#tamil lanka

[singinginthecar]

israel saying that they're only bombing mosques because hamas is using them "to store weapons" and destroying universities because "they're being used as training facilities for hamas"..... is like watching exactly what the sri lankan government did when they carried out a genocide on eelam tamil ppl in northern sri lanka in 2009. this is the same old genocidal playbook. sri lanka called the tamil resistance fighters a bunch of terrorists too. they wiped out hundreds of thousands of ppl - resistance fighters and civilians alike under the pretext of "only" targeting the "terrorists". sri lanka bombed schools saying that "terrorists" were using them to train their "youth army" meanwhile innocent school going children were blown apart. they bombed civilian shelters on purpose saying that terrorists were using these places to hide. same goes for hospitals as well. anyone who's been paying attention to resistance movements around the world knows israel's playbook like the back of their hand. because we've seen this before. and we've seen the innocent lives that it costs. we've been seeing this all play out again and again, only now in a different part of the world... and like before, the world watches while letting it all happen. this breaks my heart. truly.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Israel has thus fully embraced the “war on terror” and richly profited from it. One of the most successful though bloody counterinsurgency battles of the early twenty-first century was the Sri Lankan government’s destruction of the Tamil Tigers militant group. Israel played a key, though largely unpublicized, part in Colombo’s successful campaign in a civil war that killed and disappeared more than 200,000 people, mostly Tamils, over a quarter-century that ended in 2009. Israel sold Kfir fighter jets and trained the Special Task Force, a brutal unit of the Sri Lankan police. Sri Lanka borrowed the Israeli playbook during the last stages of the civil war and ignored calls by NGOs, human rights organizations, and foreign governments to cease violence. The military stopped when the Tamil Tigers were completely decimated and Velupillai Prabhakaran, its leader, killed. Israel also helped generations of Sinhalese politicians build and maintain Sinhalese enclaves in the north and east of Sri Lanka, areas where most Tamils live. The aim was to create buffer zones around Tamil-majority areas and establish an unofficial occupation of Tamil territory. These plans continued after 2009 and Sinhala colonization has never stopped. These ideas were directly taken from Israel’s presence in the West Bank, where Palestinian sovereignty is denied with numerous fortified Jewish colonies. Israel signed a US$50 million deal with Sri Lanka in 2021 to upgrade the country’s Kfir jets.

Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

[hussyknee]

it’s rare to find a sinhalese person (online atleast) who is supportive of tamil self-determination. genuine question: among leftist circles in sri lanka, how common is such a stance?

I don't know whether I'm a reliable source to answer this question because I'm very jaded about this in general. A couple of days ago, someone on the Sri Lanka Reddit started up discourse about Maitreyi Ramakrishnan's choice to reject identifying with the country that tried to genocide her people, which I'm still chewing wire about. I'm a very isolated person with a very small social circle of like-minded leftist friends. They're mostly not SinBud and anti SinBud nonsense, but none of them are Tamil and I'm the one who really convinced them about Eelam I think. The people I learned from, who are out there doing the work of building inter-ethnic dialogue and overturning Sinhalese propaganda, might have a more hopeful view.

Thing is, there's no one "leftist" faction here because "left" doesn't mean the same thing as it does in the West. The Rajapaksas' party SLPP is socialist, a legacy of their ancestor the SLFP who was the party aligned with the USSR. They and their voters and their saffron terror acolytes (Buddhist priesthood) are all for public infrastructure they can rob blind and central government they can use to crush minorities, and build on the nationalist fervour of genocidal Sinhalese Buddhism that's served both major parties independence. There's quasi-communists, descendants of the ethnonationalist Marxist JVP that rose in opposition to the class corruption of ethnonationalist USSR-aligned socialist SLFP and enthonationalist US-aligned neoliberal UNP. They've since distanced themselves from their ethnic myopia, possibly due to suffering much of the same state terrorism as minorities via militarisation and policies like the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act. They're the most vocal about the abolition of the executive presidency, the defunding of military and police, and restructuring and executing the long-mismanaged socialist infrastructure. These are usually the working class and university students, but their base has been growing in other demographics too, since we "held our noses and voted" for the Yahapalana government in 2015 and it ended up fucking us over. But despite their sympathy with the suffering of Tamils and Muslims and favouring the devolution of power, most still cling to the idea that Sinhalese majoritarianism is a fair result of democracy.

The kind of pro-LGBT, anti-racist, feminist liberals that would pass muster with the western left otoh, are a minority of urban, English-speaking professionals. Their panacea for enthofascism is voting for the neoliberal party, whose idea of reducing corruption and increasing efficiency is privatizing everything, are against racism because it's bad for tourism, and coasts on the promise of never actively feeding ethnosupremacy, even if they won't do anything about it either. Both these groups hate each other but are equally deeply uncomfortable with if not entirely resistant to the idea that the North and East are Tamil lands colonized by the Sinhalese. Both groups are aware of the corruption and complicity of the Buddhist priesthood and are prepared to do exactly nothing about it.

What I'm trying to say is that Sinhalese Buddhist ethnosupremacy is baked in to the Sri Lankan political fabric. "Left" means jack shit when it comes to whether Tamils have rights, in much the same way that the western left agrees on everything except Palestine. It's a political no man's land everyone tries not to look at.

The fundamental problem is that Sinhalese people who know enough about 1958, 1983, or the full scope of genocide perpetrated against Tamils during the last push of the war, let alone all 26 years of it, are very much in the minority. It takes a particular education to understand that "Sri Lanka" is a post-colonial invention that took over from "Ceylon", which was nothing but a construct for the ease of British administration. As far as I know, this education is confined to activist organizations and whoever followed my sociology program. So my kind of anarchist leftism that calls the war a Tamil genocide with their whole chest and the priesthood saffron terrorists and recognises Eelam is, afaik, vanishingly small.

To be honest, I never really questioned the propaganda and narrative we've been spoon fed myself until I went to Canada when I was 23 to complete my anthro degree (became disabled and dropped out after). One thing that struck me was how racist the Sinhalese diaspora was. I was raised SinBud, my school didn't admit any non-Sinhalese, half my uncles were in the military, but these people that had left the country decades ago still hated Tamils and Muslims in a way that nobody else I knew did. I wondered whether this was what it had been like when it had all started; whether this hatred that seemed to have been preserved in amber was a true taste of what had ignited Black July. Suddenly the attitude of the Tamil diaspora towards the Sri Lankan government and Sinhalese people didn't seem so unreasonable.

Then, later in the same uni term, I went to an art exhibition of a white artist who travelled the world collecting information about their genocides and made art about them, and found a painting depicting Sri Lankan Tamils in 2008. Promptly had a meltdown. Went to the lady and told her tearfully that it was all propaganda, we didn't really hate Tamils, not even my uncles in the army hated Tamils, it was a war, the LTTE had terrorized us for my whole lifetime. Bless the woman, she didn't fight me, just let me cry at her and patted my hand and pretended to take me seriously. This made it easier for me to really think about what I knew once I'd stopped wailing and stamping. It prompted a years-long self-interrogation and fact finding that made me unearth how much brainwashing had been done to us by everyone, from our families to our school textbooks to news media. It's like the air we breathed was propaganda. And I still didn't know a fraction of what life had been like for Tamils (or Muslims) and the scope of atrocities perpetrated by the Sinhalese until I began my Society and Culture degree at the Open University when I was 30. The first year textbooks were only broadstrokes facts, but at last I found out about Gnananth Obeysekera, Prageeth Jeganathan, Stanley Thambaiya, Malithi DeAlwis. Their work on nation-making, ethnicity, historical revisionism, genocide and ethnic conflict and state terrorism...everything I should have been taught as a child. The chapters on the rapes and murders and shelling and war crimes and IDP camps were..indescribable. That was what properly radicalised me about Tamil self-sovereignty, because there's clearly no possible way the Tamil people will ever be safe and safeguarded under a Sinhalese majoritarian government.

I had to drop out of that programme too because of my health. But during the mass protests against the government in 2022, I learned even more about Tamil indigeneity, the extent of JR Jayawardena's crimes, and the persecution of Marxists and victims of the '71 and '89 insurrections. So much of the protests and their encampments were directed and galvanized by social media, that organised online and in-person lectures, teach-outs, and live discussions that anyone and everyone could attend right alongside the protests. I've never seen that kind of truly democratized, free, egalitarian civic education and discourse before. That was the very first time I saw academics, survivors, refugees and human rights activists being given a respectful platform, the masses hearing firsthand accounts from people of the North and East and witnesses of Black July. April to July 2022 was a truly golden bubble of time where I saw people finally start listening, believing, and challenging all their convictions. It was the closest we ever came to realising the hope that things could be different; that we could, as a society, understand how Sinhalese ethnosupremacy had been the black rot killing this country from the first, stop being racist Sinhala-first cunts and actually hold any of these murderers accountable.

Teach us to hope, I guess.

But I suppose it's no small thing that I learned about the Tamil resistance and struggle and taught all my friends about it. I'm sure they're informing their own circles in small ways too. These tendrils are hard to see, but they exist and grow. Especially with the fall of the Rajapaksas and their Bhaiyya contingent, more people can see ethnosupremacy for the grift that it is, and the younger generations are less defensive, more willing to listen and eager for justice and change. So I guess the answer is: not very common, but less uncommon than it used to be.

[guerillas-of-history]

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

Also known as the Tamil Tigers

Organization that fought for an independent Tamil state, free from the oppressive Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Tamil child from Jaffna, Ceylon, modern-day Sri Lanka

British vintage postcard

[worldtalks]

இலங்கை ஒரு காலத்தில் இந்தியாவின் ஒரு பகுதியாக இருந்தது.

Sri Lanka once was part of India.

[poems-from-around-the-world]

The Un-God - Latha - Sri Lanka

Translator: Shash Trevett (Tamil)

First I made the pottu

Then I planted

Tumeric and pale-scented

Jasmine on the vine

Raw-green tumeric-yellow sky-blue violet-

Inked butterflies fluttered

And fluttered

Everywhere in the house

Filling it with their music

Every moment 

Around you

As I grew around you

You said

Not all lives 

Are conceived 

To walk the earth

Yes

You will never become

A god

They’re saying in the village

[m-4399]

Pt.2 of the collection of Sri Lankan stamps

(These stamps were issued during the colonial era of Sri Lanka. Correct me if I am wrong)

[minhosimthings]

here we go :D!

Vedaant Madhavan is an Indian swimmer. He won the 48th Junior National Aquatics Championships which was held in India, winning 4 gold medals and 3 silver.

he is the damn son of R. Madhavan (maddy) and he got those damn genes im telling you NOT TO MENTION HE'S NOT THE NEPO KID?? he's got a name for himself. AND he got into his dream college (virginia tech)?????? boy i could never

i have NO idea wtf he's doing in a supermarket in a SUIT (that was his prom outfit btw🤭🤭)

helpppppppp i loved this suit so much i was watching the whole award show and i tried not to palpitate he looked beautiful

BUT BUT BUT BUT

i don't think he's ever gonna beat his dad.

(vedaant is also the same age as me :D! ykwim ykykykyk WINK WONKKKKKK)

I KNOW THIS DUDE BUT I DIDNT KNOW HE'S THE SON OF THE MF MADHAVAN WTF

He kinda hot though *bites lip* why he wearing that suit in the supermarket because I'd do the same thing lol

Omg please my Madhavan era was short lived but it was WILD AND FERAL like the way I thirst for Jay now is how I used to thirst after Madhavan because GOD DAMN THAT MAN-

[arjayproductions]

www.youtube.com/@mkabdurrahmanjay

AR JAY Artist | Music Director / Producer | Songwriter Singer | Sound Engineer | YouTuber | Entrepreneur.

AR JAY PRODUCTIONS TAMIL ALBUM Produced MK Abdur Rahman (AR JAY) Published : AR JAY PRODUCTIONS warakapola, Sri Lanka.

Contact : arrahmanofficial3@gmail.com www.youtube.com/@mkabdurrahmanjay www.tiktok.com/@arjayofficials www.threads.net/@arjayofficialac www.instagram.com/arjayofficialac/ web.facebook.com/arjayofficialac

[singinginthecar]

i still remember being a teenager and the first time i saw pictures from abu ghraib prison from the iraq war. i thought it was despicable. unfathomable the levels that the american military had gone to physically torture and dehumanize prisoners of war and to murder them. then, i remember growing up and seeing pictures from sri lanka's genocide of the tamil people (or as western media likes to call it, "sri lanka's civil war"). i'll never forget seeing those pictures and videos of tamil civilians bombed, murdered, raped, mutilated. i'll never be able to erase the cries i heard in those videos. pictures of innocent children bombed in schools. civilians bombed in supposed "safe zones". international media and western countries did nothing. and when i think nothing could possibly get worse... i see pictures & videos from gaza day after day... for the past 7 months. i've seen mutilated bodies. bombed bodies. bodies crushed under rubble. bodies flattened by tanks. burned bodies charred beyond recognition. i didn't know what shrapnel injuries looked like until now. compression injuries. i didn't... know... that things like this could be done to human beings. and they are. i hear stories and see pictures that are worse than the day before. the depravity and the moral apathy continues to worsen. and in moments like this, it's hard knowing that the ones who have all the power to stop these war crimes are only enabling it. and i'm consumed with so much rage that the world somehow keeps spinning despite it all. i'm mad at our governments. i'm mad at anyone who has any power to say or do something about it and chooses to do nothing or straight up enables it. there's got to be a better way. we can't keep living with these systems in power who inflict such pain into entire generations of people and never face any consequences for it.

[liberty-barnes]

@ tamil people i need help please

okay so my friend's birthday is coming up and we always joke about our trio of girls being the sun, the moon, and the star. she's the sun in this equation

so in her birthday card, moon & i wanna write "thank you for being our sun" but in tamil cause she's from sri lanka but i don't trust google translate and i don't want something important like that to be wrong but i also don't know any tamil people besides her so if someone could please be kind enough to translate this for us so we can write it in the card i would really appreciate it🤍🤍🤍

[hussyknee]

ඔබ සැමට කිරියෙන් පැණියෙන් සෞභාග්‍යයෙන් ඉතිරුණු සුබ අළුත් අවුරුද්දක් වේවා!! 💥🔥💥

உங்கள் அனைவருக்கும் மகிழ்ச்சியான மற்றும் வளமான புத்தாண்டு வாழ்த்துக்கள்!!💥🔥 💥

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous Sinhala and Tamil New Year!! 💥🔥💥

🪷🌟🪷☀️🪷🌟🪷☀️🪷🌟🪷

💠💙☸️💠🩵🕉️💠🔵☸️💠🔷🕉️💠💙☸️

🇱🇰🔥🪷🇱🇰🔥🪷🇱🇰🔥🪷🇱🇰🔥🪷🇱🇰🔥🪷

[bijoumikhawal]

idle curiosity: does anyone I know have any recommendations for researching Buddhism from a more practical perspective, as opposed to the often philosophical/secular one presented in a lot of English texts?

[postcard-from-the-past]

Tamil woman from Ceylon, Sri Lanka

British vintage postcard