Unfortunate, you say? Yes, unfortunate. I’d say from their perspective it was/is quite unfortunate. What is also unfortunate, that because the LTTE did some really unpleasant things, amongst them child soldiering and bombing some civilian areas, everyone ignored and continues to ignore what political issues involved. In particular I’ve been quite concerned for some time about the genocide that systematically took place in Sri Lanka against the Tamil people.
The words terrorist organization, or terrorist all by its lonesome tends to make people wig out and label them evil right off the bat. I think that’s a mistake, and it can have dire consequences. For the nay-sayers out there I’d remind you that the US was created via terrorist actions, and regardless of how the history books tell it it would be rather ignorant to think that the British did not label the revolutionaries as terrorists and guerilla fighters. Our history books call them freedom fighters though. That’s important to understand, because it’s a perspective issue. The Tamil people suffered and likely will continue to suffer a real discrimination from the Sinhalese majority in government. I find that mildly disturbing since discrimination is something that can be difficult to peg on a chart of “definitely discriminate” and “just someone being an asshole”.
I happened to come across this article, which highlights certain things like indiscriminate shelling of civilians and then using the excuse of “they were being used as human shields”. Both sides were known for being not entirely truthful in reports so as to appear to be completely on the moral high ground; however, I for one am not quite that dumb. Another article discusses the shelling of a hospital (if you don’t like CNN) that was labeled and advertised as a safe zone for civilians. That kind of indiscretion makes me concerned for what other sorts of atrocities were committed both before and after the conflict sparked up again. Ah well. I’m sad for the Tamil people, very sad. Now who is going to protect them from atrocities on the other side of the fence? I highly doubt we will see any sudden wellspring of wealth emerge from the Tamil people to be a true force of change within the government for equality; I could be wrong though.
