“Frankly, she’s very lucky to get away with supporting, even indirectly, perhaps the most ruthless terrorist outfit in the world.”
– Suresh Jayawickrama, a songwriter from Colombo, from a piece in the New York Times about M.I.A.’s controversial support of the Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka’s long-running civil war. Last month M.I.A. told PBS’s Tavis Smiley that as “the only Tamil in the Western media” she has “a really great opportunity to sort of bring forward what’s going on in Sri Lanka.” What we’re wondering is why the Times decided to write about this now — maybe they just wanted one more chance to run that preggo Grammy pic?
Comments (4)
Maybe it has to do with the Grammys or maybe it has to do with things like this?
http://www.hindu.com/2009/02/10/stories/200902105…
I'd agree but the Times uses the pregnancy pic, references the Grammys in their lede and then fails to land on either side of the issue: "Although the government has brutalized and killed Tamil civilians over the past 25 years, human rights organizations spread the blame around, estimating that 70,000 people on both sides have been killed in the fighting."
But thanks for reminding me why I miss having you here Doug!
Not to mention that her father was a Tamil Tiger. ^_^
Okay. That quote put back into the context of the Smiley interview reveals that MIA is concerned with the perspective of a civilian caught in a civil war. She discusses her experience as a schoolgirl having to duck under her chair when the Sri Lankan army opened fire on her elementary school and cited ethnic cleansing (Tamil ethnics are legally second-class citizens in Sri Lanka, like blacks were in Apartheidist South Africa), and then she connects her experience to that of child soldiers in Liberia. It’s not merely lip service: she’s building a school there for former child soldiers.
Her father was not an LTTE soldier. He led a student movement that he long abandoned to focus on political action. Regardless, she’s ESTRANGED from her father over his absence to focus on activism and, therefore, does not share his politics or militancy.
Although many Tamils in the West sympathize with the LTTE, Maya Arulpragasam (MIA) does not. She sees Sri Lankan Tamils as victims of both parties in the civil war.
The question people should be asking is about for how long Tamils will have to languish in concentration camps.
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