A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, December 2, 2012
Still Counting the Dead: A welcome first step
“We
used to be a very proud people”1 –
Uma, The
Teacher
Few
years ago, during a very wintery January weekend, at a Copenhagen hotel, I was
scrambling to prepare a last minute Power Point presentation for a conference
themed, violent conflict and health. The reason was one of the Mullivaaykkaal
survivors had agreed to speak at the conference’s public symposium as an
eyewitness of Vanni war (witnesses from Iraq and South Sudan also spoke at the
symposium). The presentation was meant to aid the witness while speaking at the
symposium. I was planning for a very brief video or photographic presentation
followed by few slides with texts, therefore I was looking for pictures and
videos both in my computer and online. Suddenly I remembered about this
particular video, which I watched back in May 2009. I managed to get the YouTube
link for that video with the help of a friend, in that video, a healthcare
professional is attempting to resuscitate (cardiopulmonary) a toddler boy with
abdominal injuries and he is gasping for breath few times and later video is
showing his dead body, throughout this ordeal, boy’s mother’s faintish sobbing
can be heard in the background. I was watching this video with another doctor
and I stopped the video in halfway because it was excruciatingly painful to
watch, there was a complete silence and we didn’t speak for few minutes.
Eventually we decided not to use part of the video, which is showing the
resuscitation of the boy. Due to my medical training, normally I am
‘comfortable’ in seeing blood, flesh and injuries but this particular video is
extremely agonizing to watch, the irony is, unlike any other typical video taken
during the Vanni war, this video doesn’t show much blood or graphic
visualisation of bodily injuries.
Here
I am recalling my experience for simply to highlight the courage and
determination of those survivors of the Vanni war to come forward and share
their tragic stories with wider world. They are courageous in two aspects,
firstly, for defying the security risk to them and to their families and
secondly, their willingness to revisit the memory – even for few hours – of one
of the most brutal civil wars since Biafra conflict. The level of dehumanisation
and brutalisation of human life during the last few months of the Vanni war is
comparable with the conditions of Nazi concentration camps.
Therefore
it is extremely important for every reader of this book to acknowledge the
invaluable contribution of those survivor-witnesses to the post-war discourse on
justice and reconciliation. Whatever their personal political views may have
been but one cannot find fault with their desire to see justice for the
thousands of victims perished during the war.
II
The
battle for narrative Continue reading »