Michael Roberts …… A version of this article was presented at the Narratives of War Symposium organized by the University of South Australia in Adelaide on 19-20 November 2013. This is an amplified version.
In reviewing the conflict between the Sinhala-dominated Government of Sri Lanka and the Tamils marshaled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Western-media represented by the BBC and ABC strands of ideology have been critical of both sides for their atrocious activities; but have also been prone to see the Tamils (and thus the Liberation Tigers) as underdogs. That evaluation, when framed within the space of Sri Lanka, is mostly valid for the period before 1983 as well as the situation in the island during the wars. But it is fundamentally misplaced in the context of the propaganda war that has prevailed in the world order from 2008 to the present day.
Directed by the activists of “Tiger International”[1] and the many intelligent Tamil personnel who have been part of the migration process dating back to the 1950s[2] and who have – quite understandably – been alienated by Sri Lankan politics since the mid-1950s, this propaganda has been ramified and powerful. It remains today as an extensive network, one that has been augmented by second-and-third generation Tamil people whose patriotism was sparked by the agitation that developed to a crescendo when the Liberation Tigers slid to defeat in 2008/09. Viewed in the long arc from the 1960s-2010 the consequence is that several Tamil nationalists or sympathizers now hold key positions in Western media, academic and governmental institutions. In comparison with their coordinated campaign[3] the efforts of the Sri Lankan government have been as Lilliputian as demonstrably laughable. Whatever they produce on video[4] cannot even dent the reach and the hegemony exercised by such outlets as the BBC, ABC, Sky, Channel Four,[5] New York Times, Der Spiegel and their like. Continue reading
