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 Sick of War
Church leaders struggle to overcome ethnic divisions in a country torn by years of civil war,
where a cease-fire agreement has opened the promise of peace at last.

By Anto Akkara

Hopes are soaring in Sri Lanka, a nation that had been sinking into despondency. After nearly two decades of bloody internal conflict, a change of government after recent elections and the implementation of a cease-fire that began on Christmas Eve have brought the prospect of peace within reach for the people of this island nation in the Indian Ocean.

“There is a lot of hope and optimism around now,” says Father Damian Fernando, director of Caritas Sri Lanka. “We pray that the good will for peace that has been clearly stated by the people in this election is carried forward to a peaceful settlement.”

“Everyone is sick of this war and bloodshed,” says Father Fernando, who oversees one of the largest relief services for the many families displaced by the fighting. “The people are desperately waiting for peace.”

Ethnic fighting
More than 65,000 lives have been lost in Sri Lanka since 1983,when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam—better known as the LTTE or the Tamil Tigers—launched a campaign to throw off the domination of the Sinhala-speaking Buddhist majority over the country’s Tamil ethnic minority.

The Sinhala majority in the south comprises over 70 percent of Sri Lanka’s 19 million people, while the Tamil-speaking minority, concentrated largely in the northern and eastern parts of the country, accounts for 17 percent of the population.

The ethnic conflict has resulted in massive displacement of families, particularly in the northern and eastern regions where the fighting has been fiercest. More than 500,000 Tamils have emigrated to Australia, Europe, Canada, or India. Another 800,000 less fortunate Tamils, lacking the financial means to emigrate, now lead a miserable existence in the “uncleared areas”—a euphemism used by the Sri Lankan government to refer to the territory under the control of the LTTE. The uncleared areas now include most of the northern tip of the island, in the Wanni region surrounding the town of Vavunniya, about 160 miles north of the capital, Colombo.

“The whole country is affected by this conflict,” said Archbishop Nicolas Marcus Fernando of Colombo—the ranking Catholic prelate in a country where 10 bishops serve 1.2 million Catholics. “It is the poor who have been left behind in Wanni,” the archbishop continued; “while those who are better off have managed to emigrate abroad. These poor people suffer more than anybody else.”

The two decades of constant military operations have also drained Sri Lanka both economically and emotionally. Thousands of young people have refused to join the army and fight against the Tamil Tigers—not so much because of ideology, or because of their career prospects (since unemployment is high), but simply because the nation’s morale has reached dangerously low levels. To many young people, the situation looked hopeless.

Light in the darkness
Out of all that gloom, the national elections last December 5 sparked a series of positive developments bringing the island closer to peace. The new United National Front government—led by the former opposition leader, Ranil Wickremesinge—immediately announced plans to rejuvenate the peace talks that had stalled under the outgoing People’s Alliance coalition government. The Tamil Tigers responded to Wickremesinge’s promise with their own announcement of a unilateral cease-fire, which was implemented on Christmas Eve. Next, the Sri Lankan army reciprocated, suspending all military operations against the LTTE. Finally the government, responding to the urgent pleas of church groups and relief organizations, lifted the restrictions on the movement of essential supplies into rebel-held areas. (For a more detailed description of the steps toward peace, see the timetable in the accompanying sidebar.)

For the 800,000 “internally displaced” Tamils living in the Wanni region, life is a constant struggle for survival without adequate food, shelter, or medicine. The poverty of the region has been greatly intensified by the embargo that was enforced by the Sri Lankan army. The head of the Relief and Rehabilitation unit of Caritas Sri Lanka, K. Theivendira Rajah, called attention to the long list of items that could not be shipped into Wanni, including dry cells, surgical cotton, and even the urea that is used as fertilizer in farming—the only occupation that can provide a living for most of the displaced Tamils.

“The Church has always been opposed to the embargo,” notes Archbishop Fernando. “You cannot punish an entire population to choke the militants.” Having served two three-year terms as president of the national bishops’ conference, the archbishop had been involved with several delegations of religious leaders that visited the rebel-held areas to speak with LTTE leaders during the long years of civil war. He reports that he saw horrible suffering among the innocent civilians living in those “uncleared areas.”

Shortage of supplies
Even after the lifting of the embargo, relief efforts remain hampered by a general shortage of supplies. In the territory surrounding the town of Killinochi, for example, a Caritas team was recently told by the local government officials that 25,000 families were eligible for a dry ration (of food grains and cereals), but because of a shortfall in funding there would be only enough food for 14,000 of those families. In fact the situation proved even worse than the official announcement had indicated; the official in question did not receive even as much funding as he had been promised, and he was ultimately able to feed only 8,500 families—just about one-third of those in dire need.

Under such conditions, even formerly wealthy families have been transformed into paupers, who now survive on relief supplies while taking shelter in huts put up in no-man’s land. Years of artillery shelling and bombing have left few structures intact in the Wanni region. Dozens of churches, convents, and schools also have met the same fate as individual family homes.

Caritas employs 750 teachers to teach in open-air schools, takes care of 2,000 orphans in welfare homes, and provides meals to 30,000 schoolchildren. The Catholic relief agency also operates five mobile clinics—which work under trying conditions in a region that lacks proper roads, adequate stores of fuel, and a reliable supply of electricity. With the displaced people living in abject misery, Caritas even extends monetary support for families that want simply to bury their dead with dignity.

However, with the revivified peace process now making steady progress and providing new hope for the future, Caritas Sri Lanka is planning to intensify its work. Several “rehabilitation” programs are already underway to help provide employment and to stir up motivation among the disheartened people of the Wanni region. Caritas is also hoping to inaugurate new programs that will give the members of different ethnic groups a chance to work together, thus “preparing the people to live in peace.”

“Our biggest challenge now is to prepare these two people [Sinhala and Tamil] to learn to respect each other and live in peace,” says Father Fernando, the Caritas director. Two decades of fighting have generated a poisonous supply of hatred, prejudice, and misunderstanding between the two ethnic groups. In one early effort to build bridges between the two communities, Caritas joined with other relief organizations last October to sponsor a “Festival of Hope” in which 100 war widows, from both the Sinhala and Tamil communities, came together to learn “to share their experiences and understand others.”

“A political solution alone will not bring the emotional unity we need,” Father Fernando insists. “We need to bring down the mental barriers that have been created by this bloody conflict.” He added that other programs similar to the “Festival of Hope,” designed to expose the two ethnic groups to each other under favorable circumstances, were being organized in each of the country’s Catholic dioceses. Caritas has already launched a major campaign to “decondition” schoolchildren against the culture of violence and hatred that has been built up during the civil war. The young people of Sri Lanka today have no memories of a normal, secure life, and “no taste of the peaceful days here before the conflict started,” the Caritas director observed. He conceded that the process of breaking down the attitudes born out of violence will be “a tough task.”

Building bridges
At the same time, Father Fernando insists that there are no inherent reasons for conflict between the Tamil and Sinhala groups. The civil war was begun and continued for political reasons, he argues, and the ethnic division provided a handy rationale for the fighting. Colombo’s Archbishop Fernando agrees that the constant “harping on ethnic divisions” by the country’s political leaders has made Sri Lankan society “the mess it is today.” In the south, Sinhala people blame Tamils for their troubles; in the north Tamils blame the government and the Sinhala majority.

“We are fully convinced that everyone must be treated as equal citizens if there is to be lasting peace. The basis for peace is freedom for all in a united Sri Lanka. The moment we have second-class citizens, we have a problem,” pointed out Archbishop Fernando. The archbishop, himself a Sinhala, was hinting at the discriminatory legislation enacted against the Tamils in the 1960s and 1970s—legislation that provoked the ethnic resentments that in turn paved the way for the Tamil rebellion.

The Catholic community of Sri Lanka is in a unique position to build bridges between the ethnic groups, the archbishop points out. While the country’s Buddhist majority is entirely Sinhala-speaking, and the Hindu minority is exclusively Tamil, the Christians who compose seven percent of the country’s population are drawn from both ethnic groups, and use both the Sinhala and Tamil languages. Every major celebration in the Catholic Church is a mixture of the Sinhala, Tamil, and English languages. Archbishop Fernando says: “Even in Sinhala-majority areas, the Holy Mass and other services are interspersed with hymns and readings in Tamil. Nobody complains. That is our advantage.”

Church leaders have been carrying forward the message of unity outside their flock, too; Catholic bishops have brought together Buddhist and Hindu religious leaders for inter-religious dialogue. If there is greater support among Buddhist monks for peace today, Archbishop Fernando said, it is “partly due to the inter-religious delegations the Church has led” to the Tamil rebels in the north.

Anto Akkara, a free-lance writer based in New Delhi, recently returned from a tour of Sri Lanka.

Back to Catholic World Report February 2002 Table of Contents