The Impossible War - Tamil versus Singhalese

Canada was startled by the complete stoppage of one of Toronto’s major automobile arteries last week. And entire roadway was shut down for over six hours when a group of people from South East Asia walked up a ramp way on to the Gardiner Expressway and stopped all traffic.

News reports flooded in as the Metro Police and OPP tried to deal with the issue. On the Gardiner Expressway stood men, women and children attempting to get attention to their people’s cause back home. The fact that there were children involved – dragged there by their parents was shocking to say the least. This stymied the normal police removal of angry crowds in Toronto. Water cannons, tear gas, and brute force was out of the picture.

Some how the rest of Canada may have caught a sniff that something significant was taking place here and people were desperate.

The people group that walked on to the highway were Tamil. These are Brown Skinned people from Sri Lanka would be the easiest way that normal Canadians might label them.

But then all people from those parts are Brown Skinned aren’t they? Why are they bringing their “feudal wars” to our country anyway?

Come on Canada – wake up! Their cause is real. It is tragic. It is horrible. It is a nightmare if you are a Tamil. But who cares anyway?

I guess I used to think that way – the way that most Canadians think.

Reports today now state that the terrible war that has raged in Sri Lanka between the “Tamil Tigers” and “the Government” is over. The Tamil Tigers “have silenced their guns” according to reports on Web Sites and in our western newspapers.

But there is more… far more to this innocuous war in a far away country. Some how reporters have missed this little tidbit of information and are not reporting on it at all.

This war is not 26 years old – it is way more than that. It is ancient.

Before I go further I should explain some of my personal interest in this. I was born in Ceylon. That statement usually stops my brown Skinned Sri Lankan friends – as I am White. The Ceylon that I was born in was named after their country’s original name given by colonists. It is Ceylon, Saskatchewan… other wise known in southern Saskatchewan as “The Grass Hopper Capital of Canada”. (Today it is even smaller than when I was born there in 1944)

Over the course of my working career I have come in contact with many Sri Lankan people. Some were Singhalese and others were Tamil.

While working in Hong Kong the real story of the struggle in Sri Lanka became part of my family – in that a close family to us were deeply affected by battle back home in Sri Lanka… family members were brutally killed. Many were hacked to death with hoes and axes in front of their own children… but in many cases the children were also hacked to death. Mercy was never known by these murdering groups.

The people group that were hacked to death in my friend’s family were Tamil. The murderers were Singhalese.

It is a generalization to say the next statement but for the most part the Tamil people were better educated and in a better level of society than were the Singhalese… who were labourers and of a lower society.

But the fact is that the Singhalese far out number the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka “the Government” is Singhalese controlled. No doubt there are Tamil within it – but the main force is not Tamil.

My Tamil friend returned to Hong Kong in 1983 after some terrible times back home in Sri Lanka. He had witnessed his neighbour hacked to death then decapitated – with the head being hung on his own fence post. His friend was Tamil and owned a shop whose children were in University. The people that hacked him to death were local farmers, Singhalese, that hated Tamil people.

Can this issue be that simple? Yes it can and is. This “26 year old war” that has now been quelled or stopped was started when the “Tamil Tigers” were formed to stop the mass murders of the local Tamil people by very cruel and ignorant Singhalese people.

So how is Canada involved? How did these people get here and how did they come to block our highways making us “suffer” with their home problems?

We let them in… as immigrants. The same way that many of our own families arrived – running from “home problems”.

You see… when they – the Tamils – were being treated so horribly back in Sri Lanka – we as Canadians opened our doors to these refugees and said “You are safe here…”

So what now?

I am not sure what to predict for the future. I think that there will be far more news reports released in days to come… as further reports come out of Sri Lanka.

It is reported that 3000 people lie dead in the streets. Government officials do not agree.

What kind of Brown Skinned people are among the 3000 dead in the streets? Knowing what I know now – I would bet that they are Tamil.

This so called war that has ended yesterday – may have been the biggest and latest genocide ever. And the rest of us just looked on and did nothing… except complain when these Brown Skinned people blocked our highways.

Why did they do it? Well the answer may be so simple that we will never get it. Many of the Brown Skinned people laying dead in the street – are their close relatives that couldn’t move to Canada – or didn’t wish to run away.

Today I feel the same as I did in 1983, in my friend’s apartment as he cried and told of the horror that he had witnessed.

Today I am sad with the great loss of life in hidden valleys and strong holds that dared to resist “the Government”. And we all looked on and did nothing.

I pray for peace in Sri Lanka – for my Tamil Friends and my Singhalese Friends too. God help them all in the cry of this White Skinned Canadian.

~ Murray Lincoln ~
http://www.murraylincoln.com/

The Following is taken from Wikipedia…
Tamil (தமிழ் tamiḻ; [t̪əmɨɻ]) is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius, Vietnam, Réunion as well as emigrant communities around the world.[1] It is the administrative language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and the first Indian language to be declared as a classical language by the government of India in 2004.

Tamil literature has existed for over two thousand years.[8] The earliest epigraphic records found date from around the third century BCE.[9] The earliest period of Tamil literature, Sangam literature, is dated from the 300 BCE – 300 CE.[10][11] Inscriptions in Tamil Language from 1st century BCE and 2nd century CE have been discovered in Egypt and Thailand.[12][13] The first two ancient manuscripts from India,[14][15] to be acknowledged and registered by UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997 & 2005 were in Tamil.[16] According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies.[17] More than 55% of the epigraphical inscriptions - about 55,000 - found by the Archaeological Survey of India in India are in the Tamil language.[18]

Sinhalese or Sinhala (සිංහල, ISO 15919: siṁhala, pronounced [ˈsiŋhələ], earlier referred to as Singhalese) is the language of the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages.

Sinhala is spoken by about 19 million people in Sri Lanka, about 16 million of whom are native speakers. It is one of the constitutionally-recognised official languages of Sri Lanka, along with Tamil. Sinhala has its own writing system (see Sinhala alphabet) which is an offspring of the Indian Brahmi script.

The oldest Sinhala inscriptions were written in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE; the oldest existing literary works date from the 9th century CE.

The closest relative of Sinhala is the language of the Maldives, Dhivehi.

Source:
Tamil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language
Sinhalese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_language
BBC Report on the Sri Lankan/Tamil/Sinhalese War end
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8054169.stm