groundviews » Blood is their medal

Blood is their medal

July 8, 2008 at 2:45 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Poetry | by groundviews

By Gajaman Nona

Last weekend a friend gave me a CD of songs by Victor Jara, a Chilean teacher, theatre director, poet and political activist. His album Manifesto reflects his struggle against an American-backed coup in 1973 which brought General Pinochet to power in Chile. Jara saw through the hollow refrain that Chile could only be saved through military authoritarianism. He sang,

“I do not want my country divided…there is room for all of us in this country”.

Jara was killed for his protest. His final poem was written in a stadium in Santiago, as he was held captive by the military along with 5,000 others. He laments:

“For them, blood is a medal; Killing is an act of heroism”.

The 1973 coup heralded an era of brutal repression and savage human rights violations. During General Pinochet’s regime, hundreds of members of Allende’s Popular Unity government were tortured and disappeared simply because they represented a new spirit of democracy. Many political activists of the 70s were creative and Chile saw a resurgence of popular theatre and song. Pinochet sought to end this. Although the military managed to confiscate most of Jara’s master recordings, his wife, Joan Jara, smuggled some of his music out so that even death could not silence Jara’s dreams.

Victor Jara celebrated life; the work of the peasants; the lyrics of songwriters and the beauty of chance - the rain in his daughter’s hair - and how nothing else mattered.

“I sing for the statements made by my honest guitar,

for its heart is of the earth and like the dove it goes flying.

My guitar is not for killers - greedy for money and power,

but for the people who labour so the future may flower”.

According to Paula Rodriguez a filmmaker who has explored Chile’s political demons, Pinochet’s house arrest in Britain in October 1998, when he was served with a Spanish arrest warrant charging him with torture and conspiracy was “the end of a process. Chileans could see how the world saw Pinochet and how they saw Chile”. In 2003, as part of a process of recovering from two decades of Pinochet’s dictatorship, the Chilean government paid homage to Jara, renaming the stadium where he was killed after him. The commemoration aimed to signal that impunity would never again be tolerated and that Chile had moved on.

Stephen Volk reminds us just how hard that process of moving on is, for any government. Volk examines how proclaimers of democracy such as the United States learnt from Pinochet how state power could be wielded to undermine those who question by using surveillance and anti-terror laws. The abuse of state power - whether this be secret renditions across Europe; censorship and invasion of privacy such as snatching SIMM cards or videotaping minority citizens in Colombo is a very dangerous trend.

It seems strange to listen to Jara’s lyrics today as killers seem all too common in the ordinary texture of life in Sri Lanka and yet there is very little space for protest. There is instead much talk of heroism and blood. In today’s world if you write about the celebration of death you can be assaulted in the capital in broad daylight. In this heroic world a citizen who just happens to be a minority can be detained impolitely for long hours. In this heroic world, the wail of ambulances from Ratmalana airport returning bodybags from the North interrupts still evenings.

Sri Lanka’s grief is not new. You can find tracts in the politics section of any major bookstore with titles like “War and Conflict”, “Ethnic Enmity”, “Scarred Minds”. But The Economist this week labels President Rajapakse as “The War President”. There has been a hardening of viewpoints in the last two years that only war is the solution. As in Chile in the 70s and 80s, impunity for rights abuses has accompanied the closing down of alternatives.

This closing down sees a reduction of identity to national and ethnic labels. Even an ordinary pedestrian has to place themselves in this identity struggle and enter a contract of implication as the security forces demand to see your ID and check if you are Sinhala or Tamil. Today identity is not various, it is imagined and reinforced by nationalists in search of cultural capital (both Buddhist and Tamil), and a state with majoritarian public culture.

This state wants criticism silenced. The trouble with war is that even its language sounds ugly. The plurality of the world gets reduced to stock phrases like “conflict affected”, “the enemies”, “seizure and destruction”. Black helicopters and war stories transform normal life into a ritual of masquerade.

What happened to the poets of old who described the scent of the earth? A friend once told me that he could get lost in the descriptions of erotic Sinhala poetry. The beauty of consummation summed up in descriptions of crystals melting in water.

Who wants to fight over land when an empty space can be more beautiful than an object? If we let ourselves, we could see the horizon stretching out beyond the gaze of the warmongers’ canvas.

Why can’t we follow Jara’s example and choose lyricism. There are many historic literary examples, like the description of the Boddhisatva’s birth as a hare:

“The dew-drops that drip - from the glorious petals

Appear pearls that slip - from the rosy finger-tips of girls”.

Jara says,

“Song is like the water that washes the stones, the wind that cleans us,

like the fire which joins us together and it lives within us to make us better people”.

We need to start looking for this fire within. What Jara stands for, along with many of the survivors of Chile’s past, is that there is value in believing in justice and freedom. Do not hunt out enemies or seek to destroy, we should notice the farmers perched in watch huts staying awake to keep elephants out. We could celebrate the wild flush of bougainvillea, the lightning striking the sea in the distance, luminous and electric. Genuflect to beauty not the merchants of death. I don’t want a medal of blood, do you?

479 have read this this article so far. You may also find these articles interesting:

On dimensions of ‘lyricality’ in times of war Aboorvan Prabanjana takes great pains to drive home a point in a piece titled “Why does Malinda justify excesses of Government?” (Sunday Lakbima News, July 6, 2008). For the record, Malinda doesn’t. But all credit to Prabanjana’s effort. That he doesn’t get it is of course another matter altogether. He says he agrees with me and also... Malinda Seneviratne, July 12, 2008
Until the Guns are silent I set out to Jaffna last week hoping to report on the situation there. I got back yesterday but am still unable to put down anything on paper as I donât know where to start. Do I start with the little boy I met who saved his baby brotherâs life by scooping his intestines back... Ange, December 17, 2007

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Justin said,

July 8, 2008 @ 8:43 pm

I like your ending “I don’t want a medal of blood, do you?” Mahinda Rajapakse and the soldiers who fight the war in the North East are seeking a “medal of blood” and not peace.

David Blacker said,

July 8, 2008 @ 9:10 pm

It’s funny, but just before my regiment flew out to Palaly in ‘91, our CO gave us a speech, and he said in Sinhalese “Blood is our medal”. And he was right, that is the ultimate medal, worth more than any metal.

Janaranjana Mahinda said,

July 9, 2008 @ 5:09 am

I appreciate this article. Truly we do need Victor Jara’s in our tragic country. Under Pinochet’s terror in Chile, 3000 people died and many thousands disappeared. According to the UN, in just under three years there have been more than 5000 unsolved abductions and killings in Sri Lanka. Our poet Veedagama Thero compared life to a drop of dew on a morning blade of grass; we do not know how soon it will fall to the ground. But now, we die faster than the drop of dew.

I’m both surprised and not surprised by David Blacker’s response here, because he is an ex-army officer. He knows that since the 1940’s no war has been resolved through military solutions. After the Americans lost the Vietnam War it took several decades and many high-cost films to fabricate the narrative of what happened there. What about Iraq? How does David Blacker judge the methods or the outcome of these past five years? The countries of the “coalition” receive the bodies of their dead soldiers every day. Blood may be their ultimate medal but the metal is little comfort to the mothers. Serious military men say that to have a gun and shoot it is easy; to have a gun and not shoot it is the point. A soldier’s honour is based not on the fact that he is trained to kill others, but on the way he has been trained to protect others. Has this been forgotten by the military hierarchies and the militarised politicians of our time?

David Blacker said,

July 9, 2008 @ 11:50 am

Good thoughts, Mahinda. First off, I wasn’t an officer — I worked for a living:)

I would disagree with your statement that NO war has been resolved through military solutions. It would be more accurate to say that very few wars have been resolved ONLY through military solutions. Some have been, however — Korea, the Liberation of Kuwait, the Israeli War of Independence, the Yom Kipur War, the two JVP insurrections, the Malayan Uprising, the Borneo Emergency, the Falklands War, etc.

There are many areas of modern warfare that, while not obviously military in nature, are the purview of the armed forces, and therefor ultimately fall under military strategy. Some are propaganda (information & disinformation), psychological operations, hearts & minds, administration, etc, and many of these have contributed to a solution. So while some wars may not seem to have been won largely by military action, they nevertheless have been.

The US military has many constraints placed upon it, some self-inflicted, and these are mostly a post-Vietnam phenomenon. The lengthy Iraq War is also a result of bad strategy by the US government at the onset of the war. Initial mistakes are hard to correct later, though not impossible. US casualties in Iraq have gradually dropped over the last year, and will continue to do so until it reaches a negligible amount. At that point the effect on the US civil psyche will be little to none. Even currently, it’s actual impact is mostly through media magnification than actual casualty effect.

Death is part of war. There’s no getting around it. The shock to the US population (and the military) caused by the Vietnam War has made it very intolerant of casualties, to the point where daring and courage cannot be exploited as it should be. Therefore, the US military requires a far bigger footprint than say the British or the Israelis.

There’s no point having a gun unless you are ready, willing and able to kill with it. That is the whole point of an army. And soldiers are NOT trained to protect others. Soldiers are trained to defend their country — and that usually means killing. There’s no getting around that. We aren’t boy scouts, or policemen, and that’s why we shouldn’t be used as peacekeepers. The whole raison d’etre of a soldier is to destroy the enemy with (as we say in the Sinha Rifles) “Speed & Courage”.

David Blacker said,

July 9, 2008 @ 3:05 pm

BTW my original comment was in no way a disagreement or attack on the author of the article or the ideology of Victor Jara. I was merely amused that two people from two ends of the spectrum could be touched by the same lyrics, and read read in it their own justifications.

Justin said,

July 10, 2008 @ 8:08 pm

David Blacker

I disagree with your comment “It would be more accurate to say that very few wars have been resolved ONLY through military solutions. Some have been, however — Korea, the Liberation of Kuwait, the Israeli War of Independence, the Yom Kipur War, the two JVP insurrections, the Malayan Uprising, the Borneo Emergency, the Falklands War, etc.”

Korean war ultimately divided the country and made North Koreans to suffer, Kuwait became a puppet of the West, losing its independence, and Israel is still at logger heads with Palestinians after so many years. Falkland war was a temporary show of strength by Britain, gaining nothing except a rock. In all these countries, negotiated solution would have ultimately worked out with patient and intelligent diplomacy.

Therefore, war as a course of action is always detrimental to the countries in the long run. Enormous number of lives are lost, destruction is caused and vast amounts of money spent could have been used to do something better for mankind. War always creates enemity. Therefore, war as a solution is never justifiable.

JVP insurrection and Malaysian uprising, as the name rightly implies, were caused by “young blood desire for guns”. They were not serious freedom movements or armed resistance against oppression.

Even with JVP and Malaysian uprising negotiation and diplomacy could have solved the matter.However, it worked with JVP.

Man is not created to kill a fellow human being. He is created to live with the other ! Killing by any soldier is cruel and wicked, even if based on any human miltary philosophy.

David Blacker said,

July 11, 2008 @ 12:45 pm

Justin, you’re now digressing by attempting to analyse the RESULT of the wars mentioned and/or the nature of those conflicts. This is irrelevant to your earlier incorrect statement that no war has been resolved through military action. Clearly, many have been. Whether those wars were insurrections, guerrilla actions, invasions, or wars of oppression have nothing to do with it. Certainly the NATURE of war has changed in the post WW2 era due to the presence of nukes, but that’s a different discussion.

If you’re trying to convince me that war is bad, don’t bother. I know it, I’ve been there. However,

“Killing by any soldier is cruel and wicked, even if based on any human miltary philosophy.”

If you’re trying to blame it on the soldiers, it’s an old and unconvincing argument, and Donovan made it far more eloquently:

“But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He’s the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can’t go on.”

Sarwan said,

July 11, 2008 @ 3:21 pm

David

I read the part ou wrote “I was not an officer-I worked for a living”.

I see that you write like a soldier and feel like a soldier. When you state the following;

a) ” just before my regiment flew out to Palaly in ‘91, our CO gave us a speech,
and he said in Sinhalese “Blood is our medal”. and

b) “There’s no point having a gun unless you are ready, willing and able to kill
with it. That is the whole point of an army. And soldiers are NOT trained to
protect others. Soldiers are trained to defend their country — and that
usually means killing. ”

I am forced to suspect from your own words that you are one of the soldiers with ill aquired fortunes. I hope you are not one of the mercenary pilots working then for the ruthless president JR, flying over Jaffna and bombing Jaffna base hospital, churches, temples and civilian targets.

If so, you are a war crimes offender. I hope I am not replying to a war criminal !

Coming to the subject matter, you write “The whole raison d’etre of a soldier is to destroy the enemy with (as we say in the Sinha Rifles) “Speed & Courage”.
My question is, who is the enemy in the conflict in Sri Lanka ? Is it not the Tamil citizens in the North East ? I mean citizens of their own country.

When soldiers are trained in SL, they are told that Tamils of North East are their “enemy”. The reason for civilian murder, kidnap, torture, rape etc; by the Sinhala soldiers.

When the soldiers of Sri Lanka start treating Tamils of North East as their enemies, and kill them, armed resistance becomes inevitably justifiable.

Nearly five million Jews were exterminated by Adolf Hitler because the Jews failed to identify the enemy and resist them.

When you were told “Blood is our medal” you were misled. Blood can never be a medal for any soldier in the North East. As you rightly understand, the soldiers must be withdrawn from the North East and replaced with Boy Scouts to bring peace in Sri Lanka.

David Blacker said,

July 11, 2008 @ 4:27 pm

“I am forced to suspect from your own words that you are one of the soldiers with ill aquired fortunes.”

It would have been nice if I could’ve acquired a fortune fighting for my country, the way the top brass on both sides have, but unfortunately all I have to show for it are the scars — the medal of blood.

“I hope you are not one of the mercenary pilots working then for the ruthless president JR, flying over Jaffna and bombing Jaffna base hospital, churches, temples and civilian targets.”

I trust you know the difference between a soldier and an airman. However, I KNOW you are not one of the terrorists who attacked the Central Bank, or the Temple of the Tooth, or the Bo Tree, all civilian targets. I wish you were, because I would have some respect for you as someone who DID something for what you believed in, however misguided, rather than someone who just applauds from the sidelines.

“Is it not the Tamil citizens in the North East ? I mean citizens of their own country.”

Is that what you think? I’m afraid you are extremely misguided. The enemy of all Sri Lankans (of whatever community) is the LTTE. The LTTE are also citizens of Sri Lanka, but they are still the enemy. The Army defends the country from ALL enemies, foreign and domestic.

“When soldiers are trained in SL, they are told that Tamils of North East are their “enemy”. ”

We are told no such thing. I have been through SL Army training. Have you?

“The reason for civilian murder, kidnap, torture, rape etc; by the Sinhala soldiers.”

And what is the reason for these crimes committed by the LTTE?

“When the soldiers of Sri Lanka start treating Tamils of North East as their enemies, and kill them, armed resistance becomes inevitably justifiable.”

Certainly, but the soldiers don’t see the Tamil populace as their enemy anymore than they saw the Sinhalese populace of the south as their enemy between ‘87 and ‘89. The situation in the East is proof of this, with Tamils fighting alongside the Sinhalese against the LTTE.

“Nearly five million Jews were exterminated by Adolf Hitler because the Jews failed to identify the enemy and resist them.”

It was six million Jews, not five, and to compare the Tamils to the Jews is an insult to that six million.

“When you were told “Blood is our medal” you were misled.”

You are in no position to decide that, since you view is not objective. Neither is mine, which is why I can speak only for myself, not for you. If I were to question you, I’d ask you if it is right to ethnically cleanse the NE of Muslims, or send little children out to die, or to send brainwashed young women out to murder civilians.

“As you rightly understand, the soldiers must be withdrawn from the North East and replaced with Boy Scouts to bring peace in Sri Lanka.”

Unfortunately the LTTE will conscript them, so we can’t do that.

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