May 18, 2019 marks the ten-year anniversary of the end of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka, which concluded with the government committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and decimating tens of thousands of Tamils. To this day, no member of the security forces or government official has been held accountable. Every year, May 18th is observed as Tamil Genocide Day.
this is a message of the emergency broadcasting system
this is a war on terror
this is a message of the emergency broadcasting system
this is a war of terror
hello my name is Tamil
a minority in america
the second largest ethnic group
in sri lanka
hello my name is Tamil
not a terrorist but in terror
of a country warring, gasping
island of blood,
shape of a teardrop
hello my name is born in the u.s.a.
but if i’d grown in a place
where my name and face
were enough reason to
arrest and detain me
i can’t say what peace
i’d have faith in today
in 1983 what they called riots
we call Black July
pogroms in colombo when
government thugs invaded homes
armed with
papers that read
like voter registration lists
grandfathers butchered in front of their wives
families in cars set aflame by mobs
the city
a funeral pyre
this is a massacre
guilt by ethnic identity
entire villages displaced
detained by a government
that told them these camps are your country
barbed wire borders until we decide
you won’t fight back
decapitated children dangling from jagged fences kill them before they learn to fight back
hello my name is heartache
my young cousins in the north
learned to play war instead of house
could identify which bombs would drop
based on the whir of plane engines
and even my Amma
after being trapped for months
but then safely tucked back into america
would startle at the sound of our neighbor’s lawnmower
running inside for cover
this is a war of weapons
but where the bombs fail to drop
a war of words, propaganda of the powerful a military spokesman says no civilians were harmed
by the army in the attacks
yet the relief workers, reporters, and survivors
who saw the mercilessly deemed “safe zone”
spoke of thousands of Tamils dying by mortar shell
hello my name is
question the government that declares peace
soon after killing thousands of its people
then confining more in internment camps
hello en peyr gowri
from a country warring, gasping
piling up people until they become “bodies”
choked by bloodied jungle vines
roots grasping for a piece of homeland
hello my name is dear Tamil people
in sri lanka
this is a plea for justice and accountability
this is a message of the emergency broadcasting system
we will keep trying to reach you
Added: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 / Used with permission.
Photo by Fid Thompson.
Gowri Koneswaran is a queer Tamil American writer, performing artist, teacher, and lawyer. Her advocacy has addressed animal welfare, environmental protection, the rights of prisoners and the criminally accused in the US, and justice and accountability in Sri Lanka. She is poetry coordinator at the nonprofit arts organization BloomBars and a fellow of the Asian American literary organization Kundiman. Previously, she was a poetry events host at Busboys and Poets, senior poetry editor at Jaggery, and associate editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly.
