In Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared the end to a raging twenty five year civil war against a terrorist group called the Tamil Tiger Rebels. The rebel group was founded by Velupillai Prabhakaran, and is well known for woman suicide attacks and suicide belts. The group is considered a terrorist threat in thirty two countries, and is responsible for the assassination of two world leaders. The long reign of the group has now ended as of Tuesday May 19, 2009, as the body of Prabhakaran was found. . “The rebels have fought for an independent state for minority Tamils in Sri Lanka since July 1983. An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people have died during the quarter century of fighting.” Rajapaksa has declared tomorrow Wednesday May 20, 2009 a national holiday for Sri Lanka, and now needs to get back to work housing thousands who fled during the rebel attacks this past week.
Has anyone heard about this recently on the news? It simply amazes me that a war can be going on for over two decades and get so little attention in other countries until something drastic happens such as ending a civil war, and defeating one of many terrorist groups. Thoughts anyone?
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
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13 comments:
I bet a lot of Americans were unaware of the civil war in Sri Lankan because the media choose not to focus and do stories on it. Like we learned in government the media plays an important role in informing people and shaping their opinions.
I also thought it was interesting that there was a pro-rebel Web site, Tamilnet.com. I never really thought how technology really effects war and terrorist organizations. In the article, it made it sound like the internet site was trying to incite rebel forces to keep on fighting by lying that their leader was still alive. If they lied about that, who know what else they could of lied about to gain support to continue the fighting.
Sometimes it makes you wonder just what exactly is going on in the world that we don't know about. I believe the correct term is "gatekeeper" for the role that Ana was referring to that the media plays. They decide what they cover, and in consequence, control what we learn. True, I'm sure with some internet research, all the world-happenings could be found, but the average person normally just watches TV to find out what's going on everyday.
This is the first time I have heard of this civil war which is amazing to me because of how long it has been going on. I knew the media plays an important role as gatekeepers by influencing which issues get covered, but I didn't think it goes so far as to make so many Americans unaware for so long.
I had a very small amount of knowledge of the civil war. The only thing i really knew was that it was coming to an end (because of a front page article in the Daily Journal). I completely agree with Micaela, our media "gatekeeps" giving us limited knowledge about the world around us. And although internet helps out with global affairs, its obvious not a lot of people care to watch news about another war in an African country. As messed up as it sounds its true, there are so many forign conflicts in Africa and the Middle East people start to loose interest.
Wow, with such an alarming number of deaths and heightened violence, I'm really surprised this issue hadn't gotten more attention. I didn't even know about it until I read this post. I'm glad it finally came to an end, but 25 years is a long time, and the country has a lot of work ahead to rebuild again.
The UN has estimated that 100,000 people have been killed during the war's span of 27 years. Interestingly enough, the UN has also accused the Sri Lankan government of not allowing them to access the Sri Lankan civilians residing in camps.
Now that the war is officially over, Sri Lanka must try to create peace between the majority (Sinhalese) and the minority (Tamil). I don't know if the civil war was completely successful because even though the war has been declared over, ethnic resentment (that was the basis of the civil war) between the two groups continues to plague the country.
Like many others, I didn't know about a civil war in Sri Lanka until reading this post, though I think I remember hearing about Sri Lanka once in the news a while back. As everyone else has stated, the media plays "gatekeeper" and has a large impact on the issues we learn about. At the same time, the media's disregard of the civil war in Sri Lanka also reminds me a bit of the media's impact on agenda setting. What the media shows us affects what we want our government to focus on. And since there was no media coverage on this, no importance was placed on the issue in Sri Lanka. This post also reminded me of the Zimbabwe post a couple of weeks ago about how the US doesn't help out other countries unless we get some benefit out of it.
This reminds me of the Rwandan genocide in which the rest of the world didn't know much about it at all because of the lack of media attention. It's good to hear that the civil war is over for now, but I can't help but imagine the violence that probably went on throughout it. This again shows the power of the media; we know little without it as it is our source of information about the outside of our local environment, but it can also control and narrow our perspectives.
I think that most people aren't really interested by the civil war in Sri Lanka. To most of us, Sri Lanka seems like a far and isolated place. I heard of the conflict between the ethnic groups, but I must admit that I know very little about it. I'm glad that the civil war is officially over, but I still think that their will be tensions between the groups. It's going to take a while before they reconcile...if ever. I also think that people are going to keep on fighting, especially if the government doesn't act appropriately.
I did find it interesting that the media gave so little coverage to this--don't they love feeding us tragedies and blood and guts stories? Still, I am happy that a terrorist group has been effectively decapitiated, and that Sri Lanka can get back to reality and help people who's lives have been destroyed by the war.
I actually did not know about this civil war. i'm not the most aware of foreign affairs though. civil wars are never really over. yea sure, they could patch things up diplomatically and have treaties, but there will still be resentment from the citizens for a while. these kinds of things take a long time. i bet you can find many people still upset that the confederates didn't win the civil war in the united states.
I remember hearing about this conflict for the first time when we were introduced to Mr. Parthapan, the student teacher for Corti/Silton, and that Mr. Parthapan himself mainly came to the US for better education and to escape the conflict back in Sri Lanka. It is a little sad that such a violent and impacting conflict was relatively unheard of by many people, especially when it affected so many people closer to us than what we might have expected.
As for the actual civil war itself, the ending seems to be bittersweet. Of course, things are much better now that the nation of Sri Lanka isnt in a state of warfare, but the defeat of the Tamil Tigers hasn't really solved the ethnic tensions left lingering in the country. It's also regrettable to note that the resistance group, which was founded on a core idea the US once adopted, independence, degenerated into a terrorist group through the use of unethical and immoral tactics. I don't really care what reasons they have, but neutral civilian deaths can never be morally or logically justified, and the loss of many innocent people was unnecessary and tragic.
That's crazy! I was not aware at all. That is terrible really. How are we suppose to find out unless the news does some coverage on the issue. It's not like any of us are vacationing to Sri Lanka. I guess people involved with preventing terrorism knew about this but not the general public. We hear more nonsense on the news than anything these days. There should at least be a popular news program that addresses worldwide issues like this. I guess BBC would be one of those but it isnt a channel like FOX or NBC. I also would never hear this on the radio news. I'm glad this is over and there is a little more peace in the world. Plus terrorism has been put down again which is good. Terrorists are sick people.
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