If you like to have a calm vacation, then don’t go to Sri Lanka

I just jump in to this simply entry at one of the Peter Greenberg’s travel website, dontgothere.org. It was the latest entry, so I would not miss it. This is what it says.

"If you like to have a calm vacation, then don’t go to Sri Lanka. The corruption will kill the joy of traveling around. You will be told how poor the country is. Hmm… I don’t think so if u look to what prices there are on everything, it’s cheaper in Europe and don’t forget, clean."

I thought commenting there, because commenting on every single blog in the world is one of my bad habits among many other such habits, but most importantly, as a child, every word I heard about Sri Lanka ended with glorious ST, such as greatest, prettiest, oldest and then usual world ‘paradise’. When one used to hear such nice things for long time, it quite painful to see those kinds of posts popping up here and there and you feel unstoppable desire to say “it is not true”.

But then I realize what it say there is true. Every bit of it. Sri Lanka is not a calm quite place. Not anymore. Either it is screaming TATA buses fly over our roads or bikers on Bajaj bikes ride like they don’t have families, children or reason to live another day. It is good we don’t have salesmen using loudspeakers vigorously promoting their merchandise, such as lottery tickets or religion. But we are far from been the quite calm place we used to be. Still there are enough beggars waiting to surround any tourist bus with their rented baby’s hanging on their arms or amputees rolling on tiny carts. A lady told me about her experience once and I’m quoting her, “when we get down at Kandy, he rolled toward us like a crocodile in dark, making all of us shiver”. Another lady told me about souvenir sales people, “When I was at Mihinthale, they separated me from the rest of the group, and forced me to buy a Souvenir. I didn’t get down from the bus since”. If you escape all those horrible encounters, then there are nationalist nut cases too, that you may occasionally bump in to. I came across such a horrible person at top of the Sigiriya, who scold one of my foreign friends for standing inside “king's Palace” and accused him for disrespecting our thousands of year’s old Royalty.

What I’m trying to say is, Sri Lanka is not the hospitable, wonderful, and "ST" place it used to be. I remember when I was young; the neighborhood I grow up had an unholy reputation as the “Korea”, and I thought about it while I’m looking at the sky line of port city of Busan some time back. There, young kids around 10 years old, cross the road alone, late at night, shop whatever they came for, and walk back home softly. Young school girls, walk home after night school around 10 at night, giggling at each other, wearing those short stripe skirts that they ware that part of the world. A pretty girl wearing short club dress, licking an ice cream, cross the road middle of the night, far from the town and went toward her way like it is Sunday morning. And that is a beautiful country. And the "Korea" I grow up in, well, we still live there.

War Theatre in Sri Lanka.

War is nothing new to Sri Lanka. If you enjoying reading those useless history books that we never learn anything from, you may have an idea us Sri Lankan has to face some sort of invasion from Indian subcontinent, every couple of hundred years. Just like Colman McCarthy once said about Pacific, we live in peace between wars, like being vegetarians between meals. I think it is the correct for any country you find on the world map or any other map not from this world, such as one from the Lord of the Rings.

War is an armed conflict that decide not who is right, but who is left at the end. It is more or less like a surgery. Bloody, painful and must not let come to it. But if you are unfortunate enough to engage in one, keep it short. If the current war in Sri Lanka is like any other war in human civilization, such as Peloponnesian War or Second World War, we should have seen an end to it long time back or at least last week when LTTE practically lost their military capabilities.

LTTE never had capacity to win a war with Sri Lankan army or any other actual army in that manner. Not back then, defiantly not now. This war started 25 years ago, when Michael Jackson used be black and top of the charts and even before Amy Winehouse was born. This dragged for so long because of two reasons. The first one been past Sri Lankan governments really didn’t want to end it. The second and most impotent one, defiantly the reason why the war did not end last week, because this is War Theatre, conducted front of live audience.

Audience of our War Theatre is western institutes such as Amnesty international or any western government that you may heard demanding human rights, ceasefire, media freedom and things in that nature, we all would like to have by the way. We do not hold parliamentary debits about Afghanistan or Iraq and demand ceasefire from British government like how British care to stop their daily activities early this month and debit about Sri Lanka and demanded a ceasefire.

"Why?", one of my friends asked me. Majority say it is the influence of Tamil Diaspora drive west to behave like that. Some say it is great conspiracy against Buddhism. But I think it none of above. I believe, It is the same reason that drives Nalin De Silva to criticize west even when he write about weather and it is the exact same reason some of our nationalistic bloggers find tremendous joy in economic misery in west. Buddha explained this behavior as “Maana” (මහා මානය, හීන මානය සහ සම මානය) in personal level and advice to be free from it. G.W.F. Hegel put it in broader social level, “We claim who we are by differentiating ourselves from others”. An obvious example, we may look at a bird and see, we don’t have feathers or wings and we don’t eat worms, so we are not birds and we are better. So does the west look at beyond the line they draw as west, define themselves from comparing to others, not in physical appearance but in their way of life and values. They believe they fought and won human rights, freedom of speech and such social values and therefore it is their organic values and others such as American Indians, Orients or Chinese or even Sri Lankans are inferior in such values, therefor they are the Westerners and Westerners are better. Just like our president have to say a Buddhist saying in UN meetings, British parliament have to debit about Sri Lanka, and about other countries, to remind their own selves, who they are.

The war didn’t ended as it naturally suppose to be, when LTTE lost their military capabilities, because LTTE find a way to manipulate this cultural sense of the west.

I don’t blame LTTE for that, because it is human nature to manipulate the environment for our benefit. For an example, if you are Tamil and poor, you cannot go to British high commission and apply for economic asylum and there is no such a thing call economic asylum, even when hunger more painful than lost of political freedom. But like someone commented in a previous post, you can burn your own hand and apply for political asylum and there you will get it. If you are a journalist, most probably they will not issue you visa to report British parliament debits, but they may grant you political asylum. This visa principle alone become a major reason for Sri Lankan war to continue, killing more than 70,000 humans, because it gave an opportunity for people to manipulate it and also west an opportunity to feel superior in the list of value that they use to claim who they are.

If it is not for west obsession of human rights, LTTE would not keep a human shield right now. The only reason LTTE do such a thing is not because they want protection, because they want to see civilians been harmed, so they can stimulate institutes such as Amnesty international. I don’t know who attacked the hospital last week, but LTTE stopped people from leaving the hospital because they wanted to show something dramatic to their audience. It is not only LTTE, reporters say how Harms leaders literally hide behind their own children and attract enemy fire in to dramatic locations like schools or hospitals. This is not war. This is War Theatre played for an audience. People like M.I.A goes around talking about genocide, not because we Sri Lankans stop our daily activity and go around killing Tamil people, because it is part of War Theatre. LTTE did not let civilians go, because it is part of War Theatre. Red Cross places an order of staggering amount of body bags not because they had to use it, because it is War Theatre.

LTTE will keep on manipulating their own people as long as they can, just to keep up their audience.