hence its intractability.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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3 comments:
Yes, the best Sri Lanka can hope for from this military victory is that a long-running full fledged civil war is converted to an even longer running low-level conflict. Even that can't be taken for granted.
And the Sri Lankan goverment does not seem to have learned a single thing. They clearly see no need for any settlement or reconciliation, and in fact look like intensifying the sort of attitudes that led to this war in the first place.
Is he related to the cricketer?
I think Jayasuriya is a common name in Sri Lanka.
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