This has to be said!

A shout out to fellow Sri Lankans

 

Wrote this as a status in Facebook on 17th of June 2014 due to the attacks on the minority Muslims across Sri Lanka. I just thought of sharing it here hoping for a possibility of spreading to a vast crowd. If you come across this, please do share or don’t; up to you.

Personally when I think of my past, me and my friends have born and raised inside a war zone. At the same time our older generation saw a war pushing out its leaf from a seed. Though our part wasn't too extreme like North did, we faced the similar problem. The police and army didn't know whether we were terrorist or not. When travelling to West, oddly we had to go through around 20 or more check points carrying our bags. The worst check point in our life was Mannampitiya. I remember the time when I had to remove the screws and show the inner compartments of my computer’s system unit just to let them know I am not carrying any bombs. There were worse times. I have seen bomb blasting a few hundred meters away. I remember running to mosque to get shelter and even before I reach, army coming and fire in the air a few meters away from me, and me lying on the road while my seniors grabbing me and taking me inside the mosque. I have been to my friend’s funeral where he got a shot on the head by the people he trusted. I have seen little boys who were around 10-15 years old carrying guns on their shoulder. We have seen multi-barrels demolishing like fire crackers at night. Yet only thing kept us running was ‘Hope’. We hoped there will be a better tomorrow. We hoped we will learn from this. This war was the result of extremism.

Just because some of our ancestors were from another country didn't make us belong to that country. Personally we never considered ourselves as non Sri Lankans. Because some what our XX or XY chromosomes belong to Sri Lanka. If we go deep we can see almost 90% of our people will share same kind of influence from another country. That doesn't mean we don’t belong here. Also, every religion came here from different places. None of the religions followed by Sri Lankans started in Sri Lanka. So over all we shared the harmony even before they came here.

Till my ordinary levels I have been to a Tamil school where I befriended a lot of Tamil people and not surprisingly we never liked the war at all. When I was in the university I got a chance to have more Sinhala and Tamil friends and again we never liked the war at all. That is what makes us Sri Lankan. We just wanted to get rid of this shit and live a good life. Also we still remain as friends.

But as always, there are extremists in every division. Some Muslims hate all the other religions and some Tamils hate Muslims because they weren't with them in the war, and some Sinhalese hate Muslims because they think we are capturing Sri Lanka slowly. Everybody has their freakishly childish opinions to grow hatred. Meanwhile there are Politicians who use this opportunity to guarantee their vote bank so they can have a luxurious life.

I have lost a few of my family members to the war which we had nothing to do with. One was shot dead on the road just because he was trying to make peace. Some got kidnapped and no idea what happened to the date. The worst of all was the Mosque Massacre. Hundreds of people killed just like that while “Praying.”

Still we just wanted to get rid of this war and wanted to live peacefully. We missed out a lot of things during the war. Just like I have mentioned, we missed 30 years of development. I don’t exactly remember but some people said that Sri Lanka was a role model for Singapore before the war started. They were like, “We wanted to be like Sri Lanka”. Because of the war everything turned upside down and now we want to be like Singapore.

Suppressing a small ethnicity will never end quickly. There will be a time where the minority will decide to fight back and it will drag for a long long time. Like, 30 years. So it was never a good thing. Never.

As a Muslim I am so glad that I have more Tamil and Sinhala friends who stand with me. But just being with us or you is not enough. There are people who shout against these radical activities and take actions. Everyone should be like that. Because this is our country. Just because some uneducated piece of shit who didn't understand the political agenda behind every racist activity tries do some stupid act doesn't mean we can’t do anything against it. Breaking the news (if you trust the source) will always help since the shameful media blackout in Sri Lanka.
Because,

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” 

                                                                                                 — Martin Luther King.

Thanks: Murshid Azeez