Revisiting Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka through Media and Literature

Abstract

The brutal twenty six year old ethnic strife in Sri Lanka came to a painful end in May 2009. Five years down the line questions are still being raised on what precisely it was that tore apart the Island Nation—a crisis of identity, lack of assimilation of the so-called migrants, majoritarianism or simply a nation so engrossed in cultural supremacy that it could not care for its minorities? Worse of all, the political leadership in Sri Lanka seems to be in a denial concerning what took place towards the end of the conflict, hence making it appear as one of the classic debates between ‗terrorists‘ and ‗freedom fighters‘. This paper will make the case that media exposure on the issue of genuine national reconciliation of NGOs and disasporic literature has only toughened the stance of the powers-that-be in that Island Nation making genuine national reconciliation a distant dream.