Sri Lanka's Opportunity

Trapped. Hidden from the world. Brandished as human shields then decimated in a storm of military fury.

For the thousands of civilians trapped on a tiny stretch of beach in eastern Sri Lanka the thunder of artillery and the cries of the wounded were a gruesome prelude to 'peace'.

These unfortunate civilians, families, women, children, were the collateral cost, we are told, of bringing Sri Lanka's 25 year civil war, pitting ethnic Tamil rebels against a Sinhalese-dominated government army, to a close.

When one considers the horror endured by those who lived through this grim finale, and the suffering of some 250,000 Tamils displaced by recent fighting, it is hard to imagine that such violence could be the germ for peace.

Indeed, while Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa preens and struts in the glow of his government's victory, while jubilant Sri Lankans honk their horns and wave flags in the capital Colombo, the only peace many Tamils now know is the silencing of the guns and an end to the killing. Thousands are still detained in government internment camps surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire.

Many among the Tamil minority, who account for around 15% of Sri Lanka's 20 million population, are left to contemplate how the government's military victory will translate into the autonomy and rights which they have long been demanding.

In truth, it is not peace that comes as the logical fruit of such a bitter conflict. Peace can only be achieved when the causes of conflict have been erased, a process which often continues long after the guns have fallen silent. At the end of the Second World War, creating peace meant a re-drawing of borders, a purging of the political and social causes of conflict, a drive to reconcile and rebuild.

As Sri Lanka enjoys this moment of relative calm, its government must now seize the opportunity to demonstrate to the ethnic Tamil community, from which the Tamil Tigers and other rebels movements were born, that the causes of the conflict will be erased and that the government will re-build and re-draw the lines of this divided nation so that there is opportunity for both communities to prosper equally.

To be sure the Tamil Tigers were a ruthless movement; pioneers of the suicide bomb, fanatics who drove women and children into battle. Much of the movement's dynamism and momentum came from its mysterious and brutal leader Vellupillai Prabakharan. His apparent death is perhaps the most convincing indicator that the Tamil Tigers as a fighting force are finally spent.

For the moment President Rajapaksa is ringing reassuring notes of reconciliation. Last Thursday he declared that it was "the duty of all to ensure that all differences that hitherto divided our people are subsumed in the great and momentous joy that is shared by us all.

"The celebration of this victory, as deep as it is felt, should be expressed with magnanimity and friendship towards all," he said.

If Mr. Rajapaksa's words are sincere then he is right to foster harmony among former foes.

History has taught us that it is supremely difficult to defeat the spirit of a people fighting for its basic rights or for its survival. For many Tamils, the civil war was a struggle for self-determination in the face of a chauvinistic Sinhalese majority for its part still smarting from Tamil dominance promoted by the British during their colonial rule.

Guns can suppress, they can eradicate, they can terrorize into silence but they rarely defeat a rebellious spirit and are often better at sowing hatred than breeding peace.

Generosity, magnanimity and reconciliation will prove the most powerful weapons the government of Mr. Rajapaksa can now deploy amidst Sri Lanka's Tamils. It is only through mutual respect and in allowing the Tamils to return to rebuild their lives as equal citizens alongside their Sinhalese compatriots that Sri Lanka can hope to truly achieve peace and ensure that a new generation of Tamils do not take up arms and find a replacement for Mr. Prabakharan.

The Passion of Thailand

There isn't a single word for 'passion' in Thai. "To like alot" (chob mak), "angry" (krort), "strong feelings" (kwam ruseuk khem) are some of the approximations that the Thai language uses to explain the concept of passion.

In some ways that Thai doesn't have a single word to match the palette of intense emotions summed up by the word 'passion' isn't surprising. Thailand is better known for its placidity and serenity; characteristics nourished by the teachings of Buddhism which warns its practitioners away from desire and anger - the very seeds of passion.

I remember arriving in Thailand for the first time in the mid 1980s. I had travelled from India and was immediately struck by the contrast between the chaos, noise and incessant movement of Bangkok and the calm equanimity of its inhabitants.

Where in India crowded buses had been seething, cacophonic anthills of sweaty humanity, in Thailand the same number of passengers crammed into non-air conditioned buses while seeming, almost, not to touch each other, with barely a voice raised and only the occasional bead of sweat as testimony to the stifling humidity.

Amidst the madness and intensity of Bangkok, where was the passion, I asked myself.

This is not to say, of course, that because the Thais don't have a specific word for passion or because in their daily lives manifestations of passion appear few and far between that the Thais lack passion. Far from it.

Passion is one of the fundamental ingredients of life anywhere. It is the emotional turbo charge that allows us to push beyond the boundaries of mediocrity. It is the psychological fuel that can propel us to excellence, to summits of devotion or to depths of destruction.

Though artfully hidden from view, one quickly becomes aware of the currents of passion flowing powerfully, sometimes frighteningly, beneath the beguiling tranquility of Thailand's 'mai pen rai' (never mind) exterior. Passion lurks here. The one truly un-tameable emotion that demands to be let loose is, for the most part, kept rigidly chained up.

And so when passion does break free the consequences are often terrible.

Last Sunday I attended the funeral of Nong Fai. Just twenty six, an only child and the love of her mother, Nong Fai threw herself in front of a speeding car. Her moment of mortal madness was spurred, friends told us, by an argument with her lover. In flash of irrational passion Nong Fai cast her young life into the oblivion.

Nong Fai's suicide was an extreme and violent gesture which appeared jarringly incongruous amidst the smooth, unruffled charm of Thai culture. Yet her brand of destructive passion is not uncommon here. It is too often echoed in stories recounted in the Thai press. Stories of jealous lovers driven to mutilation, murder and suicide.

Indeed, who could use any other word but 'passionate' to describe the intensity of the political movements which have been venting their fury in the streets of the capital these past weeks and months.

It is as though passion expressed, as it is so colourfully in Latin cultures, can be an almost poetic channel for love and desire, while passion repressed boils and churns like an explosive potion being reduced to one of it most fundamental elements: violence.

If only more Thais were allowed to set their passion free, this powerful emotional energy, today hidden and unnamed, could perhaps transform itself into ideas, into creativity and inventiveness.

As it is, battened down under layers of Buddhist propriety, Thailand's passion has but too few avenues of expression. It is a sad truth that when passion does eventually break loose here, its face is often dark and violent.