Tamils mourn suicide, protest lack of international concern over war in Sri Lanka.

GENEVA — A group of ethnic Tamils gathered in Geneva recently to attend the funeral in a Catholic Church for Murukathasan Vanakulasingam, a 27-year-old computer science graduate who had been working stacking shelves in a British supermarket before dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself on fire here to protest the bloody war in Sri Lanka.

Murukathasan had flown to Geneva a week before staging his martyrdom in front of the gates of the United Nations on Thursday, Feb. 12. His suicide was intended to protest what he saw as the silence of the international community to the conflict, which TIME magazine recently called the third most underreported international news story.

“I have no words to wake up the international community,” Murukathasan wrote in a final letter, found 30 feet from his charred body. “The flames over my body will be a torch to guide Tamils to the path of liberation.”

The irony is that Murukathasan’s death went virtually unreported in the Swiss press for nearly a week. His parents learned of it through Tamil-oriented blogs.

Friends said that Murukathasan had become increasingly angry after listening to news reports about Sri Lanka, and that he had finally cracked after hearing allegations that government troops had forced 120 Tamil women to have abortions.

Sri Lanka’s government has launched an all-out assault to finish the Tamil Tiger rebellion once and for all, and sees the war ending soon. But Tamils attending the funeral service here in Geneva told me that even if the last of the fighters is eliminated, the rebellion would continue until either the government awards Tamils rights equal to Sri Lanka’s dominant Sinhalese population, or agrees to let the Tamils have their own separate homeland.

Human rights organizations have condemned both Sri Lanka’s government and the Tamil Tigers. The government is accused of bombing hospitals and safe zones in an effort to get at the rebels. The Tamil Tiger rebels are blamed for using the civilian population as human shields, for recruiting child soldiers, and for dispatching suicide bombers to attack government officials.

Regardless of who is right or wrong in the conflict, the suffering and human costs of the conflict are hard to ignore.

With such intense emotional baggage on both sides in the conflict, it is hard to see a workable resolution occurring any time soon. Murukathasan’s sacrifice was honored by some, but more thoughtful Tamils also cautioned against repeats. “We don’t want any further incidents like this,” said Thaya Idaklkadder, a Tamil leader in England. “Even though I appreciate and admire his courage and what he has done, I am pleading with people not to do it.”  

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/worldview/090221/tamils-mourn-suicide-protest-lack-international-concern-over-war-sri-lanka