Rebel Song Journey

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the last days of the civil war in Sri Lanka, in 2009, surviving in a bunker with what was left of his family, the only thing Santhan wanted to do was to sing. He lost his son and daughter in a shell attack. The other son was arrested. All was lost including his music. Priyath Liyanage tells Santhan's story on one man determined to keep singing despite the tragic consequences of war.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:04.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. There's no food, no clothes, no medicine. Children are dying.
0:30.0	Children cling to rubber tubes as families cross a lagoon desperate to get out of the line of fire.
0:35.0	25,000, many of them wounded and starving, have escaped in the past three days.
0:41.0	And still, they have to run for cover as the battle rages of.
0:46.0	We haven't eaten for weeks, she says.
0:49.0	I couldn't stand seeing the way children were suffering.
0:52.0	Some had their limbs blown off, others just lying
0:54.7	dead in the road.
0:58.7	One of her family was
1:05.0	who was clinging to a tube with us
1:07.0	just disappeared and drowned.
1:09.0	She was holding on to her two-year-old who drowned with her.
1:13.0	Our plight is a man.
1:17.0	Our plight is desperate.
1:21.0	We have lost our lands. We are on the beach.
1:26.0	400,000 people are living here on a sand dune.
1:31.0	We don't understand why the world has turned a blind eye. Every day people are being
1:37.0	killed by Shell. Karti-hi-hay Madam,
1:43.8	Poot-T-T-T-T-T-I-Kart-I-Ukalum-Poot-Poot-Tirum.
1:48.8	Kannil me... Shantin, the man appealing to the world and singing here, was nothing less than the public singing
2:00.9	voice of the LTT.
	...

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