It's time to change the discourse – who's the savage?

Often, and even to this day, leaders of Asia, Africa, Latin America and countries of the Middle East are accused of corruption by the leadership and at times even the ordinary people of the so-called 'developed' countries of the West. The poverty and squalour many of our people are forced to live in are held up as examples of the extent to which corruption pervades in our lands.

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Equally often, our people are referred to as savages and unverified instances of brutality are thrown in our faces. Large sections of our media help spread these western-based images of our countries and people.

Among the images of cruelty and brutality which particularly haunt our minds are unsubstantiated stories of the late Ugandan leader Idi Amin who has been accused of all forms of cruelty and perversion, including cannibalism.

Whether these Idi Amin stories are true or false, we really do not know.But the western dominated media, especially the audio, print and television plus the film industry promote these beliefs. So much so that even our education systems (Western-valuebased) promote these beliefs. Not surprisingly, large numbers of our naive ‘intellectuals’ echo these beliefs as though they are ‘gospel’ truths.

For instance the political leadership in Canada has declared a particular date as ‘Sri Lanka Tamil genocide Day’. The Mayor of that Canadian town (Brompton) even went to the extent of demanding that all Lankans protest the so-called genocide, or leave ‘his’ country and go back to Sri Lanka.