All you need is love

June 13, 2010 11:42 AM

Mass wedding for former Tamil fighters Fifty-three couples of former Tamil Tiger rebels were married Sunday ... at a rehabilitation camp near the northern town of Vavuniya.

Reminds me how the PLO retired Black September: "Arafat ordered Abu Iyad 'to turn Black September off'. My host, who was one of Abu Iyad's most trusted deputies, was charged with devising a solution. For months both men thought of various ways to solve the Black September problem, discussing and debating what they could possibly do, short of killing all these young men, to stop them from committing further acts of terror. Finally they hit upon an idea. Why not simply marry them off?"

posted by kliuless (7 comments total)

I had nothing to do with this.
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:59 AM on June 13, 2010

Well, it's better than a mass execution.
posted by homunculus at 12:46 PM on June 13, 2010

Sivapathasundaram Kavithas, 29, had been a fighter for nine years. He met his wife Bhavani, 28, a fighter for 12 years, when they went for weapons training together.

There must have been an interesting crowd on both sides of the aisle. And one hell of a reception.
posted by pracowity at 2:23 PM on June 13, 2010

This is going to make a great M.I.A. video.
posted by seventyfour at 5:40 PM on June 13, 2010

I will admit that I know embarassingly little about what's happening in Sri Lanka, but the breezy tone of this article was pretty disturbing. Did the reporter just take a government press release and change a few words?

Brig. Sudantha Ranasinghe, in charge of the rehabilitation of former rebels, said they will not be free until the government feels they are "ready to join the society." He said that would not be a long time off, and that the inmates would not be prosecuted for their roles in the war.

Translation: no due process for the prisoners, and no idea of when they will be released.
posted by lunasol at 6:19 PM on June 13, 2010

Wasn't there a similar program enacted to try and de-escalate former members of Black September and the PLO? There was basically a dating service set up for all these hair-trigger militants, and a little while down the line it was found that the ones who managed to find a special lady were a LOT less inclined to volunteer for martyr-work.

Ah ha! 2001 article from The Atlantic. Really good read, as I recall I found it right here on MeFi!
posted by FatherDagon at 7:43 AM on June 14, 2010

Coverage from the BBC.

Some photos on Flickr by a blogger living in Sri Lanka.

Yeah, the whole story seems kind of ridiculous. I guess this is better press for the Sri Lankan government than stories of nepotism or civil rights abuses or war crimes or internment camps or all that junk.
posted by chunking express at 9:29 AM on June 14, 2010