This week the Sri Lankan government has rejected a ceasefire in favour of pressing on with the ‘military option’. Just a fortnight ago, CMS’s Adrian Watkins visited the east of the island – now under government control – where seemingly random killings make daily life a tense affair
.
Picture: Women on their way to the funeral of Yaharajah in the east of Sri Lanka.
Photo: Adrian Watkins/CMS
A small group of women wander down a quiet country road, holding umbrellas against the sun. A charming picture of tropical life.
But these women are on their way to a funeral – of a young man, just 25 years old, murdered in cold blood by an unidentified gang.
Yaharajah, a Tamil, was from a village near Batticaloa in the east of Sri Lanka, once under the control of the LTTE, or Tamil Tigers, now a high-security zone under the control of the Sri Lankan government.
“He had just got his emigration papers to leave the country and resettle overseas,” says Adrian Watkins, CMS regional manager for South Asia, who met the women and heard Yaharajah’s story.
“He was due to take his flight the next day and an armed gang had come to his house at night and shot him dead.”
The truly shocking thing about the story was that it was not a surprise, they told Adrian, but “a very familiar kind of incident”.
Yet this was in an area that has been under government control for some time. While normal life appears to carry on in the daytime, it is seriously restricted and killings like Yaharajah’s generate fear.
“Checkpoints are everywhere and people don’t like to move around much after dark,” says Adrian.
“People are scared to say why Yaharajah was killed and who was behind it,” says Adrian.
We cannot speculate on the reasons for this seemingly random killing but in this kind of atmosphere, imagine the situation for the 400,000 people estimated to have been displaced by the conflict so far – and the 200,000 still trapped in the fighting between the LTTE and the government.
‘Safe zones’
“People are coming out into what have been described as ‘safe zones’. Sometimes they’re not very safe – and some of the refugee camps have been described as more like prisons than places of refuge.”
Hospitals in the area simply cannot cope with the numbers of injured people coming to them having lost limbs through military attacks and often bombs.
A potentially worse problem is the trauma being created, explains Adrian. “Not only will there be the practical task of rebuilding but there will be people who have gone through enormous trauma, who need pastoral support to come through and deal with the violence they have experienced.
“This is one area where the church has a particular calling,” says Adrian. The church offered counselling after the tsunami, and CMS mission partner Ina Watson, helped train Christian counsellors at that time, and helped establish a counselling centre in Kandy.
Indeed, in a country that has been in a civil war situation for 25 years, the church is one of the few institutions that brings people together from both sides – Sinhala and Tamil.
“They have both significant Sinhala and Tamil communities within the church. So in a unique way they express unity across these ethnic communal divides.
“For example, the church plays a significant role in providing education and the schools are run on the basis that they recruit pupils and staff from both communities. Sometimes there have been pressures on schools to admit more from one community or give advantages to people from one community over another but the schools resist that and seek to be impartial.”
Speaking out
The Church of Ceylon (the Anglican Church in Sri Lanka retains this name because it is felt to be more neutral) has always been against the government’s ‘military option’, which is now in full flood, in favour of a negotiated settlement.
“It has spoken out against abuses and violations of human rights on both sides – both from the government and from the LTTE, who are also renowned for the practice of forced conscription, particularly of young men and of children, and that is something that continues to go on.”
As well as using its influence in national forums, the media and among influential figures, the church is playing a significant role on the ground.
Priests like Fr Chandran Crispus, the area dean in Batticaloa where Adrian visited, are working hard visiting refugee camps providing practical help – assisting people in reconnecting with their families, for example – and pastoral support.
The church is also building community centres in some of the villages in former war zones that are now being resettled.
Massive task ahead
The church has its own rebuilding to do too, as it has always had congregations in the north and east. Kilinochchi used to be until recently the capital for the LTTE.
There was also a church and a children’s home run by the church. “In 2005 Frederica Venn was on a CMS placement there to do art therapy with children who had suffered from the results of violence – and of the tsunami,” says Adrian.
“She was able to help the whole community build a sculpture to remember the tsunami and also the violence.”
Now that church and children’s home have been completely destroyed in the government offensive which recaptured the town.
All the children from that children’s home are now in refugee camps, except for four who were conscripted by the LTTE and two who were killed in the fighting.
“That’s an example of the kind of situation the church has to go back into and help its own community reform and rebuild in that place.”
As the Church of Ceylon plans its long-term contribution to healing the wounds of a brutally divided country, CMS wants to be an active partner. We are grateful for any donations which will go to supporting the church’s response in the aftermath of what seems a likely government victory.