Sri Lankan priest raises resettlement concerns

[struggle4progress]

Published Date: June 8, 2010

... “Resettled people find it difficult to restart their normal life,” Father Arulanandam Johnaly Yavis said while speaking with Major General G.A Chandrasiri at military headquarters in Kilinochchi.

The priest is dean of Catholic priests in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts, president of the Jaffna Diocesan Priests Union and head of Caritas Human Development Centre, the social arm of the Catholic Church in Jaffna.

Farming activities are disturbed since wells and irrigation canals have fallen into disrepair. Most people have lost their belongings including farming accessories, he pointed out ...

http://www.cathnewsindia.com/2010/06/08/sri-lankan-priest-raises-resettlement-concerns/

[darkstar3]

1. And your point?

Someone is complaining about the fact that they have to move because the place they currently live is nigh uninhabitable. Elsewhere, a butterfly beats its wings...

Oh, but because a PRIEST said SOMETHING about it, you felt the need to post it. Couldn't you go flood the gun forum? I've seen before that you are very good at that.

[Igel]

2. While not annoyed because it's from a religious source,

nonetheless it's a strange article to point out.

Lots of people find resettlement difficult. I personally found resettling after being driven out of my home difficult. I had graduated college and needed to establish myself as an independent economic unit.

Then I found resettling for grad school difficult. Getting settled after grad school was a great challenge as well, and resettling into our house was a royal pain--all that cleaning and scrubbing and painting and mending, then actually moving all the furniture.

The point is, resettling for any reason can be very difficult.

In this case, ultimately we're being asked to feel especially sorry for people that were forced to settle, perhaps through no fault of their own. I feel sorry for them. However, it's a common refrain throughout history and these particule "resettlers" get no more or less sympathy than those that resettled after Katrina, Ike, in Africa after conflicts, in Georgia after the conflict there, the millions who resettled after WWII, etc., etc. It happens.

Okay. I feel sorry. Now what? Should I feel a certain animus against those who caused it? Those who caused it to be caused? Those who caused the cause-causing cause? Should I dig for the root cause, or perhaps settle on a cause that's wedged gently into one of the stomata on a leaf, or perhaps at the leaf-twig interface, the twig-branch interface, the branch-bough interface, the bough-trunk interface, or perhaps at the point where trunk meets root? And if not settle for the ultimate root cause, why stop at some intermediate point? I mean, ultimately I'd have to blame the guy living in the last single group of humans in Africa when it split into two groups because (s)he didn't let another share a dead monkey, which ultimately leading to tribal divisions, the exodus out of Africa, the spread around the world, differentiation into various groups that split and mergered for 10s of thousands of years before settling into Dravidian vs Indo-Europeans, then Tamil vs. Sinhalese, combined with differential settlement patterns in antiquity, various invasions and resettlements since then, imperialism, the breakup from the Muslim empire in S. Asia, more imperialism, emigration of Tamils to Sri Lanka, more imperialism, more emigration of Tamils to Sri Lanka, independence...?

Personally I find it easier to blame !kana's selfishness (for so I've decided to name her, and have decided it was a her that led the breakup of pan-human unity) than the Sinhalese majority.