Occupational Alienation: a personal perspective
Abstract: This blog entry reflects on my personal feelings of occupational alienation and how they were stimulated by the use of occupational alienation and occupational injustice as weapons in a foreign country. It provides examples of politically and internationally generated occupational risk factors. Finally it describes my self-treatment using the limited means I have. Luckily for me, those means are far less limited than those available to people in the country that inspired this blog. THIS BLOG INCLUDES PICTURES FROM WAR, INCLUDING DEATH. YOU MAY THEREFORE WISH TO AVOID READING IT. The pictures in the referenced material are much worse and are likely to shock most people, so think carefully before looking at material from the reference list. Thank you.
Introduction:
The other day I stumbled upon a vulgar article in a year 2000 issue of the Lancet: “Of the 184 men, 38 (21%) said they had been sexually abused during their detention. Three (7%) of the 38 said they had been given electric shocks to their genitals, 26 (68%) had been assaulted on their genitals, and four (9%) had sticks pushed through the anus, usually with chillies rubbed on the stick first. One said he had been forced to masturbate a soldier manually, three had been made to masturbate soldiers orally, and one had been forced with his friends to rape each other in front of soldiers for their “entertainment”…… The injuries were: thickening and tenderness of final 1–2 cm on urethra of a man who described a soldier pushing an object inside his penis; a scar on the base of shaft of penis of a man who said that soldiers had repeatedly slapped a heavy desk drawer shut on it; an irregularly defined defect in the foreskin of a man who said that soldiers had tied some string around his penis and pulled, tearing off a piece of his foreskin; and a cigarette burn on the scrotum of a man who said that soldiers had stubbed cigarettes out on his genitals.”[1] The victimised community described in the article has to date received no tangible protection from the international community, yet, when it raised its own army to protect itself, that action was deemed to be ‘terrorism’ and supporting or even just receiving literature from that army is illegal in Britain today![2] Superficially this appears to be a gross and nonsensical internationally imposed injustice. This blog entry is about my personal perspective of the issue, how it has damaged my psyche and the limited occupational opportunities I am aware that I could use to repair it.
Background:
Personally I do not believe that history is an excuse for current atrocities in any situation but it may provide some understanding of the racial hatred underlying the inhumane acts described above.
Religious stories: According to Hindu scripture the land now known as Sri Lanka was inhabited by a demonic race until it was conquered by an army of demigods incarnated as monkeys, animals and God himself incarnated as Rama[3]. A Buddhist account of Sri Lankan history similarly states that serpentine humanoids, ghosts, and primitive aborigines occupied the land until the sixth century BC when it was colonised by a half-man-half-lion exiled from India, leading 700 exiled criminals of Aryan descent, that later interbred with the family of Buddha to become the Sinhalese race[4, 23]. Indian missionaries progressively converted the Sinhalese people to Buddhism from about 250 BC until they developed into an advanced entirely Buddhist civilisation[4]. According to this account growth of the civilisation was disrupted and great suffering was caused by various Saivite Tamil invasions from 103BC onwards and Indian influences that tried to destroy Buddhism. According to one Sinhalese source, Tamils made up 12.5% of the population[5].
European conquerors: Portuguese invaders that forcefully propagated Catholicism from 1505 further threatened Buddhism. From 1658 Buddhism was threatened by a Protestant schooling and legal system set up by Dutch colonists. The last Buddhist king in Sri Lanka was removed from his throne 2/3/1815 by British conquerors that (it is claimed) systematically oppressed Buddhism while trying to propagate Christianity[4]. They brought with them a Tamil workforce from India, bringing the Tamil population up to 18%[5]. Tamil people were over-represented in professional and administrative jobs until 1948 when the British handed control over to the Sinhalese people[4, 6].
Sinhalese rule: The Sinhalese government denied the citizenship of 30% of the Tamil people[5, 6], pronounced Sinhala the national language and Buddhism the national religion[6]. The Tamil people began non-violent protests against this legislation because many of them could not understand Sinhala. Their protest was broken up by a large mob that sparked off the first anti-Tamil riots in 1956[7]. In 1957 the government signed and agreement (Bandaranaike Chelvanayakam Pact) to allow some Tamil autonomy in the North and East of the country, but the agreement was not honoured because Buddhist monks protested against it claiming it was betrayal of Sinhalese-Buddhist people[8]. A Buddhist monk assassinated the prime minister Solomon Bandaranaike in 1959, to prevent him instigating a system of federal government[6, 13].
The Sinhalese nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) movement tried to take over the country by force in 1971. Their attempted uprising was quashed but they remained as an underground organisation, killing any politicians opposed to their views and the families of armed forces personnel[9]. The military retaliated by abducting and killing people thought to be associated with the JVP, leaving their smouldering burnt bodies in public view[10]. One of the JVPs political spokesmen from that time was Mahinda Rajapakse. Now (at the time of writing this blog entry) he is the president of Sri Lanka[10]. Ironically, the method of control the government once used against him is still in operation today under his government, and it has been estimated that over 40000 people have ‘gone missing’ in Sri Lanka so far[9].
Ethnic cleansing: The anti-Tamil riots of 1956 were followed up by targeted attacks on Tamil people all over the island[7]. Hundreds of Tamil people were murdered and thousands assaulted during another wave of riots in 1958[7]. Tamil homes and businesses were looted and destroyed forcing 25000 refugees to relocate to the north[7].
“The terrible incidents that took place when I was living with my parents in Puttalam in 1958 are still fresh in my mind. Hundreds of innocent Tamil people were massacred. Pregnant Tamil women were put into tar barrels and burnt alive. I am still unable to overcome the trauma of hiding in a haysack after losing my father, getting loaded like cattle with hundreds of others into a lorry, and wandering as a refugee”[22:piii].
During 1977 elections, a political party called the Tamil United Liberation Front was successful in Tamil-dominated geographical areas. Sinhalese nationalists responded with pre-planned, organised anti-Tamil riots[7]. In 1981 the Jaffna Public Library was destroyed during an army-imposed curfew[6]. As the event took place during a forced curfew it is believed that the destruction of the library was either carried out by, or authorised by the government[6].
Following an attack by Tamil militia that killed 13 soldiers on the 23rd of July 1983 a rumour was spread on the 25th of July that the Tamils were going to attack the capital city Colombo[14]. This led to another series of anti-Tamil riots. Surviving victims claim that mobs had been given lists of Tamil people and residences from the electoral register so that they would know who to attack[6, 14]. According to the BBC[6] a government minister was seen in the street directing the mob towards Tamil homes and businesses. Western tourists and journalists that were in the area at the time said that government troops did nothing to stop the riots and in fact, stopped people from putting the fires out[16]. According to witnesses, soldiers re-directed fleeing Tamil people to a mob that killed them and burned their bodies with tyres[14]. Hundreds of Tamil people were killed and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to India[7]. The South of the country became almost devoid of Tamils, and many of those that remained "forcibly disappeared" over the next 25 years[7]. The allegations of attacks by Sri Lankan forces on Tamil civilians are too numerous for me to critically analyse, but they were summarised by a Sinhalese man here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLmwBhUwfac and are catalogued on this web-site: http://www.srilankanatrocities.com/ Examples include children being hung in front of their parents or raped before being killed, and orphanages being bombed by the Sri Lankan air force. Despite these atrocities the British Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) trained Sri Lankan armed forces until 1988[18], and United States Special Forces provided similar services to the Sri Lankan government as late as 1997[19]. On the 2nd of May 2007 it was said in the House of Commons regarding arms exports “£7 million-worth of arms were licensed for delivery to Sri Lanka in the last quarter for which figures are available”[20]. Sri Lanka also receives arms from India, Pakistan and China[21] so it could be argued that ethnic cleansing to remove the Tamil people from Sri Lanka is in fact an international effort.
The rise of Tamil militia: Following the repeated failures of peaceful protests to end racist atrocities against the Tamil people of Sri Lanka several protective Tamil militia groups formed. The most notorious of these, ‘Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’, did not form until 1972[6], and emerged in 1975[11]; 19 years after the ethnic cleansing of Tamils began. Other militia included the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOT), the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation (EROS) and the Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front (ENDLF) [17]. On the 23rd of July 1983 the Tigers attacked a unit of the Sri Lankan army whose soldiers had been accused of raping Tamils[14] and killed 13 soldiers[15]. According to Douglas Wickramaratne[16] the Tigers amputated the soldiers hands and removed their wedding rings. This was the attack (mentioned earlier) that many consider led to the 1983 anti-Tamil riots[15].
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fall into disrepute: It is believed that following the mass exodus of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka to India that resulted from the 1983 riots, several militant Tamil groups were armed and trained by India[15]. During subsequent conflict between the various Tamil groups, it is widely believed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam absorbed or eliminated the other groups by killing their leaders and moderate Tamil politicians[17]. On the 14th of May 1985 the Tigers shot 146 Sinhalese civilians at Anuradhapura to avenge the killing of 70 Tamil civilians at Valvettiturai by the Sri Lankan army[15, 24]. By attacking civilians and alienating Muslim people[24] the Tigers established themselves as a terrorist organisation, leaving the Tamil people with no legitimate force of protection against continuing atrocities by the Sri Lankan armed forces and police. Time-lines of attacks attributed to the tigers can be found here: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSSP33257120080202?pageNumber... or here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/51435.stm According to secondary sources, the Tigers are currently using Tamil civilians as a human shield; shooting those that try to escape, and in one case, even amputating a lower limb to prevent a person from running away[38].
Inability to maintain peace:
The modern history and politics of Sri Lanka are too complex for me to spend any more time on. Too much water has passed under the bridge for analysis in this blog entry. A brief history of government incompetence and conflict between two brutal uncompromising sides can be found here: http://www.uthr.org/Reports/Report4/chapter2.htm The last ceasefire between the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers (agreed in 2002) was violated by both sides. Examples of this include when “alert Naval troops off the sea in Mannar destroyed one more LTTE arms trawler with several LTTE terrorists aboard the vessel”[26, 27] only to suffer a revenge attack the next day, killing 92 Navy personnel[27].
Occupational injustice and alienation suffered by Sinhalese Buddhists:
The survival of Sri Lankan Buddhism has historically been subjected to significant threats. From the time of Portuguese occupation there “are lurid accounts of men thrown into rivers to be eaten by crocodiles, babies spitted on the soldiers’ pikes and held up before the parents, or crushed between millstones before the eyes of their mothers who later were to be tortured to death” [4:p71]. Under Dutch rule “civil rights and inheritance depended on a person’s church affiliation. No person who was not a Christian could hold even a minor office under government, no person who was not a Christian could get married legally or register the birth of a child”[4:pp 75-76]. The under-representation of Sinhalese people (compared to Tamil people) in government and professional jobs under British rule was their final occupational injustice. Perhaps therefore it is not surprising that a fearful and defensive subculture has evolved within Sri Lankan Buddhism, characterised by Buddhist monks believing that Tamil people from India wish to take over the whole of Sri Lanka and pressuring the government to make no concessions to the Tamil people[25]. The belief that India armed and trained Tamil militia in the 1980s adds credibility to this fear.
Occupational alienation of Sri Lankan Tamil people:
Can you imagine Buddhist monks killing ministers of parliament, the police and army coming to your house and raping your family with no fear of punishment, or the British government ordering the assassination of journalists here? Sitting in the comfort of University accommodation in England, it was hard for me to imagine people can be so uncivilised until I saw pictures of atrocities that are probably still ongoing as I type this blog now. How about if the national language of Britain was changed to Sinhala, so that the all the road signs were in Sinhala, the police spoke only Sinhala and when arrested you would be tried in Sinhala? You would not be able to get into University unless you would read, write and speak Sinhala. Can you imagine how life would be? Our inability to imagine the predicament Tamil people in Sri Lanka have suffered for the last 53 years leaves us unable to understand their culture and the ground ripe for their occupational alienation. This alienation has not occurred completely by chance or bad luck; it is continually being engineered as a weapon of war. I have put a few examples that spring to mind below:
Re-writing history: Anybody reading Buddhist accounts of Sri Lankan history could be forgiven for believing that it was a unified Buddhist nation with insignificant non-Buddhist populations. The aboriginal people were only briefly mentioned and given insignificant attention[4]. The Hindu population was described as “sannyasis or yogis who practised asceticism and sometimes lived in cemeteries scantily clad, with bodies covered in ashes, and as the story says, pretending to be saints while at the same time they led sinful lives”[4:p28]. In fact, impartial sources state a Tamil kingdom was established on the island in the 14th century[13] and some Tamil authors claim that the aborigines described in the Buddhist history were Saivite Tamil people[22]. Needless to say, it is those in power that write the official history, and the BBC follows the Sinhalese-Buddhist version[28]. What then happened to the aborigines? Was their continuing existence and culture written out of history, or did they disappear into oblivion? The burning of the Jaffna library was instrumental in destroying evidence of Sri Lankan Tamil history.
Control of the media: I guess that there is a high probability that before you read this blog entry you had heard of ‘Tamil Tiger Terrorists’, but had you ever heard of the anti-Tamil riots of 1956, 1958, 1977 and 1983? Did the media ever tell you that the Tamil people in Sri Lanka endured 19 years of atrocities before finally taking up arms? Did you ever hear of the Chunnakam market, Othiyamalai, or Mannar massacres in 1984, Valvettithurai, Kumudini boat, or Killiveddy massacres in 1985, Akkaraipattu massacre in 1986, Prawn Farm massacre in 1987(allegedly carried out by police trained by the British SAS[18]), Kalmunai, Eastern University, or Batticaloa massacres in 1990, Kokkadichcholai massacre in 1991, Mylanthanai massacre in 1992, Jaffna lagoon massacre in 1993, Kumarapuram massacre in 1996, Jaffna Hospital massacre in 1987, Tampalakamam massacre in 1998, Mirusuvil massacre in 2000, Trincomalee, Allaipiddy, Vankalai, Muttur, or Pottuvil massacres in 2006? Why is this? It is because occupational alienation is key to allowing the extermination of a race to go unnoticed.
When reporting on Sri Lanka the media usually describes atrocities committed by the Tamil Tigers, but rarely on the reasons for their actions. The BBC for example describes the 1985 Anuradhapura massacre as carried out by the Tamil Tigers but makes no mention of the Valvettithurai massacre that provoked it[15], similarly attention has been paid to the Tigers closing the sluice gates of a reservoir[29] ignoring the reasons behind the action[30]. Throughout the history of the conflict the Tigers have been accused of attacks that they themselves denied involvement in. According to one Tamil author, the Tigers denounced the 1985 Anuradhapura massacre as “senseless violence”[31:p119], yet it has been recorded in history as having been perpetrated by them. The victims (or those close to them) of several attacks officially attributed to the Tigers actually believed the perpetrators to be government forces. Douglas Wickramaratneeven for example, broadcast claims that the 1983 anti-Tamil riots were planned and orchestrated by the Tamils[16]. More recent examples of this include rapes routinely blamed on the Tigers before formal investigations[32], the hanging of children in Mannar[33,34] and the killing of 17 workers from the international aid group Action Contre la Faim[35]. According to international press, the Tigers are “preying on tsunami orphans to use as child soldiers” [36] and “using threats and intimidation tactics to extort money” [36] from Tamils living outside Sri Lanka, even ordering them to re-mortgage their houses to fund the war. Impartial sources have reported that the Tigers fund their campaign by human trafficking and smuggling drugs[17]. The Tigers have also been linked to Al Qaeda and other militant Islamic groups[37]. This kind of information serves to alienate the Tigers by putting them securely in the ‘terrorist’ box. As Sri Lankan Tamil people have no other force of protection, alienating the Tigers essentially disarms the Tamil population. The government is denying international journalists access to the war zone[38] preventing the world from hearing exactly who the perpetrators are directly from the victims of the conflict. When journalists were permitted to see a ‘show camp’ where refugees were being held by the army, aid workers asked the journalists not to speak to the inmates for fear that armed guards would later punish them for speaking[38]. Journalists reporting views contrary to government policy are routinely abducted and killed[38].
2002 saw the release of the film ‘In the Name of Buddha’ illustrating the suffering of Tamil people at the hands of the Sri Lankan and Indian armed forces. The film won best foreign film awards at the Beverly Hills and Newport Beach film festivals[39]. If you look for the film now I doubt you will find it anywhere. How can a film just disappear? If you know where I can get a copy, please let me know.
Legislation: Though conveniently written out of Sinhala-Buddhist accounts of Sri Lankan history, the aboriginal people of the island must have been subjected to the same occupational alienation and injustice under the rule of European conquerors as the Sinhalese people were. Those that thrived did so by learning English and/or converting to Christianity. The difference between the Sinhalese people and minority groups in this respect, was that the minority groups continued to suffer after the occupational alienation of Sinhalese people ended in 1948. The Official Language Act No. 33 of 1956 declared Sinhala to be the only official language[12] thus baring Tamil people that could not understand Sinhala from university education[6] and government jobs[9]. Denying 30% of the Tamil population Sri Lankan citizenship was a clear case of occupational alienation.
Occupational Injustice suffered by Sri Lankan Tamil people:
Looking at the ethnic cleansing very crudely and insensitively one could say that denying a group of people life based on their race is an occupational injustice. To a lesser extent, denying them the right to live in certain areas where people of other races are permitted to live is also an occupational injustice. The ethnic cleansing mentioned earlier in this blog entry is therefore a cause of gross occupational injustice. Less extreme examples are restrictions on freedom of movement based on race[40]. The disadvantages created by engineered occupational alienation are a profound source of injustice, but perhaps most damaging of all is the restriction of freedom of speech. There are no international laws to stop the free flow of propaganda from the Sri Lankan government or by Sinhalese groups yet anybody speaking out against the Sri Lankan government or asking for a separate state for Tamils puts himself or herself at risk of being accused of supporting terrorism. In Sri Lanka this often results in abduction and execution. Anything that can be seen as glorification of the Tamil Tigers may be illegal in the United Kingdom[41]. This means that though the Tigers may try to counter defamation with their own media[42], that media is illegal in the United Kingdom. Sri Lanka is currently experiencing conflict between two terrorist organisations; the Tigers and the government. Imposing communication restrictions on just one of these two parties is an occupational injustice.
Regarding armed conflict, the fact the United Nations turned a blind eye while the Sri Lankan military massacred Tamil civilians[43] at a time when the Tamil people’s only armed resistance has internationally been deemed illegal was an occupational injustice. The same applies to the perception that it is was wrong for the Tigers to re-arm during cease-fires while growth of the Sri Lankan armed forces was acceptable. This belief led to the Sri Lankan military attacking Tiger boats during the last cease-fire period, inspiring revenge attacks that were deemed unacceptable by the international community[26, 27].
My personal experience:
Construction of my identity: I was born in England and have always been a British citizen. I first visited Sri Lanka at the age of 4 and was blissfully unaware of the politics or violence. My only memories of that time are the painful boils from mosquito bites, the huge spiders and feeling like I had been abducted when a strange relative took me somewhere without my parents. I remember representatives from the various Tamil militant groups collecting money at social gatherings in England. I even remember putting money in their pots, but that stopped when the various groups started fighting with each other; funding them seemed like a nonsense from that moment on. My parents had kept me isolated from British society up until that time. I am not sure whether that was to protect me, or the future of their culture. They also sent me to a Tamil school on Saturdays that I resented because I wanted a 5-day working week just like everybody else. I remember hearing bad news about Sri Lanka every so often. There were stories of the army sealing bus doors closed and burning everybody inside alive with petrol. Those stories would take a twist much later in my life.
My next visit to Sri Lanka was when I was about 11. The first things I noticed were the dogs and cows that took themselves for walks down the streets, huge flying cockroaches and the big ants, closely followed by the indoor gecko. Then I noticed there were no attractive girls in Sri Lanka. I did not find Asian girls attractive because they reminded me of my sisters, and having grown up surrounded by white girls I only found them attractive. That was enough to convince me I wanted nothing to do with Sri Lanka despite the nice weather, fruits and beaches. I spent the rest of my childhood living in dread of arranged marriage. After a brief stay in the south we went to the North that at the time was occupied by an Indian Peace Keeping Force. There were army checkpoints everywhere fortified with sandbags and armed with machine guns. A curfew was in place from 19:00hrs to 7:00hrs every day, and anybody that went outside during those times was shot by the Indian army. The back garden of my grandmothers’ house was full of military paraphernalia. There were 7.62 cases and separated machinegun link everywhere. I remember linking cases together to make a belt and packing it in my suitcase to bring home. My mother unpacked it and threw it away without telling me, to avoid any trouble at the military checkpoints when we left. Fragments of various munitions such as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades were also strewn all over the garden and one tree trunk had a hole right through it. I was warned to avoid touching any of it because my cousin had managed to blow his thumb off by doing so. My cousin’s house was half burnt out with only a few intact rooms remaining.
My uncle told me the people had welcomed the Indian army with flowers when they arrived, thinking they would offer protection from the Sri Lankan army and police. One of my relatives had previously been suspended by his big toes and had chilli powder rubbed into his eyes while Sri Lankan forces personnel beat him. Peace not last though. According to a Tiger propaganda web-site the Indian prime minister signed a peace agreement with the Sri Lankan prime minister regarding the future of the Tamil people, without including Tamil groups in the process[44]. This resulted in conflict between the Tigers and the Indian army. The Tigers had been fighting the Indian army for a while before we arrived. While I was eating breakfast one morning the Tigers attacked a military checkpoint on my grandmother’s street. There was an explosion and gunfire, but everybody just calmly continued eating their breakfast as if it was a daily event. Later, one of my relatives told me that violence in Jaffna was like rain in England, and that the community had become so desensitised to it that they previously continued with their daily shopping while being bombed by the Sri Lankan air force. One day the Tigers showed up with a baby elephant during festivities at the Temple behind my grandmother’s house. A short while later the Indian army showed up and the Tigers disappeared. One of my cousins had joined the Tigers but left and went back home. My father took me to visit one of his friends whose only son had been killed in action as a Tiger. He seemed to have a very calm resigned sadness about him. I remember him giving me sugar cane. My thumb-deficient cousin told me he wanted to be a Tiger. I wanted to be a Tiger too. From my experience of being there, I feel that at the time the people favoured the Tigers. That is not surprising, as it was believed that the Indian Army was responsible for the 1987 Jaffna Hospital massacre. I also heard talk of rapes, though nobody was going to speak to me directly about that as an 11 year old boy. At the time I naively ignored what I heard because my father had brainwashed me into believing that Hindus only used sex for procreation and for no other reason. I therefore doubted that Indian or Sri Lankan soldiers would rape Tamil women. The worst thing I saw Indian soldiers doing was beating up a man with their sub-machine gun butts by the roadside and the worst thing I saw the Tigers doing was tying a woman to a tree and cutting all her hair off. In my juvenile naivety the conflict simply added excitement to my holiday. I remember back in England hearing on television news (I believe it was the BBC) that British colonists introduced the Tamil population to Sri Lanka as a workforce for tea plantations. My mother was infuriated that history had been re-written and she went straight to the telephone and called the BBC to tell them Tamil people had lived in Sri Lanka for thousands of years. The account presented by the BBC has since improved, but it still reflects the Sinhalese-Buddhist view neglecting the Tamil history[28].
Occupational alienation due to racial stereotypes: A few years later and wiser I became disillusioned by the fact Sri Lankan Tamil people were killing each other. I had heard British people likening the Tigers to the Irish Republican Army many times. I also had Sinhalese friends so I wanted nothing to do with the Tigers. The books ‘Bravo Two Zero’ and ‘Who Dares Wins’ inspired me and I decided I wanted to work for the British SAS instead. It was a fantasy that I did not think would ever become real. Much later, during my first year at University a girl I liked that had been flirting with me for several months told me that nothing could happen between us because I was from a different culture. This experience hurt me quite badly and I found myself looking at all of the Asian stereotypes portrayed in the media, wondering whether people associated them with me. I was not proud to be Tamil because by then I was ashamed of the brutality of the Tigers and the disgraceful behaviour of some Tamils in London[45]. I started to notice racist graffiti that I had previously been oblivious to and remembered previous incidents of racism that I had previously been unaffected by. Other than some overt racial harassment I had experienced during a summer job, the most prominent memory I had was skinheads throwing stones at my brother and trying to terrorise my family. The police came to our house but I do not remember them actually doing anything about it. I systematically removed all traces of my ancestry from my persona. I took up Buddhism because I considered it less dogmatic than Hinduism and more applicable to life. I even stayed in a Theravada Buddhist monastery for a week to see what life would be like if I became a monk. The Abbot told me he was ashamed of Sri Lankan Buddhist monks and that they should give up their vows before entering politics but I did not really understand what he was talking about.
Deliberately engineered occupational alienation: News reports stating that the Tigers are extorting money from Tamil people in Britain[41] do not match my experience so I phoned an uncle that runs a shop yesterday and asked him if the Tigers have ever threatened him. He also told me that they occasionally visit and ask for money, but leave him alone when he refuses. As the Tigers are illegal in this country I doubt they present an overt infrastructure, so it would not be possible to check that people making threats are real Tigers, or have them disciplined by their seniors. I spoke to a cousin in Southern Sri Lanka on MSN messenger recently and he told me that the Tigers have ruined the country. He told me that when he lived in a Tiger controlled area he was not permitted to watch movies. “Do not give the Tigers any money” he said. I asked a couple of personal questions to authenticate his identity, but he could not remember the answers. His communication was abrupt. He said he had to study for an exam, and then he logged off, so I did not get any useful information out of him. One of my friends was a Tiger at the age of 12 but subsequently ran away. I asked him if he believed the Tigers would use civilians as a human shield and he told me that the only Tamil people they terrorised were those considered to be traitors. He said he went to the Tigers voluntarily after seeing members of his family killed and was given military training but was not permitted to fight because he was too young. Everybody I speak to agrees that the Tigers are brutal, but first hand accounts of people I speak to do not match the reputation portrayed by the media. Propaganda linking the Tigers to Islamic terrorist groups is not consistent with propaganda saying the Tigers terrorise Sri Lankan Muslims. It may be one or the other, but I cannot understand how both of these allegations could be true. I personally believe they were fabricated to help place the Tigers in the ‘terrorist’ box. Finally, on the 6th of March 2009 I received an e-mail saying “This is the destiny of the innocent Tamil civilians who tried to escape into government controlled areas. If caught they will be burned alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Extreme brutality of LTTE…… Burning their own people A L I V E !!!!!1……” It appeared to have been sent from a Anuradha Wijesekera (6/3/2009) to a Shanika Ranasinghe to a Chris Desilva to a Dulsri Ranjan Weerasinghe who was kind enough to forward it to me. Strangely I had seen the exact same pictures before on a web-site claiming to show the effects of Sri Lankan Army shelling on Tamil civilians[48]. The HTML alternate text of the pictures in the e-mail was “Tamil%20Genocide%20”, which funnily enough was the exact same alternate text that was on the web-site. The injuries in the pictures were not consistent with small arms fire or burning alive. Bodies were completely mangled and heads or limbs had been blown off suggesting heavy weaponry. I had just witnessed somebody trying to re-write history to discredit the Tigers. When I replied to the e-mail with my quires I received the response “These are NOT my pictures They are being circulated/forwarded on the WEB”. I believe the Tigers are a terrorist organisation, but now that I have seen how easily people are duped, I wonder how much of their reputation is actually deserved, and how much should be attributed to the Sri Lankan armed forces. Some time ago, my father was admitted to Northwick Park Hospital with respiratory problems. I remember one of my uncles who is a doctor standing at the entrance to the hospital during visiting time. He was staring at a sign that said ‘Welcome’ in several languages. Tamil was amongst those languages. He pointed to it and said: “Look, we have more freedom to use our language in this country than we do in our own!” When I asked him what he meant, he told me that Sri Lankan signs were written in Sinhalese only. Reflecting on this I feel glad to live in a country where racial equality is valued.
My investigation of the problems: It was while researching the subject I found news reports of 108 out of 950 Sri Lankan soldiers on a United Nations mission to Haiti being returned to unit due to rape, child abuse and sexual offences[49] and allegations of mass rape made against the Indian Army in Manipur[50]. Now the allegations I heard before seem completely plausible. I also learned that the police unit accused of the 1987 Prawn Farm Massacre were actually trained by the British SAS[18]. Though Tiger propaganda is illegal, ridiculously false information still streams from Tamil sources[51]. Looking at a less extreme video I could hear a lot of screaming and see many people running around creating an appearance of chaos, but there were relatively few obvious casualties[52]. This led me in my heartless frame of mind to wonder whether people were playing up to the camera. It seems clear to me that two terrorist groups plague Sri Lanka at the moment. Due to mass propaganda it is difficult to determine which is the lesser of the two evils. To do this I looked at an impartial source:
"The overwhelming majority of Sri Lankan clients seen by the Medical Foundation in the past year were Tamil, with just three giving their ethnicity as Sinhalese. This accords with findings by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) who in recent country-specific reports have highlighted the Sri Lankan government’s strategy of targeting members of the Tamil community………Where religion was specified, 61 clients declared themselves as Hindu, 14 were Catholic, and five were Muslim…………Several women who were detained by security forces or paramilitary groups while seeking to find their husbands were raped by the very authorities they had sought help from…….Out of 115 where the perpetrator was named, in 79 cases the perpetrators were the Sri Lankan Army, with the Sri Lankan navy named in a further 14. The Karuna group was named in 11 cases, and the LTTE implicated in 15."[53:p4-5]
Karuna is an agent of the Sri Lankan government wanted for war crimes[54]. That means according the above sample only 13% were victims of the Tigers; the rest being victims of government forces. This sample may not of course be representative of the country. Perhaps the Tigers kill more of their victims leaving less to seek help for recovery from torture. Perhaps Sinhalese victims are less likely to flee the country to seek help due to greater social support from the Sinhalese majority. Any number of factors could have influenced these statistics. We will only ever get a true picture of what is going on in Sri Lanka if the survivors of atrocities are given full protection from the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers to enable them to testify without fear.
How this experience affected me:
During my military training I was shown pictures of dead people that had been hit by various weapons. This was to enable other soldiers to gather intelligence about enemy weaponry from corpses and to psychologically prepare me as a medic for treating battlefield casualties. At the time, other soldiers in the same position surrounded me, so I felt undisturbed. Seeing mutilated babies a few weeks ago had a much more profound affect on me. I was unable to sleep and unable to concentrate on work. This was because the images I was seeing were happening in real time; they were not from a past that I could not change. I knew that as I sat blissfully studying at University, the killing was ongoing. I am aware that killing like this is happening all the time in various places from Dharfur to the Congo, but I believe I was born Tamil for a reason and therefore have more responsibility to do something about this particular problem. I felt fortunate that my parents had fled the country long ago to give me a better life, but I also felt like a deserter that had turned my back on my people. My military background made this harder for me to deal with, because if I had never had military training it would have been easier to rationalise that there was nothing that I could do. Up until this point I had not really identified with Tamil people since my teens. Solid knowledge of British involvement in arming and training the Sri Lankan military changed my opinion about British Army careers. I can no longer ignore the fact that British armed forces have secretly taken part in unethical military campaigns since at least the 1970s, and no longer feel any pride about the British army. I feel unable to recommend careers in the British military to people and will actively discourage Tamil people from joining. The problem with that is that my involvement in the British armed forces was a key component of my British identity. Now I am clearly aware that even by paying taxes I may effectively be contributing blood money to foreign military campaigns. Events in Sri Lanka have therefore diminished my sense of British identity. On Sunday I visited another Buddhist monastery of the Theravada tradition. I was unable to look at the monks the same way. I wondered what their political beliefs were, and whether they would advocate the genocide of Tamil people. I may never be able to look at Buddhism the same way again. If this is not occupational alienation, I am not sure what is.
Personal solutions: What could I do? My first animalistic impulses when seeing the pictures were despair, anger and a bloodlust for revenge, but I am a yoga teacher, and therefore believe one is unfit to go into battle unless one has compassion for ones enemies. Acts of revenge would simply add to the problem and reinforce the international image of Tamil people as terrorists. This ‘terrorist’ label is being used to disarm oppressed people and render them completely helpless. Out of sheer desperation, several people had burnt themselves to death in India to protest. I remembered that Buddhist monks had created a lasting impression by doing this to protest about religious oppression by Catholics in Vietnam[55], but the Indian self-immolations were hardly noticed in Britain. I figured that doing that in London would effectively draw people’s attention to current Sri Lankan events. Murugathasan Varnakulasingham had the same idea and did it in front of the United Nations building in Switzerland[56]. Sadly I fear his sacrifice had little effect on the awareness of the European public. Only earlier today a medical student at the University where I study told me that she is looking forward to her holiday in Sri Lanka this Easter. She sent me this link: http://www.mermaidhotelnclub.com/ It looks like paradise.
I figured the only thing I could do was raise public awareness. I posted several links about Sri Lanka on Facebook, but a couple of friends told me they would rather not know anything about it. Then, feeling helpless I wrote an expressive poem for my own benefit. It seems to me that it has been suggested on MetaOT that clinical trials are needed for evidence-based practice[57] but I do not need a clinical trial to tell me that writing the poem was therapeutic for me. Perhaps this illustrates how the meaning of occupation is a very personal and individual thing, and clinical trials are not always the best source of evidence for efficacy or lack thereof. Finally I hope that writing this blog entry will enable me to feel like I have done my part to stop the suffering of Tamil people in Sri Lanka. I hope I can now get on with studying for my degree without any feelings of guilt.
Possible solutions to the actual problem:
It is clear to me that the Tigers are too brutal to rule the Tamil people, but anybody that thinks they will be safer under the Sri Lankan government must in my opinion be ignoring history and current events. The fact that the Sri Lankan government is prepared to shell Tamil civilians in order to occupy land, suggests to me that the government values the land more than it values the people. You cannot free people from terrorists by killing the people. The government is therefore not fit to rule the Tamil people. I believe the international community should never have interfered as it did; disadvantaging the Tigers by declaring them an illegal terrorist organisation and blocking their sources of funding. The international ‘war on terror’ created the power imbalance that brought about the current desperate situation. I therefore believe that the powers that disarmed the Tamil people now have a moral responsibility to protect them from the state terrorism that they armed themselves against.
I wish Tamil and Sinhalese people could live in peace in Sri Lanka, but in reality I think that could only happen if Tamil people accepted their status as second-class citizens. The people in the North and East should therefore be permitted to choose their own government without intimidation from the Sri Lankan armed forces or the Tigers. I doubt this will happen without intervention from larger powers. Tigers, armed forces personnel and government officials should be charged and tried for war crimes whenever adequate evidence can be found. When considering such crimes, steps should be taken to avoid occupational alienation due to cultural differences. Is it realistic to expect people that have been the victims of inhumane, violent oppression for generations to value the Geneva Convention on the battlefield? British army cadets start training at the age of 12[58]. Are they child soldiers? If British children had been attacked and terrorised for several generations and their lives were continually at risk, would arming them still seem an alien concept? How about if Britain had an apprenticeship system of education as there was in traditional Hindu societies, instead of a national curriculum[59]? At what age would it be acceptable for warriors to start training then? Hindu Tamils are not told that they will go to heaven and be greeted by 100 virgins for suicide bombing. Their acts of suicide bombing, just like the acts of self-immolation, reflect desperate feelings of helplessness. I feel disappointed by the Tigers’ deviation from dharma, but I lose my own temper whenever my flatmates use my ketchup without asking me first, or take my food out f the fridge to make more space for their own, so I do not believe it is realistic to expect the Tigers to behave in a civilised manner without first considering their personal histories. Unless the United Nations protects survivors from the Sri Lankan government and Tigers to enable them to testify, it is unlikely we will ever find out what is really going on in Sri Lanka.
Even if the Tigers are completely wiped out, it is unlikely that armed Tamil resistance will cease until the abuse of Tamil people ceases. Seeing pictures of current atrocities by the Sri Lankan government initially inspired me to take revenge. I quickly overcame that destructive feeling because I am a yoga teacher. Only a small proportion of the Tamil people that see or experience those atrocities will be yoga teachers. The Sri Lankan armed forces and paramilitaries are probably the biggest recruiters for the Tigers. A robust mental healthcare system will therefore be necessary to rehabilitate traumatised people away from the viscous circle of violence.
When there was an apartheid system in South Africa, other nations placed sanctions on the country and refused to compete with South Africans in sport. I do not remember the South African government using artillery and cluster bombs to kill black South African people. It seems strange to me that Sri Lankan sportsman can play while Sri Lankan Tamils are being massacred[60]. As you are reading this blog, please consider that any money you spend on Sri Lankan produce could be blood-money, as you will be fuelling the economy of a country hell-bent on genocide. That includes flying with the Sri Lankan airline or going to Sri Lanka for your holidays. Finally, I noted earlier in this blog that occupational alienation is being used as a weapon. It may also be the cure. Buddhist leaders from around the world should openly condemn the war mongering of the Sri Lankan Buddhist clergy, and they should consider going to Sri Lanka to speak of dharma. None of these things are likely to happen without international intervention, so thank you for reading this blog.
To avoid alienating British Tamil people, the current British government should consider reviewing its foreign policy regarding Sri Lanka, and it light of current events in Sri Lanka the British government should formally express regret about previous involvement in arming and training the Sri Lankan armed forces. If the government does not do this, it is likely that Tamil people will be discouraged from serving with the British armed forces in future.
Conclusions:
Occupational alienation and injustice have been used as weapons against Sri Lankan Tamil people since Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948. This blog entry provides a stark example of how occupational risk factors are politically generated. The occupational therapy profession may have to work cohesively at political levels to address such risk factors.
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Comments
24 June 2007
30 weeks 4 days
Reference 51 is an error. http://www.tamilnet.tv is not TamilNet. It is a racist web-site set up to ridicule TamilNet.
V