Up to 40 Students attended the Queen Mary Tamil Solidarity meeting on Monday 8 October. Frances Harrison, former BBC correspondent for Sri Lanka, read from her new book, Still Counting the Dead. Insightful questions and comments from the largely young Tamil audience reflected the growing thirst for political explanation and ideas in this community that has suffered such a huge loss. Only days before a UN representative had acknowledged that the death count from the recent bloody and brutal war on the Tamil people in Sri Lanka could be 75,000 or much higher.
Frances Harrison patiently answered all the questions giving graphic examples of the horror of war. She explained that her aim in producing this book was to give a narrative of the war victims and at the same time to tell the story of the great solidarity that existed among the victims to survive the ordeal. All the students who took part in the meeting were inspired by the discussion and agreed to be involved in more political activities and continue to organise on the campus.
