"My Daughter, the Terrorist"

What makes anyone want to blow themselves up for a cause? In this intimate and personal portrait we join two young female elite soldiers trained for the ultimate mission. We share their childhood experiences, their dreams and their families’ loss. Left behind are the mothers.

Dharsika and Puhalchudar belong to the last batch of the Black Tigers, and are now equipped for the last mission: strapping an American-made Claymore mine to their bodies, able to blow themselves and everything within 100 feet to pieces. We first meet them at an optimistic time: The peace talks are making progress, and the Black Tigers are officially decommissioned. The girls are serving as ordinary soldiers.

The girls have a close friendship. For seven years they have been eating, sleeping, training and fighting side by side. They can survive for weeks in the jungle without supplies. They don’t know exactly how many enemies they’ve killed in ordinary battle.

Their only source of information is what the guerilla allows them to know, and sincerely believe that their great leader would never order them to bomb civilians. The grisly images of the bombing of Columbos very own World Trade Center is a somber counterpoint to this.

Dharsika’s family is typical: the father died in the war. We meet her mother, who has been struggling to bring up her family in a war-torn society. She tells us that Dharsika stayed with the family just long enough to bury her father, then disappeared into the guerilla’s hands. She is proud of her daughter’s fight for their homeland.

This film ends with us and the mother hoping to meet Dharsika and Puhalchudar on Hero’s Day, the yearly pompous and grand celebration of every single tiger martyr. But we – and her mother – are unsuccessful. In the pessimistic mood of faltering peace talks the guerillas have decided to put them into active service again.

Alongside the wailing and grieving mothers clutching the graves of their loved and lost ones, she places her flowers on the grave of the unknown soldier and walks away.

"My Daughter, the Terrorist" justifies suicide bombers

The Sri Lanka embassy in Washington has urged the authorities of the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take appropriate measures in preventing screening of "My daughter the terrorist," a movie on LTTE suicide bombers scheduled to be shown at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Durham, North Carolina, on April 4, 2008, an official of the Foreign Ministry said.

The film is said to be a distortion of exploitation of the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. The film, 'My daughter a terrorists' has audaciously portrayed a 12-year old Tamil girl's path towards becoming a suicide bomber, trained and brained washed by the LTTE terrorist movement.

"The LTTE website has unashamedly admitted how she was forcibly kidnapped as an infant for the ignominious role of being a suicide bomber. The movie has no qualms about glorifying suicide bombing in all its gory details. The Full Frame Film festival in Durham is now using this film as an attraction for viewers to enjoy the Film Festival at Durham, North Carolina, Asiantribune website reported.

Sources from Foreign Ministry told news.lk that the Norwegian producer Beate Arnestad had arrived in Sri Lanka during the Cease Fire Agreement period and entered Wanni without the permission of the Foreign Ministry or any responsible state body for the filming of the movie.

Meanwhile foreign news sources reported on Thursday (04) that the Eelam Revolutionary Organization (EROS) has also urged the United States Government to ban the "Black Tiger" documentary in the United States of America, as it was a blatant propaganda film glorifying suicide bombers and terrorism in Sri Lanka and would entice would-be suicide bombers to join terrorist organizations that are a threat to the interests of the United States.

Also Sri Lankan expatriates from all over the U.S. have risen in indignation and fury at the gross insensitivity of the organizers of the film festival. The organizers have been reportedly plagued by hundreds of e-mails and faxes from the public, pouring in from many States of the U.S. expressing outrage and trying to appeal to the better judgment of the organizers, who should have anyway known better than to schedule a movie promoting terrorism, foreign news sources added.

Courtesy : SL Government Information Department