Alyson Camus writes:
There was a lot of controversy around Iman’s last post about M.I.A.’s refusal to do a free concert because her mother cannot get a US visa.
Right now her mother is apparently not able to get into the US, since she is seen as a threat to society in America. M.I.A. has clashed with immigration officials because of her comments about Sri Lanka. The US authorities want her to apologize to the Sri Lankan embassy, which she refuses to do.
M.I.A. was born in London, but her Sri Lankan parents moved back to their country when she was six months old. When the violence in Sri Lanka became too dangerous, Maya’s mother took her children to London, where they were granted refugee status in 1986.
Maya’s father stayed in Sri Lanka, since he is reported to be one of the founding members of Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a guerrilla group fighting for the independence of the Tamil minority, although other sources are less affirmative.
M.I.A. has become very outspoken about Sri Lanka politics, as if she were an authority on the subject, although she has only lived until the age of 10 over there. For her, the situation is simple: the Tamil Tigers have been fighting to create an independent homeland for the Tamils which represent only 20% of the population, after decades of being discriminated by majority Sinhalese-controlled governments. She said there is a genocide going on over there nobody knows about since humanitarian organizations and journalists have been banned from the country.
I’m not very aware of the situation in Sri Lanka, but the problem is that the situation as she describes it is certainly not that simple, with on one hand the oppressed Tamil people and on the other hand the awful oppressor Sinhalese people.
The Tamil Tigers are a terrorist organization, no doubt about this, they have used child soldiers and suicide bombers, this is how they killed Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993.
If you do any research about the LTTE, you will find all kinds of horrific things like the ones described by the website South Asian Terrorism Portal: the LTTE provided forged passports to Ramzi Yousef, who was one of the planners of the first attack against the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, and this allegation has been backed by the Westminster Journal. They also said that the LTTE was smuggling arms to various terrorist organizations, including Islamic groups in Pakistan and in the Philippines. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies has also found that LTTE was building commercial links with al-Qaeda and other militants in Afghanistan.
Should I continue?
And funny how M.I.A. never mentioned the Muslims, for her there are the Tamils vs the Sinhalese but there is in fact a third ethnic group, the Muslims, who have been massacred, evicted by, precisely, the Tiger terrorists. Since she is talking about genocide, may be she should mention this too.
So with 32 countries (including the US, the UK, the EU) listing the LTTE as a terrorist organization, and her father being linked to it, it is understandable that M.I.A. and her mother have visa problems. I seriously doubt her mother is a terrorist though, and this is the stupid part of the whole thing.
She said that Tigers and Tamils are two different things and she has defended herself to support terrorism. But why are her videos filled with Tiger symbols, like the LTTE flag? Why is she using LTTE slogans in her albums? If you flirt with terrorism, don’t complain to be ‘singled out’
Recently, M.I.A. has unsuccessfully enlisted the help of Hillary Clinton in her visa battles, who just said to her ‘You know, it happens…’
M.I.A. just wants to look like a guerrilla rebel because kaki outfits are fashionable. May be I exaggerate a little bit, but the aesthetic of the rebellion seems really important to her, looking at her videos. She comes as an arrogant Brentwood resident who wants to give us lessons about the Sri Lanka situation whereas her views about a complex situation are really simplistic and biased. At the end, she just wants to make a lot of noise.
Iman Lababedi writes:
Thank you Alyson for writing about the issues so clearly.
A couple of points.
1. Terrorism, like history, is designated by the victors. Certainly, Israel was formed by a terrorist organization.
2. There is little doubt the Sri Lankan goverment, like the Europeans did to the Native Americans and the Turks to the Armenians, and mure recently, Hutu’s to the Tutsi’s , are attempting genocide while starving their citizens. Mass murder is a numbers game and those in power play Chicago rules nthed out.
3. MIA may do many things but exploiting Sri Lanka is not one of them. This is her father’s organization and I have no doubt her feelings are sincere.
4. When MIA says “Give War A Chance” she is echoing history.
With the exception of the above caveats I agree with Alyson’s take.
And I still don’t understand why Bronfman can’t back channel MIA’s mother into the States.