Incredibly twisted view of the Sri Lanka report in a Sri Lankan paper

[karynnj]

Here is a link to the article, that I will not quote from. It essentially claims the US wanted the Tamil Tigers to win (or at least not lose) and we now have no plan. (This was not the paper that my daughter recommended to follow - though I at first thought it was. She read the Daily Mirror. I am glad my memory here was wrong - I checked back on the election eve comments that I posted a few days after the election.)

I am not sure if their feedback link creates posts or if they simply get it, but after hesitating I sent a response speaking of having had a daughter study their, who loved the country and the families she lived with and that we had visited. I then said the article completely twisted the report and gave the link to the report, pointing out it was publicly on the committee's web site - I also mentioned that Kerry had ethnic Tamil protesters at his Boston office when the report came out.

After last week, where I think that a lying media had some part in teh victory of Brown, it is frightening to see this in the Sri Lankan paper - especially because their government has cracked down on the media - so this might be their view.

[wisteria]

1. I have to confess, I know nothing about this situation. Can you recommend some good reference

material.

[karynnj]

2. The committee report is excellent in expalining the current situation

I don't really know a good source of the history there, as what I know came from summaries in the Sri Lanka travel books and from my daughter's explanations. The short story there is that there are two main ethnic groups, the Sinhalese, who are mostly Buddhist and the Tamils, who are mostly Hindu. There are also Christians and Moslems, but they are much smaller groups and they were essentially neutral or allied with the dominant group.

Under the British, the Tamils, about 30%, were the ones educated and the ones with civil service jobs. Before the British left, the country was set up to be a democracy - and the Sinhalese of course gained the power. (It appears that a standard British empire method to favor the minority.) There has been a civil war since then, hotter, often brutal, at some times. Last year, the Tamil Tigers, who were a brutal group that killed most competing Tamil leadership as well as fighting the Sinhalese were defeated. The Tamils fought for a separate country.