Sri Lanka Genocide: What If It Happened In Texas?

Imagine the following scenario.

As a result of the Texas governor's call for succession from the United States, American government declares a war on Texas. American government raids people's houses, jails people who have expressed the desire for succession, and heavily discriminates against Texans residing on the territory of the country.

A paramilitary group called the Texas Jackalopes forms to protect Texas. The Jackalopes gun down marketplaces and blow up buildings in American cities. At home, they demand of their people complete loyalty and execute those who are suspected of treason. The US government brings NATO troops into Texas, after which a member of Texas Jackalopes blows up the head of NATO in a suicide bombing.

The Texas Jackalopes are named a terrorist organization. Now, every time someone thinks "Texan," he thinks "terrorist." People come to America saying what a lovely, peaceful, spiritual country - except those terrible terrorists in Texas. As the fighting continues and the conditions in Texas get worse, the international community is totally apathetic. Some say that it is an internal dispute not theirs to arbitrate. Others say that every country deserves its government, that every place and every person has their own journey, that what is happening is a result of negativity in the consciousness of the Texans, its karmic lesson, or a punishment from God for its sins.

After two decades of low-grade civil war, the government puts in place a final solution. The army surrounds Texas while denying access there to foreign observers, killing two UN personnel stationed in Dallas to prove the point. It then sends missiles all over Texas, gasses Waco, and pounds all areas of habitation with rockets, ostensibly under the claim of fighting the Jackalopes. The people are caught between the bombing by the military and the extortion and brutality by the Jackalopes. Denied access to food and sanitation, people die in droves.

The Texas immigrants living in other countries stage demonstrations and hunger strikes, but the media ignores the issue. The stories begin to appear in the news as the government has driven the Texans into a tiny area around El Paso, where they continue to be bombed. As some Jackalopes flee and others kill themselves, the government declares victory, while telling the world of the casualties on both sides of about 10 percent of the actual number. The Texan-run businesses all over America are shut, and Texans living on territory of the rest of United States are exiled abroad.

Sounds far fetched? Yet this is exactly what's happened in Sri Lanka.

Most likely the world will never know the number of dead in the ugly campaign of extermination of Tamils waged by the Senghalese majority of Sri Lanka. As far as genocides go, this one is quite clear-cut, more so than many other events that have been declared as genocides and prosecuted as such. The Serbs against Albanians in Kosovo, for one, do not begin to compare in the number of dead or in deliberateness of genocidal intent. The world needs to see this crime for what it is and deal accordingly. Genocide must not be acceptable in 21st century, whoever carries it out and against whom.