The Post-LTTE Dire-spore-a

If this was the decomposition, the definition would be something like:

dire  (dr)adj. dir·er, dir·est 1. Warning of or having dreadful or terrible consequences; calamitous

spore  (spôr, spr)

n.1. A small, usually single-celled reproductive body that is highly resistant to desiccation and heat and is capable of growing into a new organism, produced especially by certain bacteria, fungi, algae, and nonflowering plants.2. A dormant nonreproductive body formed by certain bacteria in response to adverse environmental conditions.intr.v. spored, spor·ing, spores To produce spores.

This is my point of view as an ethnic majority Sinhalese, from the comfort of my adopted western motherland, with the privilege of minority ethnic Tamils as some of my best friends and close family.

From their tolerant and safe western heavans, a majority of the so called diaspora are ready to continue to wage this war of hypocracy.  Its easy not to walk the talk.  Twenty something years of funding a war remotely so that the less fortunate may sacrifice their children, their lives, shed their tears and the blood, trapped in a world of torture, chasing an impossible dream, robbed of a childhood and youth.  Fighting a hollow war that would eventually come to a sudden end.  Thousands of lives and almost a billion dollars that could have been spent towards improving lives, not destroying them.

I would ask why not, why most of you did not dispatch your sons and daughters to fight a war that you feel so passionately about?  Are you the selected ones that were asked to board the arc, so that you may return to a land of freedom?  Perhaps the selected ones may never return from their safer heavens of economic priviledge to walk the land that is now soaked with the blood of the less fortunate and the poverty striken.  Perhaps nobody bothered to look over the bow of the arc, long enough, to see that the flood never came.

Agitating to fight a war from half a world away, with nobody left to walk the talk, would be lives, dollars, time and energy spent unwisely.  A leader who had the courage and the commitment to destroy terrorism that has plagued Sri Lanka and its people for twenty something years has reached out, showing the same courage and commitment required to rebuild a united nation.  Those who would debate and be unwilling to refer to the LTTE as a terrorist outfit could then be magnanimous or humble in a militay defeat.  A cause and its military soundly detroyed by an opposing cause and its military.

This majority diaspora should now have the courage to accept the monstrous destruction that they remotely inflicted upon its own less fortunate people and accept that the only way forward is to achieve their aspirations through peaceful means.  That is only if those aspirations are for an equality and a lasting peace.  The war for a separate homeland is lost and over although there remains a number of options for self government through federation, devolution and such systems.  It takes courage to leave behind the past, the misgivings, the unfairness and the discriminations and look to rebuilding a united Sri Lanka that is a motherland to all its peoples.  This is the best opportunity that Sri Lanka has ever had and now is the time to seize it.  It is time to leave behind years of hatred that the majority diaspora has passed down to its generations.  These are new generations, of a new age, that are free of such discriminations, overseas as well as in Sri Lanka.  It is a time to rebuild and to look forward.

If blood had to be shed to achieve a lasting peace, blood has now been shed a plenty.  Let it be known as a diaspora of reconcilliation and reconstruction and not a “dire-spore-a” that continues to demand a violent military means to an issue that may have been left behind twenty something years ago.  The level of destruction has brought about an eagerness globally, a universal understanding and a national urgency to sieze this opporunity of a lasting peace.  May a majority of the Sinhalese, the Tamils, the Muslims and the other minorities that are still of the land, who still hold it to be their home, be men and women of peace and reconcilliation.