A few months ago I was passing by
the Peace Palace, the UN complex here in Geneva. It is the site of many demonstrations, and on
this particular day a group of Tamils was displaying posters with shocking
pictures of cruelty, accompanied by slogans of what was happening in them. According to the descriptions, the picture
was in each case that of a Tamil, sometimes a child or a civilian woman, tortured/raped/killed
(or all three) at the hands of the Sinhalese.
The allegations in the posters
were shocking, outrageous.
I marched to the info stand and
told the gentlemen manning it that I knew what the Tamils had been through
during the last months of the civil war in Sri Lanka, and that what had
occurred probably amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. I told them that I supported their cause and
that they were right to protest in front of the UN, as it was about time the
international community did something about the atrocities.
The reason I did this was that I
had seen all the images on their posters before. I had seen them, and the slogans, put into
context. I knew who the kid was
(Balachandran, the son of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the founder of the Tamil
Tigers), I knew who the woman was (Isaipriya, a Tamil news anchor). I knew all this because not long earlier I
had seen a documentary called “No Fire
Zone”, which had made me hate humanity and have nightmares. If anyone is interested in seeing what people
are capable of during civil war, watch this documentary, it is really
good. Even if it will make you feel anything
but good.
I don’t know if the Tamils
holding the protest outside the UN cared about my expression of
solidarity. But I’m guessing that not
all that many passersby gave such unqualified endorsements of their cause. This is because not many people had seen the
documentary. This fact gave me pause,
because if it had not been for the documentary, I would have been quite suspect
of the protesters’ claims, outrageous as they were.
Would I not have believed the
protesters so easily if I had not seen the documentary, because I, along with
many others, have become jaded by fake and manipulated images of atrocities in
Syria and elsewhere? If this is the
answer, then it is a healthy one. In the
days where everyone can easily falsify pictures, one should be slightly wary of
photographic evidence, especially when emanating from interested parties. (Even if countries such as Iran
or North
Korea haven’t quite completed the advanced course on photoshop yet ...)
Or was it because “No Fire Zone”
had been made by – let’s be blunt about it – a bunch of Whities? Do I trust Whities to tell the truth more
than I trust the Tamils actually on the ground, suffering through it all? A worrying thought, but one that I have not
been able to entirely shake. It is a
frustrating example of internalised racism.
Frustrating because (if it is true) I can’t rid myself of it and
frustrating because it is so profound.
Somebody please pass the brain bleach, I don’t want to be like this!
On the more important, and less
self-important, issue of what happened to the Tamil people and will there be consequences
for this, there are some good news. The UN
Human Rights Council passed a resolution on 27 March 2014 to open an enquiry
into war crimes in the final stages of the civil war in 2009. I don’t know if this was because of the Tamil
protests or the documentary. “Who cares?”
one could say, the main thing is that something is happening. Or then again, if the world in general is
suffering from collective internalised racism, then that would indeed be a
problem. So let us assume that the UN is
not (only) finally reacting because a bunch of white people said so.
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