Triumphalism, fear and humiliation: The psychological legacy of Sri Lanka's civil war

Jayawickreme, Eranda; Jayawickreme, Nuwan; Miller, Elise

doi:10.1080/17467586.2010.531031

Cited by 31 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Emotions such as fear and anxiety, or empathy and compassion, play an obvious role in world politics (Bleiker and Hutchison 2008;Korf et al 2010;Pain 2009) -and the emotional impact of particular critical events generates diverse forms of engagement. In our specific case, the critical event was the total annihilation of the LTTE and the tremendous suffering of Tamils inside the northern battlefield of Sri Lanka in early 2009 (Jayawickreme et al 2010). 6 As Sökefeld (2006: 267) suggests, the diaspora as an imagined transnational community needs to be actively constructed.…”

Section: Diaspora Politics Critical Events and Second-generation Polmentioning

confidence: 96%

Tamil diaspora and the political spaces of second‐generation activism in Switzerland

Hess

Korf

2014

Global Networks

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In this article, we study the emergence of the political spaces of activism of second‐generation Swiss Tamils resulting from a critical event – the suffering of Tamils during and after the final battle in early 2009 of a civil war in northern Sri Lanka that had lasted for decades. We contend that we can explain the geographies of newly emerging second‐generation activism committed to achieving Tamil Eelam through two factors. These are first, this generation's multiple senses of belonging both to Switzerland and to the Tamil ‘nation’ and, second, the way a specific politics of affect remoulded second‐generation identities because the pain of witnessing the brutality of war and suffering of Tamils occurred concurrently with a perceived lack of interest from their ‘new home’ (Switzerland). The combination of these factors made them want to acknowledge their Tamil ‘roots’ and encouraged them to become politically active. Consequently, these second‐generation activists primarily sought to engage with their host society – to awaken it from its indifference to the suffering of Tamils and from its passivity in taking action on an international level. We thereby witness the emerging of a new type of Tamil activism in Switzerland, which is firmly located in and bound to the host country.

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Section: Diaspora Politics Critical Events and Second-generation Polmentioning

confidence: 96%

Tamil diaspora and the political spaces of second‐generation activism in Switzerland

Hess

Korf

2014

Global Networks

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“…In accordance with this, the LTTE has been recognized as a terrorist organization by 32 nations (Council of the European Union, 2007;Home Office, 2015). For its part, the Sri Lankan government was accused of various human rights violations during the decades-long civil war, including the detainment of 280,000 civilian Tamils in the months following the conflict's end (Jayawickreme, Jayawickreme, & Miller, 2010;Keenan, 2007).…”

Section: The Sri Lankan Rehabilitation Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deradicalizing Detained Terrorists

Webber

Chernikova

Kruglanski

et al. 2017

Political Psychology

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Deradicalization of terrorists constitutes a critical component of the global “war on terror.” Unfortunately, little is known about deradicalization programs, and evidence for their effectiveness is derived solely from expert impressions and potentially flawed recidivism rates. We present the first empirical assessment of one such program: the Sri Lankan rehabilitation program for former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (a terrorist organization that operated in Sri Lanka until their defeat in 2009). We offer evidence that deradicalization efforts that provided beneficiaries with sustained mechanisms for earning personal significance significantly reduced extremism after 1 year (Study 1). We also found that upon release, beneficiaries expressed lower levels of extremism than their counterparts in the community (Study 2). These findings highlight the critical role of personal significance in deradicalization efforts, offer insights into the workings of deradicalization, and suggest practical methods for improving deradicalization programs worldwide.

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“…ARL has promise as an easy-to-use and easy-to-understand data analytic method that practitioners can use to efficiently analyze data they have collected in the post-disaster populations they hope to serve. In the current study, we aim to demonstrate the utility of ARL in identifying profiles of trauma and stressors that predict psychopathology by using the technique to identify such profiles in survivors of the Sri Lankan civil war [29]. Lasting from the period 1983 to 2009, this war was fought primarily between the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the Tamil separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Association Rule Learning Is an Easy and Efficient Method for Identifying Profiles of Traumas and Stressors that Predict Psychopathology in Disaster Survivors: The Example of Sri Lanka

Jayawickreme

Atefi

Jayawickreme

et al. 2020

IJERPH

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Research indicates that psychopathology in disaster survivors is a function of both experienced trauma and stressful life events. However, such studies are of limited utility to practitioners who are about to go into a new post-disaster setting as (1) most of them do not indicate which specific traumas and stressors are especially likely to lead to psychopathology; and (2) each disaster is characterized by its own unique traumas and stressors, which means that practitioners have to first collect their own data on common traumas, stressors and symptoms of psychopathology prior to planning any interventions. An easy-to-use and easy-to-interpret data analytical method that allows one to identify profiles of trauma and stressors that predict psychopathology would be of great utility to practitioners working in post-disaster contexts. We propose that association rule learning (ARL), a big data mining technique, is such a method. We demonstrate the technique by applying it to data from 337 survivors of the Sri Lankan civil war who completed the Penn/RESIST/Peradeniya War Problems Questionnaire (PRPWPQ), a comprehensive, culturally-valid measure of experienced trauma, stressful life events, anxiety and depression. ARL analysis revealed five profiles of traumas and stressors that predicted the presence of some anxiety, three profiles that predicted the presence of severe anxiety, four profiles that predicted the presence of some depression and five profiles that predicted the presence of severe depression. ARL allows one to identify context-specific associations between specific traumas, stressors and psychological distress, and can be of great utility to practitioners who wish to efficiently analyze data that they have collected, understand the output of that analysis, and use it to provide psychosocial aid to those who most need it in post-disaster settings.

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Triumphalism, fear and humiliation: The psychological legacy of Sri Lanka's civil war

Cited by 31 publications

References 28 publications

Tamil diaspora and the political spaces of second‐generation activism in Switzerland

Tamil diaspora and the political spaces of second‐generation activism in Switzerland

Deradicalizing Detained Terrorists

Association Rule Learning Is an Easy and Efficient Method for Identifying Profiles of Traumas and Stressors that Predict Psychopathology in Disaster Survivors: The Example of Sri Lanka

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