Blood money speaks... (an essay)

Well things are little quiet here in the capital city but that is in the least a sign of how things are really in the country. For one having killed all those people in the North in the name of eradicating terrorism we are now responsible for thousands of people sitting in detention camps shelter-less and un provided for. where people die from simple gash wounds that get infested with worms and people who have diarrhea are just dumped together without even the most basic medical treatment(needless to go into all the other urgent medical emergencies). And you know it’s a crime. You know that this is unacceptable. And you wonder who’s going to take up these questions, questions based on our fundamental human rights. Human rights. No one says them here in this country no more. It’s become taboo. And a word that is, for some time now, censored actively by the Government. For all their might they seem to fear these simple basic codes of life that the world decided on some years ago. Come to think of it I don’t have too much of a problem with it I guess.Because you see i come from this war economy. Its inevitable in a country seeped in war for so many years. Corruption has become part of my nature. I actually make money out of this horror. Blood Money.

You may wonder why? Well because I tell you it’s necessary. Yes. For me to live my life comfortably with my family I decided to live this way. And i am not alone, there is a whole system being supported by people like me. And why should i fool myself and be idealistic? It’s been years since I had the chance to talk about what I really thought of our military policies and economic decisions (they just kill people for such loose-talk these days). The budget of my tax money and my fellow citizens is no longer in my hands. I am no longer an active participant, but a subservient in this country. We don’t need democracy now. We need what we have. Who knows from which impoverished, war torn village of the north another rebel group will manifest? Who knows how many young boys of our nation once belonging to the faction known as LTTE are still on the loose (exempt all the 13,000 young people who have now gone missing from the camps under the label of questioning and suspicion- they are being taken care of i guess), and a constant threat to national security.(forget the kind of paramilitary forces we run in the south)

It’s not like we are going to ask too many questions anyway. And it’s not like we will be allowed with the right to our life if we do talk about it I guess. And as long as we are not prepared to take the risk no one is. So why ask for democracy. Why pretend that this despotic rule is democracy? There is no harm. It’s only when we go to embellish our lies that we fumble. We must learn from our leaders how to state an honest untruth without any scruples. maybe one day they will come to take me away. Maybe. But then I know there will be no one to speak on my behalf.(especially since i was one of those people "bumping" those who started talking- don't blame me, your government payed me for stuff like that) But I am a true Islander. I believe that i have too many sins to be accounted for. But until then voodoo does the job for me.

At a time when we prepare to bring home the soldiers who have had to slay civilian brothers and sisters in this war, we are told that this country needs them like never before. We are now not only the "victors" who captured the Northern territory but are now the occupational army for years to come.What a grand master plan. But wait a minute our economy is suffering, what about the price hikes? how can we afford such a scheme to change the demography of the North and East so that Tamils can never call it there traditional homeland?(kill half move the rest- all of them are terrorists anyway our government says) How can we ensure that all our soldiers are given the best of benefits, since now most of them returned limbless and lifeless?

We don’t need the IMF money. How dare do these international forces (well except for the time they lent us arms and gave us machinery to fight in the north of our country) come here now and put terms of humanitarian assistance (how absurd) on to the money. We want no strings attached. If they can't give money like that We don’t need their help. We are getting money. You see we have the greatest hostage situation in the country. We have thousands of people literally kidnapped, no one knows what's happening to them, do you? These people are stuck in camps where they can’t leave... at least that's what we say out loud. But we aren't that unrealistic. If those distraught, traumatized souls can fork out about a million or so (depending on where they want to go to) then we will even arrange the ticket for them to fly to which ever country they choose (this falls in to our plan of move 'em or kill 'em) Well most of the times they can hardly afford to buy themselves food. You see we made sure they had nothing left that they could call as theirs. We hit them that hard and feel good about it too. But thanks to our years of discrimination and pogroms and the civil war… over time we have a growing Tamil Diaspora.Luckily for us not all of them are stuck in petrol sheds or waiting at tables earning small amounts of money to live by and negotiating visa requirements from their little rooms. Some of them were quite enterprising and did quite well after a lot of hard work i suppose. A group that is now willing to pay the ransom to help their desperate relatives. Flows of money that will help keep afloat our foreign reserves. Thus we can take care of ourselves. We know how Myanmar does it. We’ll do it even better. Just watch, wait and see. If you are alive that is.

I Protest

When I was young I watched my mother struggle away organizing various campaigns, trying to mobilize more and more people towards a cause and I used to ask her why go through all this effort, the issue isn’t that big after all and you needn’t put so much effort into it. But she would always be patient with me and explain that she was teaching people to- protest. She told me it’s with the smaller issues that you can learn how to withstand the bigger fists in the belief of a cause. But I was at that age where I couldn’t differentiate from feeling strongly about something to acting upon it and I don’t think I understood all what she said then.

When I was in my teens she challenged me to get people to rally towards a cause that I though most people I knew would identify with: garbage disposal, collection and cleaning up our neighbourhood. That’s when I realized that sometimes people weren’t disturbed about some things (even if it affected them directly) and even if was a simple act of coming together and voicing their protest it was too much to ask of them, in their busy set ways of lives. So I learned that people had to be taught to use the tools of a functioning democracy. Only by making yourself heard can you ensure a democratic rule through mutual understanding. This talent is definitely not something we are born with.

When I watched the war on Iraq take place and the whole world go on the streets in protest on the ruthlessness of the American oil conquest, I saw democracy die another death. We were shown with great clarity that those in power laid down the rules for us and that we had little choice and the only time they were going to listen to global opinion was when things backfired on them.

Today , right at this moment, there are so many injustices taking place out there in the world, in your own country, in your very neighbourhood. And somehow whether knowingly or by choosing not to know we let them take place, for history to record them in its many narratives. Right now Palestine makes the news, but let me point out that simply because it didn’t make the headlines during other times it wasn’t to say that their hardships and human rights violations were any different. When you think of the amount of news that never reaches your daily paper headlines due to the tacit agreement between media and the corporate and pressures of governments upon free media practices that act as impediments to the exploration of the truth, it might amaze you. And then again it may not. Maybe I am telling you of something you already know about. The fact that these practices still continue with our knowledge makes them even more frightening.

Right now in Sri Lanka there is genocide underway. The Sinhala army is carrying out a genocidal strategy, where they place embargos on food, medicine and other essentials to the North, especially to Tamil settlements and towns in the name of war on terrorism. They have removed various other non-governmental agencies that were providing aid in these areas. They carry out intense aerial bombing and cluster bombs over areas that were residential, citing schools and hospitals and homes as potential terrorist locations. The government has media regulations by which they control the reporting on the war, this includes brutal murder of anyone who reports contrary to the report issued by the military spokesperson or against the current president Mahinda Rajapakse( like the recent killing of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha) or simply just throwing grenades and destroying a whole television station like they did to MTV, a main private broadcaster. They practice kidnapping and killing of Tamil people in what that has come to be known as the menacing “White van terrors”, where they would come in a white van and simply take away someone, and you will never hear of them again. There is no where that the families of these Tamil people can go and file a report, as even the police is in on this scheme. This also gave the military enough room to carry out extortions and ransoms, where the bigger payments were deposited into the bank account o of no other but the president himself.

A friend of mine tells me that one should be weary of writing about an issue until they know all the facts about it. And I agree with that. But I also think that even to know one has to fight. To be honest the proof to all which I claimed above is everywhere in Sri Lanka. Everyone speak of it and yet they speak of it in hushed voices. There is no knowing who the next target is. Now it is no longer only the Tamil journalists and activists and politicians who are being killed, it could be anyone. So yes it’s not like anyone will produce the proof to you on a silver platter when you asked for it.

It’s sad that when the Sinhala and Tamil people had a chance to protest against the killings of Tamils they did not. And now they cannot protest against the mass murder that the government has unleashed upon its subjects. These are the times when I truly understand what my mother had tried to teach me so long ago about learning to protest. With each choice not to protest we further estrange ourselves from the ability to protest and fight. That is what the people of Sri Lanka did. They gave away their rights each time they let Justice die. The people in power were simply given more power. And now when the people of Sri Lanka have to raise their voices in protest and alarm as never before at seeing the atrocities the Sinhala Government has resorted to they cannot, they remain voiceless and exposed.

You might wonder as to why I lay emphasis on the ethnicity. Whether we like it or not, Sri Lankan politics and loyalties are along ethnic lines(one of those colonial legacies shall we say). Most people when the civil war started used to argue about whether Prabhakaran was the sole leader of the Tamil struggle or not, rarely did they talk about discrimination of the Tamils, or about how the menacing war against the rebel group turned to one against the Tamil population as it became impossible to determine the difference on the surface between the two. Even now the questions that seems to be in the air is “where is Prabhakaran?”, similar to the question where is Osama, while the American military kept bombarding Afghan people, the Sinhala army keeps deflecting the attention away from the real ground issues: the terror tactics of their warfare, the displacement of Tamil people into concentration camps and the resettlement of Sinhala people in those territories which were previously Tamil areas in order to change the balance in the Nothern populations.

We saw Nazi Germany operate like this and that’s when we built global bodies, after the Second World War, so that we can stop these very atrocities from taking place. Many global organizations have already recognized the seriousness of the issues being covered up in Sri Lanka. The Genocide Prevention Project has indicated Sri Lanka as one of the top eight “red alert” countries where Genocide is taking place. Peter Campbell of the world Food Programme has commented how conditions of Northern Sri Lanka are similar to Somalia. Diplomats from other countries have written to the President of Sri Lanka voicing their “disappointment”. Global opinion is that which it claims itself to be, simply an opinion. As long as Sri Lanka has no important resources that is of any interest to the global powers or poses a potential threat there will be no need to put pressure on the government to rethink its practices.

It’s almost fashionable now to talk about ‘issues’. We constantly “condemn” an action. We are never constant in our opposition. In college I witnessed how easy it was to jump from one issue to another without connecting to a greater picture. Being passionate about incidents is hardly productive as being actively opposed to the ways in which incidents operate under certain ideologies of power. And it’s easy to forget the importance of always being aware that you cannot simply theorize and systematize the lives of people. For a long time I have debated over bias, over criticism and presenting a balanced picture and I have learnt from life that it is not simply a journalism classroom. Wars are never about equality and fairness, and even truth is not about balanced perspectives. An armed guerilla movement and a national military force are never equal opponents. When a government of a country wages war on its own people in the name of democracy you can be sure that justice has been killed. For many Tamils who have left Sri Lanka as asylum seekers to other countries they have lost the right to live in their homeland, for those who still live there it has become their living hell.

State Sponsored killing and abductions in Sri Lanka

In the name of national security the Sri Lankan Government has now orchestrated a scheme where through the national forces and paramilitary units they can conduct search operations, arrests and even abduct Tamil civilians. Once a subject is taken in for questioning there is no information as to his whereabouts or what is to become of him to his immediate family or friends.
The more recent scare of the threat of the "White van Terror" is even more sinister, where armed men in Uniform can nab you anywhere, whether the street or at your work place and then there is no information what so ever about you. The very same state mechanism that conducts such abductions also ensembles search operations for the missing persons' where abouts.

so there is no suprise when we find out that the Tamil people live in a state of constant fear for their lives. The sad situation is that in no way can they protect themselves. Civil society groups and human rights groups remain helpless and ineffective in the face of this state sponsored pogrom.

In other words our tax money goes into the funding of these very men who are responsible for the disappearences of our sons.

This calamity has forced upon the Tamil people a self imposed censorship where they fear to speak about their predicament. the Sinhala people on the other hand seem to take this as a necessary security measure and also remain passive about these disappearences as it does not directly affect them. They too fear that if they were to raise their voice in protest then their life is in danger.

The media has been supressed through state censorship, and now is a mouth piece for sensational news and not a progressive vision for reporting what really happens. For example it become clear that in the 5 people abducted that day that all are tamil. But the news will state 5 disappearences and only through their places of residences and names are the audience able to place that all are tamil.The story loses its primary focus "that Tamils are being systematically Targetted", the private main stream media struggles to retain its professional integrity. All journalists who criticise the government are in danger of being kidnapped, beaten up or worse still killed.

State propoganda continues. The state media is busy promoting the identity of the Sinhala nation and about the current scoundrel in the president's seat, Rajapakse.
Surely we don't want such a poor and despicable person, who is responsible for all these deaths, to be the representive of our nation.
surely we have learnt enough lessons by this time to know that this too will pass, but only with united action against the violation of our rights.

speak out, speak against, act.
Now, before it's too late.

Dilemma in procurring Democracy

In focus: Pakistan

The common statement that is circulated is ‘Musharraf has done it again’, within and outside Pakistan. International criticism has turned it’s eye towards the nation and it’s dictator of 8 years Pervez Musharraf. Interestingly enough, with all the internal and international pressure on him, he has been forced to call off the restraining orders on the Chief Justice, however he has yet to lift the state of emergency, which from his press conference on Sunday the 11th of November is well into its first week and showing no signs of being lifted! Musharraf’s defense has all the skeptics raising their eyebrows and hopeful idealists shaking their heads. How can emergency laws be a facilitator for the formation of democracy within a country?

In his statement to the press regarding the ‘emergency decree’ he defends this action as a necessity taking into consideration the ‘ground situation’ which has come about through Pakistan’s involvement in the war on terrorism. Yet, though it becomes clear that he has explained it as a measure to maintain law and order it also becomes inexplicably clear that holding a ‘free and fair’ election under these circumstances is a dubious affair. But the question that should have been asked by many from the very beginning is why should a dictator be worried in securing democracy within his country? Surely he could continue a dictatorship (we have more than one example to look at within the South Asian region itself) even with all the opposition in his country as after all he is a military man (the basis of the supreme court to contest the winning of elections being the very same; that he shouldn’t be standing for elections in his uniform in the first place). So does this mean that the man with the stick is maybe after all on another agenda?

The major debates consist of how far Musharraf has become the puppet for the United States. When he took the restraining orders off the Chief Justice after an important request made from Bush himself, it just seemed to reinforce the fears of idealist and convince the extremists and Islamic fundamentalist that he is going to continue to pay such lip service to the Western Powers. But we must also take into consideration that extreme forces are building up within Pakistan. The formation of Pakistan is both diverse and complex. For over two decades Pakistan has had an influx of refugees from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Chechnya at various if not simultaneous time frames. The unique Tribal form of governance in the Border States that separate Pakistan and Afghanistan has made it even more important that government separately identify the tribes and their armed forces that are loyal to the Government of Pakistan from the mercenaries that infiltrate these borders from Afghanistan. The very mercenaries trained and sent in by The United States to combat Russia (ironic isn’t it?) that then coalesced with the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

The fundamental extremists are susceptible to be won over by these elements as they are in fact in favour of a rule established on the Holy Koran (under their interpretations), which they see is threatened by the democracy which Musharraf seems to promise. Already terrorist elements have spread into the Northern and Southern frontiers. It becomes vital that they deal with this if there are any intentions of bringing democracy. In the history of Pakistan the Army and mullahs have always gone hand in hand, one sustaining the other, and now, there seems to have arisen a deep rift between the two powers. What is preventing Musharraf from actually coming to a deal with the religious parties instead of antagonizing them? Surely he could still try to maintain a balance between them and the Western Powers. Their suspicions would have been curbed had some sort of power balance been settled, but instead Musharraf still wants to be identified separate from them. Yet he is under constant flak from liberals at the same time, for being either a collaborating force with the Mullahs or siding with the United States. Musharraf has only made this picture more complex by bringing Bhutto back. It is obvious that he is trying to maintain his status quo throughout all these political intrigues, but the question is how dedicated is he to bringing democracy to Pakistan and how far will he go to ensure that it happens under his leadership.

The fact of the matter is no matter how ‘good’ Musharraf maybe, he still remains a dictator, a man who was not elected by his people through any election and that for many is impossible to accept. Musharraf claims that he is indeed facilitating a democratic awareness and changes from the grass-roots. . It is in ‘Pakistan’s interests’ to eliminate extremism at the source. And for all these aims to be realized what he asks is “please give us time” (address to the nation after declaring emergency). His request remains to the critiques and idealists is ‘not to expect or demand your level of democracy which you learned over centuries”. It is true that for real democracy to evolve in any new nation it takes time. And it has to be contextualized. Musharraf has had 8 years already and still he is trying to balance the various powers within his country and battle poverty, a key obstacle to the people of a country to function democratically. And even if his intentions were genuine he is still surrounded by corrupt politician who are in the end the central manipulators. So how does he hope to overcome these various challenges? Questions which (for now) only time can answer.

However, in the end no matter how much international scrutiny there is, it is up to the people of Pakistan to decide what they want. Democracy is in simple terms the will of the majority. So do they want a democracy or dictatorship and can such a unanimous voice be heard in a population where more than 70% live in rural areas under severe strains of poverty. There is also another more deadly question, what if Musharraf never was able to land his plane on that fateful night in September 1999 when then Prime Minister Navaz Sherif tried to establish an Islamic take over. What if there was no military coup? What Pakistan would we have on our maps now? And if indeed now Musharraf is ruled against contesting in his uniform, what viable options does Pakistan really have.

The Taj as it really is...

تاج محل / ताज महल

We've all heard about it..wanted to see it..lovers around the world (well let's hope not all..and really only a small percentage!) consider it their Mecca! It comes as no suprise that shah jahan's monumental creation, is now held as masterpiece of architecture for all to behold.


so me going to see it, is probably i guess natural...though believe me in the summer of Agra walking that long shadeless walk up to the mausoleum is no joke..and the last thing on your mind is anything but love!

The politics for the ordinary: Though the Taj does keep a lot of my thoughts involved i cannot help but observe certain surrounding areas.

Enter Agra.


Once a medieval city, Agra situated on the banks of the river Jamuna, is now..to be honest a sore sight for the eyes. You'd think we would try to make it better, with the whole campaign for getting taj into the top 7 world wonders in the world (personally the number and voting method is just simply ridiculous and waste of our time really..) up to the taj it's a horrible sight, and once you enter the grounds your mind is completely taken away from the sights that you have witnessed...the emaculate grounds are well maintained, the place is clean.. but..


you'd think there is something that can be done aboout the Oil refinery belonging to the Indian Oil company in Mathura (the adjoining city) that is polluting the environment, the very reality of a polluted and dying Jamuna, the resulting acid rains that are slowly but surely dicolouring the stones on the Taj,...i could go on..

The fact is non of the politicians will dare take a stand in developing Agra, or cleaning it up because that would mean some sort of displacement, of the very poor that is the back bone of their votes! As i heard once remarked over one of those many political dicussions "you take a stand on Agra? you will be voted out next". those lines really do sum it up. And then you start wondering about this system of democracy that has come in to place. There are too many of us out there proclaiming the ideological virtues of Democracy...but the question is exactly what have we installed in the name of democracy? The fundamentals maybe simiar, but somehow there is a unique development of a particular DNA that seems to make a particular type of demodracy to function. And this DNA is governed too, oddly by the people.


indifference...


It's always easy to brand the politicians, no...i'm definitely not trying to speak on their behalf, but we have to see the whole picture to really grasp the fact that it isn't about the individual will of a man or woman. It's the lack of collective will of the people. now collective will may sound like some kind of social movement, But believe me, democracy is a social revolution that is still taking place, but unfortunately in many instances it came rather from the top than willed from the bottom. Thus have we sealed the fate for a functioning democracy?


mmm....the taj is beautiful, symbolising love and purity..etc. etc. and also of a man's arrogance in enslaving thousands of workers to create this masterpice and ensure it is never replicated. it recalls the necessitty for us to chose democracy instead of other methods of governance, a free world...


which means in other words a world of our choice..


what we fail to remember is when we did this, we shifted all the responsibilty from the guy with the crown on his head to every individual of our land. somehow, our own governance of ourselves seems to interest only a few intellectuals who will theorise this philosophy, or a few morons who are quick to manipulate the situation. The general public seems to title it POLITICS. Oh that, not my area of ineterst.


when do we stop thinking about ourselves?

never.

believe me governance of yourself is part of your birthright. think about that


It says on a stone inscription situated inside the Taj grounds that the Taj mahal is considered "a tear drop in the expanse of time"

very poetic..

seeing how we treat the women of our society,
how we have let our eco-system be disrupted,
how we have let poverty become acceptable
and intolerance part of our natural make up...


this symbol of love, purity, of woman hood... the whole tear drop thing...


should really be like "bawling my head off for today's world".