Writing in his online blog, the British news anchor, Jon Snow from Channel 4 questions whether the England cricket team should be playing in Sri Lanka on tour, whilst war crimes and crimes against humanity remain unaccounted for.
"Cricket’s vast achievement in Sri Lanka today is to have conjured a blanket of turf, leather, and willow that saves most of us from having to think of Sri Lanka in any other light. But elsewhere on this sumptuous isle there is a bad light that stopped play altogether – play amongst the children women and men who died in the closing weeks of Sri Lanka’s civil war. The beguiling, tiny, round, ground at Galle in the south is as far from the Jaffna Peninsula as you can reach without leaving the country altogether."
"The English cricketing authorities plumped to resume ‘business as usual’ in a country which is facing international excoriation in the light of a growing mountain of evidence pointing to horrific war crimes."
"Amid the sweat, the heat, and the romance of this colonial ground, cricket has ensured that a whole world of sport is absorbed in a game, whilst the fate of up to 40,000 civilians (UN expert panel estimate) slaughtered on fields on the very same island lie unaddressed and largely unmentioned."
[more]
See also: 'Another tour of cricket, another year of sanctioning impunity' - TYO UK
