Touring “Terrorism”: Landscapes of Memory in Post‐War Sri Lanka

Abstract

The Sri Lankan state's power to narrate the war and characterize the enemy is an expression of "triumphalist nationalism" and is a selective remembering of war. Based on photographs taken during several field visits to these sites by both authors between December 2012 and January 2014, we analyze the relationship of war and tourism and how a particular Sinhala nationalist remembering of the war and landscape of memory are being constructed in post-war Sri Lanka.Today, Sri Lanka is a former war zone where the Government's troops defeated the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers) and ended 26 years of violent conf lict in May 2009. The end of the war came at a huge cost to civilian life in the northern part of the country; the UN estimates that over 40,000 people were killed, most of whom were Tamils who form the majority in Northern Sri Lanka. Despite the end of military conf lict, war continues by other means, and its representation encapsulates a nationalist politics of victory that at once vilifies the defeated LTTE "terrorists" and excludes Northern Tamils from the Sri Lankan polis. The LTTE's former hideouts, training facilities, weapons, and vehicles are now tourist sites on display for public viewing.

The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

“…I visited many of these sites in 2013, concerned that I was a voyeur of tragedy, but found that most of the sites on display featured military hardware, installations, and strategy maps complemented by new victory monuments. A postdoctoral researcher with whom I was working also made two separate visits in 2012 and 2013, and we analyzed our findings in a short illustrated paper (Hyndman and Amarasingam 2014). …”

Diasporic mobilization and post-war uplift: an inquiry into the global Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora's influence in post-war Sri Lanka

“…The war had depleted much of the Tamil community and now the heightened military control, embedded in the political and social fabric of state, has produced militarized nationalism in Sri Lanka. The military presence is, larger, stronger and better equipped with artillery than police forces, which further normalizes its existence (Hyndman & Amarasingam, 2014). The Sri Lankan government utilizes militarized nationalism in the post-war era to produce the national and international threat of the "Tamil Tigers", with the intention of stabilizing militarization in civilian spaces (Hyndman & Amarasingam, 2014).…”

A genealogy of military geographies: Complicities, entanglements, and legacies

“…Post‐war spaces and landscapes have also been studied in order to understand the politics of memory, and the ways in which victors represent, in material form, their narratives of conflict and enrol these sites into present shapings of national identity and future directions of a country. As Hyndman and Amarasingam () explain, in their work on landscapes of memory in post‐war Sir Lanka: “the construction, selection, placement and prominence of these landmark have the potential to reveal much about the victor's nationalist project” (p. 562). Further, the sites, monuments, and material remnants of war and conflicts as spaces of “dark tourism” (Muzaini, Teo, & Yeoh, ) and consumption (Zhang & Crang, ) have also been examined to reveal what work military histories are put to in the present.…”