Read here for an incredibly brave human rights worker, Ruki Fernando, explaining the reasons why Sri Lanka remains mired in despotism:
This is how our society used to behave and think during the war. There were hardly any concern in the south about the Tamil victims when horrendous things were happening, because people simply wanted to believe the version put forward by the government. That made things easier for the government to not only to suppress the people in the north-east, but even to suppress any dissent in the south. In a society, when no one cares about the plight of others, everyone becomes vulnerable and everyone’s rights will be at risk. Three years after the war, many in the south are not willing even to consider that abducting Tamils and torturing them in detention or making them disappear as colossal crimes and that exposes the level of degeneration of our ethical values and standards. Our insensitivity to such atrocities and our willingness to turn a blind eye to such crimes reflect the erosion of our moral sensibility.