I am sure many of you must have already heard and seen recent events and terrorism promoted through ISIS. After watching the video which was released by the Islamic extremist organisation a couple of thoughts crossed my mind.
The definition of terrorism as per Oxford English dictionary is 'unofficial or unauthorised use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims; such practices used by a government or ruling group, in order to maintain its control over a population; such practices used by a clandestine or expatriate organisation as a means of furthering its aims'. But this definition has quite a few loop holes and FBI definition of international and domestic terrorism is more inclusive of religious extremism of all sorts including Islamic terrorism. Examples of organisations such as LTTE and BBS from Sri Lanka are vivid when it comes to international and domestic terrorism respectively.
Killing a human being is a crime both under federal law and as per the teachings of religions. Is how its done important? yes indeed, it tells the moral of the assassinator, brutal vibes, training, inception of execution, politics of the executor, tolerance and the will.
Please try to recall and compare a few historical incidents of civil wars, assassinations and torture chambers in Sri Lanka with this index case. Countless and well known LTTE mass murders and assassinations, rape cases and massacres committed by SL army, and detention and torture chambers in Batalanda which involved a mass murder and was partly backed by Ranil Wickremesinghe, our incumbent prime minister and the SSP N Delgoda, who are said to be indirectly responsible for maintenance of unlawful detention houses at the Batalanda Housing Scheme. There had been a few evidence to testify these allegations against Mr RW and no conclusive evidence to set him free either. However it is not conclusive that RW is not guilty as well and the commission report is yet to be released, officially (trusted news sources say that the report is a good weapon against the prime minister all the time and it has even been used during the Air Lanka scandal of CBK!)
This is a brief account of Sri Lanka’s state violence and LTTE terrorism, just to help everyone to reflect on what we see on the internet today through both ISIS and American press. These crimes that I mentioned above had taken place many years ago, either with a similar character or in the most brutal and agonising backgrounds in our own motherland, but then again the question is; is there a difference between these incidents? if yes what exactly it is?
It has not been a politically sounded step to make those crimes public and air to be witnessed by the world, because most of them were categorised under ‘state terrorism’, then why LTTE after being a terrorist organisation did not use it as a weapon? it is because the LTTE used its immaculate image in search of funding and they were looking for loopholes of the govt to prosecute leaders. The best example is the Channel 4 video.
In this case ISIS which is another Islamic extremist terrorist organisation which is consolidating power in Islamic Caliphate, is trying to say something else to the world. Wait..!
In Sri Lanka we know many absurd news channels like Swarnawahini, Derana and Hiru TV which use human agony by the means of broadcasting tears, coffins, dead bodies in order to hold grounds in the competitive news arena and simply to capitalise the micro market in Sri Lanka. So as the ISIS. It uses these videos as a versatile tool to gain funds, intimidate people, to implant a fake imagination in people’s minds to convince them that it is unstoppable and to make people believe in terrorism and that it could be infuriating. The second use of these videos is the american press, even though it comes in the name of Islamism at times. These videos have been widely used by the US to justify and to defend their defensive and oppressive acts in different parts of the world.
So what can we do to prevent terrorism and to give a drop of relief to the humans who suffer in their native lands. The number of options that we can choose from, to support the oppressed are very limited since its extensive involvement in deep driven politics and economics but we can opt for the simplest change that everyone of us can do right now to make a simple but an important change.
Sit down relax and start reading the world history of religions! Try to understand the instances that one religion could effectively bring peace to the entire world or at least a great majority of the population at a given point in time. You will soon realise that its an absolutely a null search result.
Islamic and Catholic religions wrote the history with blood sheds with the only exception that Islamism beat the Catholic church to it, since killing of non-believers was not a part of it from its inception. Buddhism had it’s own ups and downs with blood sheds which were carried out in the name of the religion in order to secure relics just the way the Catholic empire did in Europe. Finally Hinduism and mythological wars and teachings in Rig Weda. These are just a couple of very superficial and arbitrary facts that I just tied together to get to one point. As you all know all the prophets and religious leaders/preachers did not promote violence and not at least non-violent civil disobedience, at the inception of every religion! Everything was written in the history by our hoi polloi because of the inherent nature of man to promote separatism while being a social being!
The scariest fact after all is, the spread of fake facts on religions, ethnicities and etc through social media in countries like ours where the Internet literacy is extremely poor. It was counted to be around 16% among the urban population (depending on the use of emails) in 2010. But now the use of the internet must be considerably high given the exposure to social media, but literacy is still very poor, indeed! When people get to read and listen to hate speech and evil propaganda with no idea on how to do proper fact checks and how to assess the reliability of sources they read from, it always works to the detriment of a country’s development and economy specially in countries like ours because of it’s beautiful inherent social convention of peace among different ethnic groups.
Another important thing is to stop propagation of terrorism and to make countries to hold their own federal laws against religious extremism without regulating freedom of speech and freedom of religion which is certainly an ambiguous area. Meanwhile we should be careful and smart enough to understand and avoid the traps of religious extremism that is omnipresent in our country in form of almost every religion, that sneaks in to our minds without our knowledge and understand that the most important religion is promoting equity and equality, securing life and dignity of human person, safe guarding rights of one another and solidarity.
There are many people in every country who work tirelessly towards these goals, to enforce governments in decision making processes, for social justice and to promote human rights. Stop being a type-worrier by sharing and posting on social media. Go, get involved in establishing processes, educate another human and make a change.
Getting back to the point: what we can do to make a small change right now? spread peace! I remember this verse which was written by the veteran Sri Lankan poet Mahagama Sekara, in his book "Prabuddha"
"If the war was created in the minds of people, cannot the peace also be created from and within the same place? Will we be able to build the ultimate society with war and atrocities?”
"If the war was created in the minds of people, cannot the peace also be created from and within the same place? Will we be able to build the ultimate society with war and atrocities?”
If you really want peace, work for justice! Help our dying and slowing down planet earth to breath without religious extremism.
Samandika Saparamadu
23/02/2015
