By Emily Howie –
Emily Howie
Brami has rushed from work to meet me. She arrives on her bike and tells me she must be home soon to care for her three children. We sit down to talk in a small office in a village in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, beneath the unforgiving glare of a bare light bulb. Very soon it is dark outside.
Brami, who is thirty-six but looks much younger, is quiet and well-dressed, and smiles frequently as we talk. Although she seems a little nervous, she wants to tell me about her experiences as a Sri Lankan Tamil, a widowed mother of three children, and a survivor of Sri Lanka’s three-decade civil war. She is also one of nearly 10,000 Sri Lankans who paid people smugglers to take them to Australia last year.
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Javi / September 30, 2013
Goraka,
The ones who stole the sheep are puzzled as to who is going to stop them??
Contradictions do not exist. You are facing a contradiction, check your premises it’s never a one way street.
You will find that one of them is wrong like very own Mr Foxy.
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Spring Koha / September 30, 2013
There isn’t a single contentious sentence is this article. Underneath the thin veneer of everyday normality there exists a broad band of despondency and hopelessness. Not only in the North and East but throughout the whole of SL. In the south, I know, first-hand, that more than 50% of SLankans are supposed to be ready to jump at the opportunity to go abroad to ‘improve their prospects’. The boat journeys will dry up if the small clutch of facilitators who enjoy high patronage and protection are taken out; but do not expect this to happen anytime soon. The Aussies are being led a merry dance and I have it on good authority that there has been many a chuckle over a stiff late night arrack on the this score. But here’s another thought; the ingenious, daring lot that we are, there is talk about trying New Zealand next. Sail on, sailor!
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Abhaya Premawardena / September 30, 2013
what is new here . mexicans run away to the US all the time , for no other reason than economic ones . if you read the article it is clear the author takes the economic concerns and adds that to her perceived human rights BS . If Australia is rich enough let them take all these monkeys . They can then replace the Aborgines as the “original” people and ask for their own eelam
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LI / September 30, 2013
Oops Mr A, careful, there are some Australian passport holders and Green Card holders in the Government you admire so much you may be insulting by calling them monkeys. Not nice no?
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Spring Koha / September 30, 2013
Spot on! there are plenty of sinhalese hedging their bets and as one very early emigre down under said to me ‘we tried to get away from the yakkos and they have now come over to blot our copybook’. What a right Kehelmalla! There is an alarming growth in the Sinhalese swallowing their pride and heading west with what loot they have garnered.
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sarojini / October 1, 2013
I do not know whether the problems ( SO called Grievances ) are exclusively for the tamils only . Why does Howie not explore the poor Sinhala families that live in Paidiyathalawa or Padawiya that do not have the basics like water or electricity . The Tamils like to highlight these as there are enough international organisations , NGO’s running behind them . There are no NGO ‘s or any Howies in these areas . The poor Sinhala voices are not heard internationally as no one is interested in the poor children in these areas who even cannot afford proper shoes or clothes to go to school.
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Athula / October 4, 2013
How much of this drivel must we read – ‘when I met Brami/Kumar/Rani she/he told me….unsubstantiated allegations selectively chosen and written with bias. Innuendo and hearsay – all are acceptable if the writer is justified in drawing large sums of money from whatever foundation they represent. I have seen and met many of these – check into the five star hotel, meet you ‘connector’ who will take you to the ‘source’. Names are changed (of course) and if the source is not too definitive in what he or she says, it must be extracted to sound uniquely painful. “a jailor once said…’ is translated to mean the entire Sinhala terrorists.
Look- we all want what Australia offers –the social safety net, the substantial wages, the deep concern of the state once you are in. We are from a third world country with third world challenges – and they are definitely less so in most western countries. People smugglers are just natural facilitators to a huge demand – less work, more freebees.
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