The reason has been two fold - I feel there is an insurmountable amount of PhD work to do and I'm always behind - ie Guilt for spending time on a creative piece of email work (my supervisors ar on my list after all - not that they would read this sort of stuff with much enthusiasm i'm sure!).
But the other reason is I like the emails to be a brief reflection of my life and thoughts, and no group email in current times could happen without a comment about the current political and war situation.
It has been so increadibly difficult to write about this because in a few paragraphs you cannot capture what is in my mind. Also the thoughts are so dynamic I become somewhat tongue-tied - or "dont-press-send on the computer-bound", if that makes sense. There have been two drafts just sitting on my computer of the last bit of my next group email which i will post below
From February 09
The conflict
And finally it’s been a really difficult time here in Sri Lanka regarding the situation of war and conflict. It doesn’t matter who is right or who is wrong, what your perspective is, the bottom line is “conflict” is painful to all even those who are not directly involved with violence. If you look at it from a “human” perspective.
There is so much misinformation that is being brandied about regarding this conflict, which adds to the pain of all sides, which only adds to the pain. In my opinion there is no genocide going on in Sri Lanka – there is a terrible war in the north, and I for one want it to stop. The majority of the country peacefully coexists. There “is” a definite Tamil cause and we need to make the Tamils of Sri Lanka more feel valued and appreciated as equal members of society. However Terrorism will not pave the way for this. Nevertheless the end of the day all we can offer, (including what I offer) no matter how well researched we appear to be is our own perspectives, based on our own experiences and our version research.
There are too many thoughts and emotions that have gone on within me since coming back. A glimpse of this had hopefully been captured in article, prose and poetry in my Peace Blog. Please leave your feedback, either on the site or by email.
All this conflict has made doing research very challenging task – but I will continue to progress despite all this. This extra delay and challenge I cannot expect my supervisors nor Australian University to understand fully, although I’m sure they do to some degree – for they are not me, and unlike them I am a Sri Lankan ‘through and through’ whether I like it or not, and really there is nothing I’d like to see more than lasting peace in this beautiful country.
And from March 09
The conflict in Sri Lanka
There are too many things to say here and it would be wrong for me not to say anything as the conflict itself and the unfolding developments have consumed much of my mental and emotional energy since coming back this time.
The best thing is to read my blog which represents a myriad of my views at different stages.
The first thoughts must go to the Tamil civilians caught in the no fire zone of the government army and LTTE – they are currently suffering the most. My thoughts and prayers to them . Then it goes out to the rest of Sri Lanka – we are all suffering at the hands of this country no matter where we are – either directly or indirectly. Last Friday the lights were out in Colombo as the LTTE was dropping bombs in the city centre – one of my research assistants was only metres away from a building which was being bombed at the time – luckily he was okay.
One thing that is important to me is that people out there know there is a lot of false information being brandied about.
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