This is a rather fabulous little post; a lovely piece of writing. Cheers.

I am amazed this series of protests has not been given more thought and analysis by the left or anyone else in Britain. Whilst the protests have been so long and sustained that they have generated coverage, commentators haven’t weighed in on it to the extent that the conflict is more widely understood among the public. As I understand it there were two protests today: one outside the High Commission where 1,000 non-Tamil Sinhalese protested against alleged collusion between the UK government and the LTTE (which doesn’t quite sound plausible); and the other, in Parliament Square, where 2,000 Tamils protested against the government’s silence over the Sri Lankan government’s killing of Tamil civilians.

All in all, pretty explosive stuff that is almost sailing under the radar of the commentariat. I am not saying it is because the latter do not care, but it certainly hasn’t been a big issue on the agenda, expenses or otherwise. Why is that?

2. Because the issue is complicated and it is difficult for th left wing middle class to portray the LTTE as blameless.

I’m not sure it’s even a case of portraying it as black and white, good-vs-bad a la Israel/Palestine. The LTTE are violent terrorists who have probably killed more of their own people than the Sri Lankan government. But what I, and I wager I’m not the only one, do not yet know is whether or not those people demonstrating in Westminster were doing it explicitly for the LTTE or for the Tamil people more generally. I had assumed it was the latter, but it appears also to have contained an element of the former. Sunny has just written on Pickled Politics about not supporting or sympathising with the LTTE, which is of course correct: but at the same time, I do wonder if those Tamils in Westminster were justified in protesting the level of violence the Sri Lankan government has inflicted upon the Tamil civilian population in an attempt to destroy the LTTE. I do not think it is as cut-and-dry as “they’ve killed the terrorists and ended the war so let’s not highlight the violence they committed in order to do it”. Something similar happens over Israel/Palestine discussions.

Anyway, I am glad the fighting is over. What it means for regional stability is unknown at this point, but assuming the insurgency has finally been crushed one only hopes that things can only get better from here.