Good question. Initially, it was attacked more by the Tamil diaspora, especially in London and Norway because they didn't like the implicit questions about the LTTE. So they didn't like discussion of forced recruitment or child recruitment, which was rampant by the end. And they didn't like the portion in the book where I discuss why the LTTE wouldn't accept a Norwegian-sponsored surrender offer.
Actually, most Tamils won't even discuss that now. Many of them reject it and say it's ridiculous to even have considered surrender. I felt that it was a credible surrender offer, and nobody knew about it at the time, and they turned it down because they preferred martyrdom, really. They knew that this would have a scar on the psyche of Tamils that would make them want to continue to struggle long term. So that wasn't popular.
And then on the government side, obviously, they don't particularly like the fact that I've written a book, but it's quite difficult to argue with individual testimonies and individual stories. So what they tend to do is try to smear me and say I'm a white tiger and that kind of thing, as they do with almost any expatriate who has had anything to do with Sri Lanka and been critical of them. Also they try to say that I've said what the death toll is, which obviously l haven't because I don't know, but I've cited everybody's analysis numbers.
But what was interesting was the book has been translated into Tamil and Sinhala. And in Sinhala, with the help of Sinhala journalists and exiles, we pushed it out and serialized it for free on Sri Lankan websites in some of the country. In other words, they couldn't be blocked. They were extremely nervous about pushing out the first one. They ran a banner headline for a while to see what would happen, and then they ran the first excerpt. It was interesting. They said that they got calls from ordinary Sinhalese saying that they were horrified and they didn't realize what had happened and they didn't know that this had happened. That's extraordinary when you think that it's only 300 kilometres from the capital to the so-called killing fields. So I think there's a huge gap in knowledge still, a half-year later.