Every eye sees the world with a different view.

What is right and wrong depends

on the person making that judgment. What I say is not what is right, but what I view.

This is the Sri Lankan national flag. When someone brought up the issue of the
lion holding the sword towards its minority, not the wisest man in Sri Lanka was able to
answer that question; but after having studied martial arts, I was able to come up with a
theory. I was told by someone who studied Sinhalese history that the lion was used to
represent them in the king’s time. I can make an assumption that this is a historical fact
because as a boy, I once visited a historical mountain in the southern part of Sri Lanka
with my family that had a lion’s claw carved into the stone. After studying martial arts I
learned that in the old days, warriors pledged their service to someone by either having
their sword perfectly horizontal to the ground or by holding it perfectly vertical to the
ground in between the center of their eyes. You can still find soldiers marching with
their sword held vertical to the ground.
The purpose of creating a national flag is to represent the nation before the other
countries. If the people who created the Sri Lankan flag had the intention of showing that
the lion dominates the country, they would have been showing a sign of weakness before
the foreigners stating that they already have internal conflict. The marching lion could
never have had the purpose of domination. The flag of colors is most likely to be stating
that this is a united country where the majority looks after its minority. For so long Sri
Lanka had to worry about foreign invasion and when that finally stopped, people ended
up turning against each other.
When an ignorant man came to power wanting to proudly represent his own race
by declaring his language as the national language, he created a spark by creating in
equality among the citizen in the same country. Now that spark burns like hell itself.
There is a claim that the current president is committing genocide. The victims are
holding the lion responsible for it without realizing that the lion is an entire race and not
just the government.
Our purpose of existence can only be determined by us depending on where we
stand in this world. I volunteered to join the Tamil tigers in an age where I could not
even lift a gun. The brotherly LTTE members I spoke to simply told me that they have
no need for me and that I should focus of my studies. When the Sri Lankan army took
over the town that was close to mine, my town people vacated. There was only my
family and a couple of other families that lived in my town. My grandfather who served
the government through his entire career did not really fear the army or consider them his
enemy; and my mother being a very religious woman strongly believed that God would
not let something bad happen to us. If we had left our home, we would have become
homeless and my family having lived somewhat of a luxurious life, we would not have
been able to survive being homeless. It took us a while to find a place for rent in another
town and we stayed in our own home till then. My house was very close to the border of
the other town and the LTTE’s camp was two houses away from mine. Since I was in a
deserted town, I spent a lot of time with them. Until now I did not realize all the things
people have left behind when they join the LTTE. They stayed in a home that was
abandon by the people. They had food delivered to them and their duty is to stay on
guard. This is all that was left of their lives. There was no pay for their duties; no one
cared about their existence. They were nothing more than a single rain drop. They can
not desire a woman’s love; they can no longer have any desire of fame or fortune. They
can not even go back or even contact their own family. Once you joined the LTTE, you
made an oath stating your only sole purpose of existence is to serve your duty. Once you
committed yourself you are bound to serve and die as an LTTE, unless you become
injured and you are no longer of any use. I guess that is why they enjoyed having me
around like a little brother, because they no longer know what is like to have one.
Every government leader that came to power seems to have been wanted to
challenge the rebellion leader Prabhakaran and destroy the LTTE by continuing the war.
No government in this world will allow an individual to start their own government. The
Sri Lankan government was determined not to let the LTTE grow but in fact, it was them
who were making the LTTE stronger. Why would any civilian want to leave their own
desires in life to voluntarily fight in a war? The more families that became the victims of
war, the more members the LTTE had. There was only one president in Sri Lanka who
put a cease fire on war until a solution can be found, Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe. Since
that time LTTE was already operating like a government.
They created all the special divisions that the government had. They had policing
division, navy division, even tax division to start developing the country. The president
knew that he cannot just ask all these people to leave everything and start living as
civilians so he simply paused the war until a solution was evident, meanwhile allowing
the economy to regain its strength. However, when the next election came along, a wrong
man once again used race in his favor by claiming that Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe was
working in favor of the other races and the LTTE more than his own race. The wrong
man’s race happens to be the majority and he won the election by using the people’s
ignorance and innocents to his advantage. Once again the new president started the war.
He increased the country’s dept to 200 billion rupees (US$1.8 billion) by maximizing his
fire power to destroy the LTTE completely. Since he can afford to do air strike when the
rebellions only have their advantage on the ground, he is randomly killing everything that
is trapped in the small area that still remains under LTTE’s control. I am not really sure
how he could have even thought of this as a solution, because even if he kills all the
LTTE members, the country now is at a high risk of people committing hate crimes by
the victims of this war. Maybe that is why he plans to take care of the victims by
eradicating them all so that, there no longer will be a person to rise against the
government. Can genocide ever be a solution to anything?
There only two solutions now, the country must separate for the well being of
both race or the lion must awake and save the Tamil people by making a stand against the
government. The Sinhalese people must show the Tamil people that they were never the
enemy, they were just misguided. The Tamil people who have been suppressed for so
long have declared the lion as their enemy out of hate without realizing the political facts
of this war. Since, the majority determines the government who are the ones causing
trouble to the Tamils, the Tamils are holding the Sinhalese people for their misery. The
Sinhalese people who have been brain washed by the media under the government’s
control will never understand why the Tamil people have such hatred towards them. No
one will understand what is like to be in a war zone until they experience it themselves.
Until the Sinhalese people know what is like to lose a loved one in vain, what is like to
have to decide between saving their own life and saving their loved ones, what is like to
live without electricity, what is like to be homeless, what is like to struggle for food, what
is like to have to live in refuge camps made up of coconut tree leaves, what is like to have
to go to the washroom behind a tree, what is like to have to take a bath in a lake, pond, or
public well, until the Sinhalese people live a life where the purpose of existence is
survival, they would never know what this war has done to the Tamil people. The lion
has been asleep for a very long time. It failed to do what was promised by their
ancestors. While it is asleep, it is a very small group of people that is representing the
lion.
I am not a victim of this war. If I was, my judgment would also be blinded by
hate. I am simply a witness. I saw the struggles of the Tamils, and the struggles of the
Sinhalese. The Sinhalese face economical struggle since the government’s economical
decisions have made everything expensive while the Tamils are struggling to survive.
The level of education is very low at both ends and that limits their lack of understanding.
I would never be able to go and convince a Tamil person that the Sinhalese are not their
enemies and I can never convince the Sinhalese people that the government is not really
doing what is best for the country. When there is no one to listen, there is no reason to
speak; but since the world is listening now, I thought I should before it is too late.
There is no victory in wars. It is just a lesson to be learned. The countries that
fought in the WWI and WWII is not likely to fight against each other again, because
almost every leader that is elected in these countries came to understand that war is not
the solution to anything. If you use power to enforce a law, that law will only be in effect
as long as you remain powerful, but if you can elevate someone’s level of thinking then
you would have made a permanent change. On November 11 we not only remember the
soldiers that fought in that war and the victims that died, it illustrates that war does not
determine who is right, it determines who is left (Bertrand Russell).
I wrote this poem for not only the soldiers of WWI and WWII, not only LTTE
and the Sri Lankan soldiers; but for all soldiers who has given their life to sever someone
else.
 It is time for Sri Lanka’s revolution to take place. The country must be separated
until time allows both sides to be educated enough not to kill each other. There are five
human characteristics that lead to war in the third world countries:

1) People’s willingness to respect and accept others. We see the world from one
view and never stop to think what is the view from someone else’s shoes.
2) People’s nature to differentiate themselves from others. We divide ourselves by
race, language, culture, religion, class and even cast.
3) Lack of education to understand what is really going on. The ignorant gets used
by the vicious.
4) A hatred that has been passed on from generation to generation. Do you think
that we should hate each other, if our great grandfathers hated each other?
5) Most importantly, our desire to become superior.

Until people become educated enough to deal with there own faults, there can never
be peace, but how can people be educated in the middle of a war zone. The Tamil
television is constantly showing that there is death everyday and the government claims
that they are trying to rescue people that are trapped in the area that is under LTTE’s
control. I would like to ask all the military experts in this world how a government
sucessfully would complete a rescue mission by air strike? I always thought that rescue
mission’s priority is to have minimum causalities. There are a 50 – 100 people dying
everyday and 300 000 people are trapped in the war zone. If the surrounding world
remains silent any longer, that means we are allowing for another Adolf Hitler to exist
and grow. Can we ignore the emerging Hitler?