Puzzled About The Video

I'm occasionally stumped at certain differences between the Sri Lankan and the British psyches. Sometimes I approach things with a Sri Lankan viewpoint or attitude and am surprised when I hear the British one and sometimes I take a British view and struggle to understand the Sri Lankan one.

One of the things that I have a very British attitude about is death and bodies, that kind of thing. I'm not sure if it's a typically British attitude or if it's a Western attitude but it's vastly different to the Sri Lankan, or maybe the Asian one.

Sri Lankan culture presents death and grief in much more matter of fact ways than is done here. When a dignitary dies the newspapers usually show pictures of the body, of people paying their respects to the person. They'll often show members of the family in the peak of their grief and there's little or no sense of keeping things private.

Over here a picture in a newspaper of a dead body would probably signal the end of many newspaper people's careers and images of a widow at her beloved's funeral in the throes of her grief would be considered a massive intrusion of privacy. Perhaps it's to do with the British stiff upper lip, the need to maintain a public image at all times, maybe it's to do with differring religious beliefs although I can't quite see how that would be so.

Over the years I've come to accept the contrasts though. There's not necessarily a right or wrong way to behave, just different ways.

But I've been puzzled and perplexed about this video that's doing the rounds. You probably know the one I'm talking about, it's the CCTV footage of the LTTE suicide bomber at the EPDP offices.

I'm amazed at the way in which this has been published and put out for all to see. I have watched it, which maybe makes me part of the problem, and the fact that it's out there makes me feel unbelievably uncomfortable.

The Sri Lankan blogosphere has been awash with the predictable types adding links to it and insulting whoever they want to in the process. I even had a comment on this blog which gave the link and said something like

"Have a look at this link, you can even see her head bouncing off the wall"

I deleted the comment, which is only the second time I've ever not published a comment deliberately. I just find it a bit sick to be honest. It's not so much the principle of seeing a suicide bomber in action, there's a certain part of me that thinks that's what the assassin wanted. It's the rubbernecking element of watching other, innocent people, getting hurt and dying.

I take no pleasure in watching the suffering of these people, yet I admit that I did watch it. The other morning I saw that it had been put out on the MOD's website and this totally dumbfounded me. These days everything gets on Youtube one way or another, but to be on the MOD's site shocked me. Then I saw stills from the footage splashed across the front page of one of the Sunday papers.

I wonder if the family of Steven Peiris had any say in the broadcasting of it. Perhaps they did, I really don't know, but I strongly suspect that the others who were injured and their families didn't have any say in the whole world being able to watch their suffering.

Maybe, by making the footage available to all, the GoSL hopes to gain some public sympathy, a totally way out and radical idea but one that isn't beyond the realms of possibility!

Where am I left in this confused post?

I just don't know.

Is it good to put these things out there or should they be kept in private?

Is it disrespectful to the dead and the injured, to their friends and relatives?

How hypocritical is it that I watched the scene and added to its "popularity" by that very act?

All these questions remain unanswered, any thoughts?