KAMALIKA PIERIS

The book ‘Brotherless Night’ is the ‘inside’ story of   the Eelam war, written by an author who did not live through it and extravagantly praised by others who had no firsthand experience of it, either.

This book is yet another novel on the Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka, written by second generation immigrant Tamils, born and bred in the west, brainwashed by their elders and totally unaware of any   view other than their own.

One purpose of this book is to provide the reader with the other side of the story, the effect the Eelam war had on the civilians in Jaffna. They are portrayed as innocent victims, not as persons complicit in high treason.   Sri Lanka Tamils were a nation with a homeland and had a right to self determination, said   the book.

The author says the book is specifically for Tamil people with ties to Jaffna. However, it is unlikely that those who lived thorugh this will want to relive it again in print. They will read it only to check for accuracy and impact. The book   supports the Tamil separatist cause and is intended for the general reader.  It is propaganda for Eelam.

The book shows how, in the book at least, Jaffna got politicized. Niranjan had gone to an international conference on Tamil language, literature and culture in Jaffna. Policemen had fired into the audience. This had affected him. He started to read Emergency 58, which his father had, from which he learnt all about the government of Sri Lanka.

According to this book, the Tamil took arms because of the actions of the government. After what they did to us in Colombo, [in 1983] how did they expect us to react? The young people in Jaffna said that there was no other choice than to fight. I had some sympathy for the Tamil nationalism taking hold in Jaffna, said the main character, Sasha.  There was a call for a separate state fortified by generations of inherited anger and our own new fueled rage, she said.

The civil war arose due to discrimination and violence from successive Sri Lankan governments, said the book. We could no longer bear the discrimination of a government dominated by the majority Sinhalese.

Sri Lanka is viewed with contempt. Long before I was born, Sri Lanka stumbled into lazy self indulgent independence, discovered ways to promote their Buddha, their language, and their histories, said Sashi. There is anti-government propaganda.  We thought the government was bad, said Sashi. We all knew the cruelty of the state.

A very negative image of the Sri Lanka army is presented. In 1984, Jaffna was occupied by the army.  There were soldiers in Jaffna. They came to Tamil houses and kicked down Tamil doors. 

Soldiers walked menacingly thorugh the villages of Jaffna. Why should an unarmed civilian in their own village ever walk past a solider with a gun.  We did not consider army protection, and never had. We wished to be protected from them, said Sashi.

 I heard of military detaining brothers, cousins, son on suspicions of being militants. Army began to cordon off villages with heavy weaponry and  did  house to house searches for suspected militants. In some places they detained all the Tamil men and boys over 14. One boy was stopped and searched. They beat him just because they wanted to. They took him to camp but  denied that they had him there at all. .

After weeks of round ups the army asked Tamil mothers to bring their sons for voluntary checking. They detained all of them and took them away in trucks.  There is a long description of the  Mothers Front,  formed in July 1984, which met the GA to ask their sons back. The sons were returned.

Shashi was told of the army stopping a bus of Tamil passengers on a break at a tea kiosk near Vavuniya. They directed the bus to a remote location and shot a third of them. Some survived to tell the tale. Also the women in the bus were raped. Buses were set on fire with people in them. We did not read about that, she was told.  You won’t but that does not mean it did not happen, said the book.

  Jaffna was  bombed. We could see the planes, take off and dive and the lift again, the second ascent they would drop the explosives. When the bombs fell we could hear the little children screaming.

At first I could not understand why the army would attack Jaffna with planes. Then I was told that  Army could no longer use the roads as LTTE had mined them. The government had bombed Jaffna with human shit, said the book, quoting reports. Military bombed Hindu temples in 1987. Many died in the shelling.

No Fire Zone is  mentioned.  Tell the UN, tell the Red Cross, tell the newspaper that we are  dying, we die on the beach, we die in the sea, said the  fictional hostages. In the Mullavaikkal rescue the army shot them from front and the  LTTE shot them from behind. As they died they called overseas on borrowed phones , announced the book. (Concluded)