5 ms·

It is hard to think about Sri Lanka without recalling [0] that this is the country which recently attempted to institute a fertiliser ban. My default assumption

by roenxi 2y ago

It is hard to think about Sri Lanka without recalling [0] that this is the country which recently attempted to institute a fertiliser ban. My default assumptions about their general infrastructure management are unflattering. [0] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-decimates-sri-lankan-crops-government-popularity-ebbs-2022-03-03/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-d...

jamal-kumar 2y ago
Wow that's crazy. You know when Greenpeace is saying they messed going organic up that they probably really messed going organic up... https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/story/on-sri-lankas-fertiliser-ban/ https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/story/on-sri-lankas-fert...
- duxup 2y ago
  I like to think folks who know what they're doing, AND pushing dramatic change know that HOW you get there is as important as anything else. Behave recklessly and you've got no support anymore and you've undone your whole plan.
  - Steven420 2y ago
    That very well could have been the plan
lostlogin 2y ago
The relatively recent genocide also points to a high level of dysfunction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_genocide
- ignoramous 2y ago
  As for the civil war, things could have ended differently, except Prabhakaran seemed to have been gripped by arrogance. Though he was fighting for Tamils, paradoxically, Prabhakaran also became the big killer of Tamils. He annihilated all competing Tamil militant groups ... ... it all led to [Prabhakaran's] last apocalyptic decision to fight to the last day — and the last Tamil. Through Kumaran Pathmanathan, KP, the LTTE ‘foreign minister’, we offered to bring out all the combatants and civilians from the war zone. When KP went to finalise the deal, Prabhakaran refused. The rest is history. https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-ltte-chiefs-rise-and-fall-review-of-mr-narayan-swamys-the-rout-of-prabhakaran/article69175420.ece https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-ltte-chiefs... / https://archive.vn/B2Gxv https://archive.vn/B2Gxv Unfortunate for the Tamils how it all played out, with little intervention or pressure from other regional powers. The past violence and pogroms were already indicative of the State's intent; they didn't need a second invitation.
  - duxup 2y ago
    It's the story of most warlords / strong men types. Ultimately anything less than full obedience makes them the enemy, even (sometimes especially) the folks you are presumably fighting for.
  - krainboltgreene 2y ago
    Little intervention? Literally every world power and some of the minor ones went out of their way to support the nationalists. The United States being a major reason why it was kicked off. We eventually incorporated the Sinhalese nationalist strategies in Afghanistan.
- master_kuro 2y ago
  This is absolutely insane. It's almost cartoonishly monstrous. Why isn't this better known? The way the Tamils were treated is so pure a representation of evil that I can barely get through the Wikipedia page. This was the work of Buddhists, too! I've been taught that Buddhists were peaceful and non-violent by creed, but clearly not if the only Buddhist majority nation is capable of such abomination.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Westerners rarely associate Buddhism with extremism or violence, but Buddhist movements in Asia have often raised few qualms about the use of force. Buddhist authorities have, at times, justified violence against the faith’s enemies and supported authoritarian regimes. * https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/16/myanmar-rohingya-coup-buddhists-protest/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/16/myanmar-rohingya-coup-b... * https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/myanmar-s-extreme-buddhist-nationalists https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/myanmar-s-extr... These links are just Myanmar.
  - anon291 2y ago
    Most westerners are woefully misguided in their interpretation of eastern religions. We are still people. I'm always shocked when Europeans or Americans single out Christianity as some uniquely malevolent force. People are like this. We have always been like this. Being atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, heathen, etc -- it doesn't make you superhuman. We're all capable of this and the sooner everyone realizes this the sooner we can work to prevent tragedy.
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      Much religion depends on magical thinking and/or blind appeals to authority. IME it facilitates bad behavior that's less likely to be tolerated by more rational belief systems.
      - anon291 2y ago
        The arc of history simply does not show that. We can point to the various issues in communist states (not criticizing communism but all the communist states are undoubtedly atheist).
- graemep 2y ago
  The wikipedia page is one sided and only puts the case for calling iu a genocide. As a mixed race and entirely ethnic minority Sri Lankan who lived there for much of the civil war I do not think genocide is an accurate characterisation, although there were certainly many atrocities. It was also made possible by the populations fear of the other side who were extremely nasty ethnonationalists, "ethnically cleansed" areas under their control, and were the inventors and most prolific users of the modern suicide bomb (the type the west associates with Islamic terrorists). A common response to criticism of the killing of civilians during the war were things like "we are fighting fascists". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam#Human_rights_violations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eel...
  - master_kuro 2y ago
    I read your comment because I thought it would provide another perspective on the situation, which is always a good thing. However, the link you shared as well as your rhetoric only made me more sympathetic towards the Tamil minority. Here's my understanding on the conflict. 1. The Sinhalese majority were given mandate by the British. 2. They used this mandate to apply incredibly discriminatory practices towards the Tamils. 3. Constant rabble-rousing by Sinhalese politicians intermittently led to race riots, in which Sinhalese mobs carried out pogroms and murders against Tamils. 4. Due to almost laughably blatant policies targeting Tamils, such as an affirmative action policy designed to reduce the number of Tamil students at universities, a group of Tamil students formed a league to protest the matter. These students would become the forerunners of the tamil militant groups. 5. Further barbarism from the Sinhalese majority, such as the destruction of culturally important Tamil heritage (for instance, the destruction of an important library), seeding racial tensions. 6. A rebel group carries out an ambush against the Sri Lankan army, seemingly as retaliation for the assassination of one of their commanders. The result of this was a week of rioting where innocent Tamil civilians were murdered, raped and tortured by Sinhalese mobs. This event is known as Black July. To readers: do not view the wikipedia page for this event if you're sensitive. The first image depicts a Tamil man being stripped and beaten before being murdered by grinning Sinhalese youths. 7. War starts, and the rest is history. I don't blame the "other side" for being extremely nasty ethnonationalists. In fact, I'm very surprised they didn't become violent militants earlier by how badly they were treated. Whilst I can't condone the ethnic cleansing they carried out, I can on a human level understand why they'd carry out such crimes when they'd been so viciously treated by their victims in the past. The sexual violence that seemingly became routine for Tamils is some of the most sickening that I've ever read. I had to take a break and go for a walk after reading some of the accounts. My job requires me to have some level of awareness to the subtleties of conflict. Having studied the aspects of international relations that pertain to war, I've learned how complex a lot of these internal struggles can be. As such, I try to be fair in my assessments of ethnic conflicts. It's usually not straightforward to charactise one side as villainous and one side as victorious. Having pored over accounts from government affiliated sources, the only consistent perspective that Sri Lankan commentators seem to provide in their support for the killing of civilians is their strong belief that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation and that Buddhism has a special place in the state constitution. That's literally the only thing that they have to support themselves without circular reasoning (and is ironically a key feature of fascist polity). Otherwise, it's "We treated the Tamils like subhumans, actively discriminated them into poverty and kept murdering them and rioting in their areas. Now they're fighting back, so we're justified in committing genocide". How on Earth do you justify that without having a revisionist stance, or claiming that the clearly documented discrimination against Tamils didn't happen? What happened to the Sri Lankan Tamils is a travesty beyond reckoning. The fact that it has been forgotten and that the Sri Lankan government that stirred this conflict is still at large is a miscarriage of justice so severe that it calls into question any legitimacy of international law and human rights.
xyzzy123 2y ago
What happened was that they ran out of forex and couldn't buy it any more. The government subsidises it heavily.
- graemep 2y ago
  Not really, the government tried a short term solution to a lack of forex, which caused a drop in agricultural productivity which lead to much worse consequences about an year later.
KingMob 2y ago
[flagged]
coin 2y ago
More specifically the activist Vandana Shiva talked Sri Lanka into outlawing conventional agriculture and only use organic methods. “In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farmi...
dredmorbius 2y ago
This story keeps rising from the dead as if it was a simplistic anti-technology action when in fact (as has already been mentioned in this thread) Sri Lanka's economy had collapsed to the point that it could not afford to pay for inputs to industrialised agriculture, including chemical fertilisers. I'd addressed many of the usual specious claims made on this in a thread from 2022, here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419111> In particular, the situation was, as I'd put it there, "the driver was not 'let's de-grow the economy', but 'we can't afford what we had'". (The larger context of that particular thread was degrowth, on which I'd addressed some other points separately here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419768>.)

by roenxi 2y ago

jamal-kumar 2y ago

Wow that's crazy. You know when Greenpeace is saying they messed going organic up that they probably really messed going organic up... https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/story/on-sri-lankas-fertiliser-ban/ https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/story/on-sri-lankas-fert...

duxup 2y ago
I like to think folks who know what they're doing, AND pushing dramatic change know that HOW you get there is as important as anything else. Behave recklessly and you've got no support anymore and you've undone your whole plan.
- Steven420 2y ago
  That very well could have been the plan

lostlogin 2y ago

The relatively recent genocide also points to a high level of dysfunction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_genocide

ignoramous 2y ago
As for the civil war, things could have ended differently, except Prabhakaran seemed to have been gripped by arrogance. Though he was fighting for Tamils, paradoxically, Prabhakaran also became the big killer of Tamils. He annihilated all competing Tamil militant groups ... ... it all led to [Prabhakaran's] last apocalyptic decision to fight to the last day — and the last Tamil. Through Kumaran Pathmanathan, KP, the LTTE ‘foreign minister’, we offered to bring out all the combatants and civilians from the war zone. When KP went to finalise the deal, Prabhakaran refused. The rest is history. https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-ltte-chiefs-rise-and-fall-review-of-mr-narayan-swamys-the-rout-of-prabhakaran/article69175420.ece https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-ltte-chiefs... / https://archive.vn/B2Gxv https://archive.vn/B2Gxv Unfortunate for the Tamils how it all played out, with little intervention or pressure from other regional powers. The past violence and pogroms were already indicative of the State's intent; they didn't need a second invitation.
- duxup 2y ago
  It's the story of most warlords / strong men types. Ultimately anything less than full obedience makes them the enemy, even (sometimes especially) the folks you are presumably fighting for.
- krainboltgreene 2y ago
  Little intervention? Literally every world power and some of the minor ones went out of their way to support the nationalists. The United States being a major reason why it was kicked off. We eventually incorporated the Sinhalese nationalist strategies in Afghanistan.
master_kuro 2y ago
This is absolutely insane. It's almost cartoonishly monstrous. Why isn't this better known? The way the Tamils were treated is so pure a representation of evil that I can barely get through the Wikipedia page. This was the work of Buddhists, too! I've been taught that Buddhists were peaceful and non-violent by creed, but clearly not if the only Buddhist majority nation is capable of such abomination.
- defrost 2y ago
  Westerners rarely associate Buddhism with extremism or violence, but Buddhist movements in Asia have often raised few qualms about the use of force. Buddhist authorities have, at times, justified violence against the faith’s enemies and supported authoritarian regimes. * https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/16/myanmar-rohingya-coup-buddhists-protest/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/16/myanmar-rohingya-coup-b... * https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/myanmar-s-extreme-buddhist-nationalists https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/myanmar-s-extr... These links are just Myanmar.
- anon291 2y ago
  Most westerners are woefully misguided in their interpretation of eastern religions. We are still people. I'm always shocked when Europeans or Americans single out Christianity as some uniquely malevolent force. People are like this. We have always been like this. Being atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, heathen, etc -- it doesn't make you superhuman. We're all capable of this and the sooner everyone realizes this the sooner we can work to prevent tragedy.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    Much religion depends on magical thinking and/or blind appeals to authority. IME it facilitates bad behavior that's less likely to be tolerated by more rational belief systems.
    - anon291 2y ago
      The arc of history simply does not show that. We can point to the various issues in communist states (not criticizing communism but all the communist states are undoubtedly atheist).
graemep 2y ago
The wikipedia page is one sided and only puts the case for calling iu a genocide. As a mixed race and entirely ethnic minority Sri Lankan who lived there for much of the civil war I do not think genocide is an accurate characterisation, although there were certainly many atrocities. It was also made possible by the populations fear of the other side who were extremely nasty ethnonationalists, "ethnically cleansed" areas under their control, and were the inventors and most prolific users of the modern suicide bomb (the type the west associates with Islamic terrorists). A common response to criticism of the killing of civilians during the war were things like "we are fighting fascists". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam#Human_rights_violations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eel...
- master_kuro 2y ago
  I read your comment because I thought it would provide another perspective on the situation, which is always a good thing. However, the link you shared as well as your rhetoric only made me more sympathetic towards the Tamil minority. Here's my understanding on the conflict. 1. The Sinhalese majority were given mandate by the British. 2. They used this mandate to apply incredibly discriminatory practices towards the Tamils. 3. Constant rabble-rousing by Sinhalese politicians intermittently led to race riots, in which Sinhalese mobs carried out pogroms and murders against Tamils. 4. Due to almost laughably blatant policies targeting Tamils, such as an affirmative action policy designed to reduce the number of Tamil students at universities, a group of Tamil students formed a league to protest the matter. These students would become the forerunners of the tamil militant groups. 5. Further barbarism from the Sinhalese majority, such as the destruction of culturally important Tamil heritage (for instance, the destruction of an important library), seeding racial tensions. 6. A rebel group carries out an ambush against the Sri Lankan army, seemingly as retaliation for the assassination of one of their commanders. The result of this was a week of rioting where innocent Tamil civilians were murdered, raped and tortured by Sinhalese mobs. This event is known as Black July. To readers: do not view the wikipedia page for this event if you're sensitive. The first image depicts a Tamil man being stripped and beaten before being murdered by grinning Sinhalese youths. 7. War starts, and the rest is history. I don't blame the "other side" for being extremely nasty ethnonationalists. In fact, I'm very surprised they didn't become violent militants earlier by how badly they were treated. Whilst I can't condone the ethnic cleansing they carried out, I can on a human level understand why they'd carry out such crimes when they'd been so viciously treated by their victims in the past. The sexual violence that seemingly became routine for Tamils is some of the most sickening that I've ever read. I had to take a break and go for a walk after reading some of the accounts. My job requires me to have some level of awareness to the subtleties of conflict. Having studied the aspects of international relations that pertain to war, I've learned how complex a lot of these internal struggles can be. As such, I try to be fair in my assessments of ethnic conflicts. It's usually not straightforward to charactise one side as villainous and one side as victorious. Having pored over accounts from government affiliated sources, the only consistent perspective that Sri Lankan commentators seem to provide in their support for the killing of civilians is their strong belief that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation and that Buddhism has a special place in the state constitution. That's literally the only thing that they have to support themselves without circular reasoning (and is ironically a key feature of fascist polity). Otherwise, it's "We treated the Tamils like subhumans, actively discriminated them into poverty and kept murdering them and rioting in their areas. Now they're fighting back, so we're justified in committing genocide". How on Earth do you justify that without having a revisionist stance, or claiming that the clearly documented discrimination against Tamils didn't happen? What happened to the Sri Lankan Tamils is a travesty beyond reckoning. The fact that it has been forgotten and that the Sri Lankan government that stirred this conflict is still at large is a miscarriage of justice so severe that it calls into question any legitimacy of international law and human rights.

xyzzy123 2y ago

What happened was that they ran out of forex and couldn't buy it any more. The government subsidises it heavily.

graemep 2y ago
Not really, the government tried a short term solution to a lack of forex, which caused a drop in agricultural productivity which lead to much worse consequences about an year later.

KingMob 2y ago

[flagged]

coin 2y ago

More specifically the activist Vandana Shiva talked Sri Lanka into outlawing conventional agriculture and only use organic methods. “In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farmi...

dredmorbius 2y ago

This story keeps rising from the dead as if it was a simplistic anti-technology action when in fact (as has already been mentioned in this thread) Sri Lanka's economy had collapsed to the point that it could not afford to pay for inputs to industrialised agriculture, including chemical fertilisers. I'd addressed many of the usual specious claims made on this in a thread from 2022, here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419111> In particular, the situation was, as I'd put it there, "the driver was not 'let's de-grow the economy', but 'we can't afford what we had'". (The larger context of that particular thread was degrowth, on which I'd addressed some other points separately here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419768>.)