Peace Land?

Developments in Sri Lanka in the new year (nevermind the last 25) make the photo below painfully ironic. While the Sri Lankan President asks the public to celebrate the capture of two significant strategic territories from the Tamil Tigers, the Prime Minister still won't reveal to parliament even a vague estimate of the price being paid in soldiers for this bloody, supposedly final, offensive in the North. Added to that, on Thursday morning the editor of the Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunge, was shot in traffic on his way to work.

I took this pleasant photo on the southern tip of Sri Lanka a mere two weeks ago. You would never guess that 300 miles away, roughly the distance between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, people were ruthlessly butchering each other in a sanguinary conflict - conspiring behind the palm tress to stain the bleached-beaches blood red.

From Unawatuna

Free press on the island is in a sorry state - in the absence of truth, there are only lies. Journalists aren't allowed to report from the war zone, so the government can feed whatever fanatical fiction and figures it desires to the fearful public. Though it has now mutated beyond recognition and reason, does anyone remember that this war initially broke out as a struggle for civil liberties? Denying them to a growing portion of the population may snuff out the Tamil Tigers, but it fuels the frustrations that ignited this fight in the first place.