30 years of Halloween in Sri Lanka

Halloween celebration is not familiar with Sri Lankans. Since this is the high time that people gather in terms of enjoying Halloween, I just went through the internet search for what does this Halloween mean.

Wikipedia gave me a good understanding about what this Halloween is.

Some horrible costumes and related stories and movies are very common specially on 31st October in celebration of Halloween. I searched for any celebration of Halloween in Sri Lanka and found that certain American tourists have organized Halloween parties in certain Star Hotels in Colombo & Kandy.

I was recollecting my memories some two years back in Sri Lanka. We were like Halloween celebrating kids always wherever or whenever we are travelling. LTTE terrorism left us those nightmarish Halloween memories for thirty years. Im 29 years old and since childhood we were under threat of bombs or terrorist attacks.

Similarly, people under terrorists held areas then, were also under a sort of celebration of Halloween, for they can't go out of the clutches of terrorists or attacks on terrorists by sri Lankan armies where Terrorists always used civilians as a shield to avoid SL Army attacks. On the other, at anytime Tamil family could lose a young child of age of 9-15 year olds as it is mandatory to handover one child from each family for terrorist gangs. So innocent Tamil civilians happened to hide their kids always sometimes preventing them going to school.

Those dire & eerie Halloween period of 30 year was ended in May, 2009 upon the death of LTTE leaders. We later understood that even among many LTTE carders (whom were recruited by force) were celebrating Halloween during those periods. Killing innocent Sinhala families or their own stubborn families gave them long cherish-able nightmare. They never liked that but they happened to do that as per the so called redeemers of the Tamil nation.

After all these, we are enjoying peace, void of suicide bombers, news on massacres, and threats. We do travel around the cities without any fear. We feel real peace and we enjoy that at our best.

Sri Lanka finished her 30 year old Halloween celebration in 2009.

Happy Halloween to All other nations!!!