What happened in Sri Lanka Yesterday

This is what happened in Colombo, Sri Lanka yesterday:

"On Thursday, around 1,000 people marched in Colombo then gathered in a park to urge an end to the fighting. Reuters journalists said scuffles broke out between the peace activists and hardline Buddhist monks who oppose concessions to the rebels.

The scuffles turned into an open fight after the shaven-headed, saffron-robed monks took over the stage, forcing religious leaders from Hindu, Christian and Muslim communities as well as other Buddhist monks to flee.

'They were saying we should go to war,' said pro-peace monk Madampawe Assagee. 'We like to listen to other opinions so we let them do that but then they started fighting and we couldn't control some of our people.' There were no reports of serious injuries."

Full report here.

It's not the scuffle I find so bloody ridiculous. It's these three words: hardline Buddhist monks.

I thought Buddhists were advised to take the middle path, to not go to extremes, to say no to violence.

Guess I thought wrong.

OR maybe Buddhism gives different advise to those monks who live in temples and those who sit in Parliament? That must be it. So no worries then.

And in other news, the South African cricket team has flown home due to a security report on the state Sri Lanka is at the moment. Today's Daily News headlined the departure as "Shame: South African cricketers chicken out" while the Daily Mirror stated the South African team flew out "amid fears of losing rather than bombs."

To all of us who looked forward to the cricket, after all the endless reports of killing - what disappointment. We, who've lived all, if not most, of our lives during the war, the security situation is not one that makes us think of fleeing the country asap (if we possibly could). This in itself is sad cos to some extent it means we're immune to violence. And even more sadly, there are so many people for whom the war is "in the North" and of no real concern - unless a bomb blast in Colombo either injures/ kills a loved one or catalyses a curfew when they were so looking forward to going out clubbing..what tragedy! *Manshark rolling eyes* (not a pleasant sight!)

To most non-Sri Lankans, or even Sri Lankans who've left the country, fighting in Jaffna, fighting maybe even 300 or 400km away is so scary they'll be shitting in their pants. *Manshark rolling eyes again* So how can you blame the South Africans?

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This is a postscript to the above post.

I just read this (the article on the South Africans leaving SL) - the website title should have alerted me - but guess I was a bit slow today. Anyways, this article claims the South Africans left SL cos "the past happenings in South Africa indicates that some political elements in the country having a hidden political agenda in promoting and sympathizing with the LTTE Tamil terrorists. The top ranking murders of LTTE have been given rousing welcomes in South Africa. Is this plot a part of their hidden agenda to provide undue publicity to ruthless LTTE terrorists who don’t have a scant respect to the human lives and children rights."

Where/ what do these fuckwits crawl out of?? Seriously.