Well. before trying to answer the question.
See these ten bullet points.
1. Sri Lankan government torched and burnt a library of hundreds of thousands of books and manuscripts, because they thought they were burning the pride and sprit of the minority Tamils and Muslims by doing so. The act was orchestrated directly by government ministers.
Yesterday was its 39th anniversary. While majority of Tamils and Muslims were remembering the event, the rest of the country and the mainstream media spent the day with no memory of it
2. The Sri Lankan government aerial bombers bombed Churches (full of internally displaced refugees), Schools and Hospitals. I was living in the same town when they happened. It did continue after I flee the place too.
3. Sri Lankan military doesn’t just ‘dominate’ it’s their own people. It just kills them.
4. Civil disobedience will lead to communal killings in Sri Lanka. Not one. Not hundreds. It’s in thousands.
5. Journalists don’t just get punched. They get murdered and/or disappeared.
6. Many women were raped, killed and dumped. So many of them were not protestors or rebels. They were just school girls.
The only consolation is, India sent a peace keeping force for us. Their military also summarily executed and raped our people. A proud subcontinent culture.
7. Does Sri Lanka have a criminal justice system? Oh yes of course. Ratnayake, former staff sergeant murdered 8 Tamil civilians including four children. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2015. Feeling better now? The gentleman was pardoned and released by the military president last month when the whole country and the world busy tackling the pandemic.
8. When I was in primary school, I learned the country’s national anthem in Tamil. It was part of the curriculum and I had to memorise it. Now they declared it cannot be sung in Tamil. Well, do I miss singing it? Not for a moment. But I do miss the right to sing the national anthem in my own language.
Can I even think of burning the Sri Lankan flag as a protest? Nope.
Can we think of bending on our knees when the national anthem gets played in events?
Good luck.
Can we organise an anti national day rally in parallel there to mark the state oppression and state terrorism?
Ha ha ha.
9. Do the majority Sinhalese acknowledge the systematic racial discrimination in the country?
Ha ha ha, My own friends and colleagues, most of them are highly educated locally and in overseas, don’t even know these things ever happened. Intolerance and ignorance are at their core. Misinformation is their historical trait. They are so proud of their country, race, religion and military. At very best they would offer these words to me,
“Let’s forget and move on machang. Whats the point talking about it? Both sides were wrong anyway!”.
10. Didn’t Sri Lanka have terrorism problem?
Yes, Sri Lanka have state terrorism throughout its post independence(hahahaha) history. For thirty years, minority Tamils and Muslims took up arms to fight against it (Notably there were couple of Sinhalese rebellions in 70s and 80s, they were comfortably crushed brutally too, no dramas). Don’t get me wrong. The rebels did activities which can come under ’terrorism’ label too. When peaceful protests and civil disobedience gone haywire, when the terrorist government is fully equiped with military, navy and Air Force against you, when the majority race is right behind the state terrorism, the minority race is forced to take up arms. That’s what happened there. You can argue for and against it. There were so many issues with the rebellion movements. We tamils do discuss about it every day. But not after skipping the previous nine points here. Now, if you just ignore or defend the first nine items and then lecture me on this point, my answer is simple my friend. Go fuck yourself.
Now back to the original question.
Do black lives matter in America?
For a Sri Lankan Tamil who saw nothing but discrimination, killings, burnings and everything else in his own country, the answer is,
Hell ya, the black lives matter in America, way better than The tamils’ and Muslims’ lives in their home country Sri Lanka.
