欧宝娱乐

“War crimes, you say?

No matter how many policies you put on paper, in reality, there are no rights and wrongs in war. War itself is a crime. War cannot be justified.

I believe, the only people, in this world, whose opinions matter, are the ones who go the extra mile to help other people expecting nothing in return.

Soldiers who fight fiercely for their country, the doctors in Sri Lanka's public hospitals attending to hundreds of patients at a time for no extra pay , the nuns who voluntarily teach English and math to children of refugee camps in the north, the monks who collect food to feed entire villages during crises, they are the people worth listening to, their opinion matters.

So find me one of them who will say: they wish the war didn't end in 2009, that they wish Sri Lanka was divided into two parts. Find me one of them who agrees with the international war crime allegations against Sri Lanka, and I will listen.

But I will not listen to the opinions of those who are paid to find faults in a war they were never a part of, a war they never experienced themselves. I will not listen to the opinions of those who watched the war on tv or read about it on the internet or were moved by a documentary on Al Jazeera.

The war is over. The damage is done. Let Sri Lanka move on. So our children will never have to see what we've seen.”
― Thisuri Wanniarachchi

“In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone.

"But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, What Lies Between Us

“Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four years ago in Sri Lanka when the LTTE was setting off bombs all around Colombo. That feeling I used to get when I hear about a bomb blast, the goosebumps, the school evacuation drills, the breaking news footage, and most of all, that fear we Sri Lankans used to feel, every second of everyday, it all came back to me today. Thank you God for bringing peace to my country, look after America the way you did Sri Lanka.”
― Thisuri Wanniarachchi

“What struck me, in reading the reports from Sri Lanka, was the mild disgrace of belonging to our imperfectly evolved species in the first place. People who had just seen their neighbors swept away would tell the reporters that they knew a judgment had been coming, because the Christians had used alcohol and meat at Christmas or because ... well, yet again you can fill in the blanks for yourself. It was interesting, though, to notice that the Buddhists were often the worst. Contentedly patting an image of the chubby lord on her fencepost, a woman told the New York Times that those who were not similarly protected had been erased, while her house was still standing. There were enough such comments, almost identically phrased, to make it seem certain that the Buddhist authorities had been promulgating this consoling and insane and nasty view. That would not surprise me.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Sri Lanka is a beautiful little island nation parked perilously close to India; a little too hot, a little too humid, and perhaps too expensive, but to its credit are fantastic beaches, strangely melancholy hills, and the ruins of kingdoms past.”
― Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Numbercaste

“For the jungle dissolves and recreates over and over and over again, as the Hindu philosophers perceived millenniums ago and built their religion on it. All that we know of things that died more anciently than a month ago, is written in stone or brick or earthwork, or, perhaps more durable even than these, in legend.”
― John Still, The Jungle Tide

“喽编窎喽溹董喾� 喽呧穩喾掄稜喾忇痘喾佮窊喽洁窊 喽膏窉喽编窉喾冟窋喽编穵 喽氞窋喽脆窉喽� 喽氞窉喽秽窊喽膏锭 喽膏窔 喽多窚喽秽窋 喾冟窉喽傕穭喽� 喽多窞喽穵喽� 喾勦窅喽熰窊喽� 喽痘喽膏穵 喽穩喽穵 喽氞动喾掄陡 喽编窉喽膏窉喽穵喽稓喾� 喽编窚喽膏窅喽窉 喽多穩 喽斷穭喾� 喽侗喾�. 喽⑧窂喽窉喽亨稓喽�, 喽嗋稖喽膏稓喽� 喾勦窛 喽氞窋喽洁逗喽氞锭 喽戉痘喾權穭喾掄穩 喽呧穩喾� 喽呧陡喾澿痘喾� 喽溹侗喾娻侗喽� 喽多窋喽穵喽� 喽班痘喾娻陡喽亨窔 喽氞窚喽侗喽氞穩喽穵 喾冟锭喾勦侗喾� 喾€喾� 喽编窚喽窉喽多窊喽�, 喽戉穭喾掄动喾� 喽斷穭喾斷锭 喽呧抖喾愢锭喽� 喽痘喽膏穵喾€喽穵 喾€喾愢动喽溹董喾� 喽编窅喽�.”
― 喽膏窚喾勦窂喽编穵 喽秽窂喽⑧穵 喽膏订喾€喽�, 喽秽窅喽⑧窉喽� [Rajina]

“c'est (...) l'un des paradoxes de cette guerre : le c么t茅 irr茅prochable du gouvernement de Colombo qui, dans les zones qu'il a perdues, et ne serait-ce que pour ne pas s'avouer vaincu et avoir 脿 prendre acte de la s茅cession, continue d'assurer les services publics, de payer les fonctionnaires, fussent-ils d茅sign茅s par les Tigres et 脿 leur botte.”
― Bernard-Henri L茅vy, War, Evil, and the End of History

“International awareness of his deceptive practices is the reflection of the frustration that is prevailing in Sri Lanka which the President is trying to undermine by the traditional emotive and hate mongering politics.”
― Nilantha Ilangamuwa

“Reconciliation without truth is nothing but a smokescreen”
― Nilantha Ilangamuwa

“You are thinking, as anyone would, as everyone has, at least in passing. about what you would have done. If I were in his shoes, I would never, you have said to yourself; or perhaps you are sure you would have done exactly the same. There is no way to know, truly, without standing where we did.”
― V. V. Ganeshananthan

“It was not to flaunt feelings of superiority that the elders of the Kaisaruwatte family clung to the traditions of their patrician lineage, but for self-preservation of themseleves and their way of life, now declining in the face of social change. It was their inability to adapt to change due to the rigidity of their adherence to tradition, that was also the cause of their decline.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe

“Life in this form is one-time chance, death is the inevitable consequence for anyone who is born. The record of one鈥檚 death is the primary respect one could render to the lost one. Tears of all relatives of missing people are indeed flowing due to this invaluable action by the authority.”
― Nilantha Ilangamuwa

“Will there be people who will have the conscience to contribute to the country by changing themselves first? That is the need of the moment.”
― Nilantha Ilangamuwa

“In Sri Lanka curiosity was not a trait encouraged among children, particularly in girls, because those in power- often males, but anyone older, or of higher caste, education or influence- were always right and their reasons needn't be explained or understood to the subordinate.”
― Niromi de Soyza

“Ich glaube fest daran, dass jede Generation ihre eigene Aufgabe hat.

Die Generation unserer Eltern hatte die Aufgabe die Perle des indischen Ozeans, die wundersch枚ne Insel Sri Lanka zu verlassen, um sich, und gerade uns, ein Leben in Sicherheit zu schenken. Daf眉r sollten wir Ihnen unendlich dankbar sein.

Und die einzige M枚glichkeit die ich sehe, wie wir dies zur眉ckzahlen k枚nnen, ist jede Chance die uns gegeben wird, zu nutzen, alles aus unserem Leben zu machen.”
― Akilnathan Logeswaran

“That day, I realized that dreams without means were like helium balloons, just flying in the air with no goal, no direction, just straying in empty space.”
― Pramudith D. Rupasinghe, Footprints in Obscurity: A Living Story

“They [Sinhalese leaders] had clearly established their predilection for the Sinhalese national identity. Though the minority [Tamil] leaders elucidated a great deal of reasoning in this discussion, the Sinhalese leaders... remained steadfast in their decision to have the Lion flag, flexing their muscle of majority for their uncompromising loyalty for their Sinhalese nationality.”
― Murugar Gunasingam, "The Tamil Eelam Liberation Struggle鈥� State Terrorism and Ethnic Cleansing

“For a long time the horror that these images elicited remained buried inside him. A morbid reality he was constantly feeding and yet he was unable to express. As though unable to fully believe or understand what they depicted. It was only when the channel 4 documentary came out in 2011, accusing the government of war crimes and genocide, when later that year the UN published its report, giving an estimate of how many civilians had died that he was finally able to speak about what had happened. To accept that the images he had become obsessed with were not some strange perverted creation of his subconscious life but they represented things that had really happened in the country he was from. Even now he felt ashamed thinking about his reluctance to acknowledge the magnitude of what had happened at the end of the war. As though he had been hesitating to believe the evidence on his computer screen because his own poor violated stateless people were the ones alleging it. As though he was unable to take the suffering of his own people seriously till it was validated by the panel of foreign authority experts, legitimised by a documentary, narrated by a clean shaven white man standing in front of a camera in suit and tie.”
― Anuk Arudpragasam, A Passage North

“In Sri Lanka, nothing succeeds like death-it is the ultimate validation. The man you hate in life becomes instantly your idol in death. Any neglected artist can take heart; reviled whilst alive, he only has to wait patiently for death to become the national hero he has always yearned to be.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel

“The path dips down to Gal Vihara: a wide, quiet, hollow, surrounded with trees. A low outcrop of rock, with a cave cut into it, and beside the cave a big seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. The vicar general, shying away from "paganism." hangs back and sits under a tree reading the guidebook. I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything - without refutation - without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening. I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures, the clarity and fluidity of shape and line, the design of the monumental bodies composed into the rock shape and landscape, figure, rock and tree. And the sweep of bare rock sloping away on the other side of the hollow, where you can go back and see different aspects of the figures.

Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded (much more "imperative" than Da Vinci's Mona Lisa because completely simple and straightforward). The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no "mystery." All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya... everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuram and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don't know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise. This is Asia in its purity, not covered over with garbage, Asian or European or American, and it is clear, pure, complete. It says everything: it needs nothing. And because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It does not need to be discovered. It is we, Asians included, who need to discover it.

The whole thing is very much a Zen Garden, a span of bareness and openness and evidence, and the great figures, motionless, yet with the lines in full movement, waves of vesture and bodily form, a beautiful and holy vision. The rest of the "city", the old palace complex, I had no time for. We just drove around the roads and saw the ruined shapes, and started on the long drive home to Kandy.”
― Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton