Srilankan Crisis - A more nuanced view

Here are a couple of articles that give a better idea of whats happening in Srilanka. Both are from Guardian.

First one - Sri Lanka's Divided Demonstrators:-

The well-organised and orchestrated public demonstrations belie the fact that many diaspora Tamils have been coerced into marching under LTTE flags. Many wishing to carry placards appealing to both the GoSL and the LTTE have been beaten and intimidated into marching only under anti-GoSL slogans. This has resulted in a one-sided protest campaign that ignores the fact that civilians trapped in the "no-fire zone" are held hostage by the LTTE, who shoot those seeking to escape, plant suicide bombers among escapees and conscript civilian children to fight alongside them. This has made it impossible for Sri Lankan peace activists to declare their solidarity with the demonstrators.


Sri Lankan activists have also had to contend with an authoritarian GoSL which, like all modern regimes, only allows embedded journalists access to war zones and displacement camps, and also intimidates, arrests, disappears and murders those who question the legitimacy of the war. Nor does it have a clear set of political proposals that address Tamil grievances.

Second One -
Tamils Have Nowhere to Turn :

The Tamils have suffered terribly both at the hands of the LTTE and successive Sinhala-dominated governments. Reconciliation with them will take a government that has greater reverence for secularism than the present one. Sri Lankans have become inured to the pervasive Sinhala-supremacist racism and religious bigotry that the present government has brought to Sri Lanka.

It is this racism and bigotry more than any passionate belief in the LTTE that has now pushed a desperate Tamil community towards the LTTE.

Indeed, it is an insult to the Tamil people that all they have to represent their cause for emancipation are the Tamil Tigers. A group that not only systematically eliminated the political leadership of the Sri Lankan Tamils but wiped out the entire moderate Sinhala leadership and prevented Tamils from voting in elections.

Both the articles are well worth a read.