Tamils - a Trans State Nation..

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !."
- Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa 500 B.C 

Sri Gaza and The Tamil Hamas

Tim Marshall
28 January 2009

 Sorry, got my tragic-something-must-be-done-we-are-outraged outrages mixed up.

I was thinking of the crisis in which, according to the UN, 'many civilians are being killed', thousands made homeless, hundreds of thousands trapped, and to which, as food shortages grow, the government refuses to allow access to journalists.

Yes indeed, the British student movement is stirring, galvanising itself into action to be joined by countless others of citizens who are shocked, shocked I tell you about the slaughter of the innocent.

Already I can hear the chanting in the streets - 'From The River To the Sea, The Tamil Home Land Must be Free!'

Except, hang on. I can't hear anything except the distant rumble of artillery shells being fired into civilian areas, and the occasional news report. If you listen closely you can hear the rattle of machine gun fire and the sound of explosions killing civilians who were sheltering with the United Nations, and you might just pick out the pleas of the aid agencies falling on deaf ears. From the people whose righteous anger filled Britain's streets and student unions recently - I hear silence. Why?

Because the crisis is in Sri Lanka and the righteous ones appear not to have such moral outrage underpinning their efforts to save the innocents. I agree that less media coverage equals less public awareness -but even so.

And hang on, we always hear it's not about Arabs and Israelis, Muslims and Jews, Sinhalese and Tamil - its simply about the innocent. And yet somehow the lives of the 1,300 Palestinians killed by the Israelis causes far more outrage, in certain quarters, than the 2 million dead in Congo, the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by Sunni and Shia terrorists, or the growing number of Sri Lankan dead to add to the 70,000 killed over the past 25 years (far more than the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the same period).

I look forward to the calls for a boycott of Ceylon Tea, especially Orange Pekoe (never liked the stuff).