A Bit More Detail

After the Grammies, it was probably only a matter time before claims and statements like the ones made in the New York Times article "The Dissonant Undertones of M.I.A" against M.I.A. were aired to a wide audience.

To many Americans, Maya Arulpragasam, known as M.I.A., is the very pregnant rapper who gyrated across the stage at Sunday’s Grammy Awards.

Yet in Sri Lanka, where she spent her childhood years, M.I.A. remains virtually unknown. And some who do know her work say she is an apologist for the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels fighting in the country’s long-running civil war.

M.I.A. — who has been nominated for an Oscar for the song she co-wrote for the hit film “Slumdog Millionaire” — has branded herself through music videos and interviews as the voice of the country’s Tamil minority. In the video for her song “Bird Flu,” for instance, children dance in front of what looks like the rebels’ logo: a roaring tiger.

“Being the only Tamil in the Western media, I have a really great opportunity to sort of bring forward what’s going on in Sri Lanka,” she said in an interview on the PBS program “Tavis Smiley” last month. “There’s a genocide going on.”

But her political views rankle some people at a time when most Sri Lankans are clutching to the hope that the rebels, branded by the United States and European nations as a terrorist group, are on the verge of military defeat by government troops.

“Frankly, she’s very lucky to get away with supporting, even indirectly, perhaps the most ruthless terrorist outfit in the world,” said Suresh Jayawickrama, a songwriter based in Colombo.

Mr. Jayawickrama is from the country’s majority Sinhalese ethnic group, and his reaction is similar to that of many Sri Lankans who know M.I.A.’s music. But he also said that M.I.A. deserved credit for her artistry and the fame she had achieved. “She really should have a little more recognition in this country,” he said.

[. . .]

Sri Lankans who have seen her videos say they interpret some parts as showing support for the Tigers, or at the very least glorifying their cause. But for those not familiar with the conflict, they might come across as generic third-world scenes.

“I kind of want to leave it ambiguous for my fans,” she said in the PBS interview, referring to the lyrics of her song “Paper Planes,” which was nominated for record of the year at the Grammys but did not win.

“Paper Planes,” which compares international drug dealing with selling records, drew a reaction from DeLon, a Sinhalese rapper based in Los Angeles, who made a video remix in which he interspersed images of people being blown up by Tamil Tiger bombs and subtitles about M.I.A. being a terrorist.

M.I.A. responded that she did not support terrorism.

I'm unimpressed by the claims against her. Has it been established that M.I.A. is actually a member or supporter of the Tamil Tigers? Wikipedia suggests that she was politicized by her time in Sri Lanka, and she certainly identifies herself as a Tamil and is critical of the War on Terror, but none of those things a Tamil Tiger make, even combined.

There’s certainly nothing wrong in being a Sri Lankan Tamil representative in the wider world critical of Sri Lankan government policies, especially in the context of historic injustices like discriminatory education quotas and the 1983 pogroms which killed three thousand Tamils in the capital of Colombo, and the ongoing pacification campaign of conquered Tamil-populated areas which include mass disappearances and the resettlement of Sinhalese peasants. My favourite explanation of the war is an article that explained that the Tamils of Sri Lanka were fighting their war of independence because they were vicious racists who refused to recognize the superiority of Sinhalese language and culture and the Buddhist religion. Why not make politicized music about this catastrophic collapse of human relations? M.I.A. certainly does a good job about it.