New breed abroad
It all set in motion after the ‘Black July’ outbreak in 1983 as a
retaliatory attack against a Tamil militant group who massacred 13 Sri
Lankan Army soldiers in Jaffna.
The LTTE (founded in May 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran) transformed
into a ruthless terrorist peril over the years and brought mayhem and
destruction to every Sri Lankan who did not draw the line with him to
dissect the country. They spared no children either, and recruited
innocent young as soldiers to become cannon fodder. President Rajapaksa,
with an unwavering policy to eradicate the terrorist threat and bring
forth freedom to the citizenry, achieved his goal within three years of
his governance to the envy of some international administrations and
their financial ‘vultures’.
Going back to over two and a half decades, batches of ‘victimised
boys’ straight from rustic villages of the far North and East saved
every cent with one day in mind, to leave the country, if not by a
direct ‘Air Lanka’ flight from Katunayake International airport or by
devious means seeking assistance of human traffickers to reach London,
via Germany, Italy, Ireland or France where they could re-start life on
a different perspective in a dreamed land, adopting new methods, a new
language and possibly with a new job or depending on the national
assistance claiming refugee status.
New environment
Of course they were well looked after initially by ‘the boys’ who had
experienced of this new adventure before. Friends of a feather flocked
together and found them accommodation until they were ‘climatised’ to
the new environment. Subdivisions of the LTTE in the meanwhile did
overtime, utilising such labour to their advantage with LTTE funds in
buying them ‘corner shops’ with conditions attached and obtaining
promises of repayment with ‘kappam’ at the end of every month.
Unlike Sinhala expatriates, ‘boys’ from the North and East worked
hard, sweated much more than they did in their dry zone. At the end,
they mastered the art of living in London - After all they were
Londoners by then! Experienced veterans of the game visited the new
influx in expensive motor cars.
The new breed managed to have a glimpse of modern Hi Fi stereo
systems, colour wide TV screens, video recorders, flashy motor cars,
which they had not set eyes on before, in their ‘ friends’ possession.
Oh Gosh! It was too much to bear. Along with excitement, an element of
jealousy began to brew in them... “Why can’t we follow suit”? The new
lot thought seriously.
Tamil pop
Finally they befriended driving school instructors who came to fill
up at their petrol stations and arranged discounted driving lessons. Yes
indeed! They passed the British driving test in double quick time and
they were on a fast lane in life to the top!
Change of their lifestyle initially started with an old Ford Escort.
Oh! The pride......, the washing ......., polishing ......... and the
pulling power! Hitting 90 mph on the motorway with the wind behind them!
Within two years, they became owners of used Mercedes Benz or BMWs.
They had no time then to mess up their Farrah trousers by scrubbing
vehicle hub caps. They loved driving and traffic jams where passing
white teenage girls could admire their firm grip on the steering wheel
and to share ear-splitting delights of megawatt entertainment - Tamil
pop. They loved the feel of the gear knob in the left hand and the power
beneath the right toe.
Friday nights they slipped into Jaeger casuals, had a body bath in
Pacco Rabana and hit a disco where white female au pairs went in search
of prey. They did not care about AIDS; perhaps they got the wrong
meaning of the word!
The new breed never thought that there would come a time that their
refugee application might become under scrutiny in a situation when the
‘Aorta’ that sustained their life machine in a foreign land would one
day become clogged to such an extent that no ‘by-pass’ operation would
help them to survive and one day they might have to get back to their
old roots.
Urbanized new cities
But they do not want to get back to their villages. Out of sight is
out of mind! Clash of culture and sophistication have embedded in them.
They still want to visualise pictures of their old villages of bare and
barren lands in the dry zone, so how can they even imagine the drastic
transformation of desolate villages into well urbanized new cities in a
rapid redevelopment plan of action under Mahinda Chinthana to take care
of their own cousins who were kept under Prabakaran’s boots?
One point is crystal clear. They are compelled to stay put in their
new sophisticated environments and determined to retain their new
comfortable living styles in the West. They cannot afford to abandon
mortgaged houses, leased splashy motor vehicles and disrupt children’s’
education in British seats of learning.
Political refugees
Who can really blame them? After all they are human too! Having no
other alternative they have had to think about their survival quite
seriously, get intermingled and associated with their friends to have a
go at resuscitating a corpse by masterminding and fabricating new
spurious stories and planning out new strategies to debase the good name
of their motherland to find new avenues similar to those very
fabrications that helped them a temporary stay as political refugees.
In their final approach they have become victims of some of the
Western politicians who have displayed a quenching thirst for ethnic
votes for their own survival in power and joined hands with a bunch of
newly arrived Sri Lankan traitors to feed the Western media with
fictitious information.
What became the final result is now become history. A distorted,
unprofessional video called ‘killing fields’ has already exposed Channel
4, once considered an esteemed TV station, as a cow without a tail!
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