INDEPTH: DISASTER IN ASIA
A flicker of hope
CBC News Online | January 21, 2005
Reporter: Brian Stewart
Producer: Carmen Merrifield
In the wake of the tsunami, ethnic divides disappeared in Sri Lanka. Explosive tensions eased. But will the goodwill last?
Sri Lanka is a potent blend of different religious and ethnic groups, political parties and fiercely held beliefs – a crucible that has exploded into violence in the past, into civil war. How has the tsunami affected the precarious peace?
The greater the human suffering, the more we look for some saving flicker of hope in all the pain and piles of rubble.
Sri Lanka has seized on this as once aloof, antagonist communities race to help each other in a thousand acts of support.
One tiny east coast Muslim community was traumatized when its local school was devastated and half the students lost. Then Buddhist monks and students from inland spent exhausting days clearing up and comforting.
Sri Lankans began to think, if we can face this united, perhaps the same force for good can also repair our long-divided country. And we found similar hopes wherever we travelled along the damaged coastal areas.
In the west of the island, Muslim youth helped out in a largely Christian village. The long, often deadly ethnic and religious divides now didn't seem to matter that much.
"We help because we are Sri Lankan peoples. Now we work as the Sri Lankan people and we work together to build up our country," one man says.
Though often divisive before, religions offered a social cohesion that helped enormously to prevent chaos.
In the overwhelming Buddhist South, scores of temples became instant relief centres for tsunami homeless regardless of faith. Much more socially active in recent years, Buddhist monks were calming and organized.
At a temple in the west, they brought in a police gym instructor to give homeless northern children at least a touch of normalcy.
Sri Lankans helped out in some astonishing ways.
Ernesto Fernando has been racing around buying vegetables and supplies for one of the Buddhist relief centres. He's given up vacation time in order to do whatever menial chores need doing. What makes Sri Lankan-born Fernando rather different is he's flown in to help from Britain where he is one of London's leading kidney transplant surgeons. He's part of a wave of Sri Lankans abroad who raced home to help.
"If you have big organizations, it takes a long time to get it together and then to actually come down and do it," Fernando says. "And you have big people who will not go and buy 10 kilos of beans or 20 packets of rice, which I can do. So I don't see myself as a hero. I'm just enjoying myself doing this, and I'm helping people."
Ernesto Fernando
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Does he buy the argument that it might help pull Sri Lankans together more, or is it a bit of wishful thinking?
"I think it might well do. I'm optimistic that, you know, as long as we don't make any political mileage out of it, the ordinary people at the grassroots level, they like helping each other. They like doing things," Fernando says.
The tendency of people to leap in and help has been impressive and has surprised many Sri Lankans themselves, long accustomed to ethnic tensions, social divides, and some extremely nasty politics.
After all, the civil war between the mainly Sinhalese and Buddhist South and largely Tamil and Hindu North has only been in a ceasefire for less than three years, and peace talks are very rickety.
So one does have to ask whether this surge of good will that met the tsunami will really be enough to bring this country together. Though it was the public's generosity that helped survivors cope in the initial stages, that's now taking second place to large-scale relief operations by international agencies and in the South by the military. Away from the stricken coastline, people are quickly returning to normal concerns and traditional cynicism.
Sunila Abesekara
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Few know the situation on the ground better than Sunila Abesekara of the Human Rights Documentation Centre in Colombo, now helping in relief camps.
"I think in the immediate aftermath on the Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday, honestly, it was just civilian response," she says. "The government structures took a while to kick in, but people were out there.
"That was really an amazing thing to observe, and I think it's always interesting to observe what happens then when the structures of relief become internationalized and become more centralized in the structures of the state, because somehow then I think people start getting a bit cynical and withdraw from the process, and I think that's a real pity.
"What we have seen, both in the South and in the North and East is that the key political players have actually approached the post-tsunami situation from the point of view of trying to score political points and gain political advantage."
Travelling in the North, we were sharply reminded that Sri Lanka has essentially two separate states functioning on one island.
In Mullaittivu, no government relief troops are allowed in to help. This is all controlled by the Tamil Tiger Liberation Movement, the LTTE.
Tough and disciplined after decades of war, the Tamil military and relief operations were praised by NGOs for their quick efficiency. Here you find no Sri Lankan government officials. At the district crisis centre, now running 28 relief camps, the LTTE's own relief agency mobilized civilian support.
"Every family was prepared to give. They started collecting clothes. They started collecting food, cooked food, parcels, like that. I think every family, every family in the close proximity came about to assist whatever they could give on their part," one man says.
In the Tamil homeland capital of Killnoahchi, the LTTE exercises armed independent power as a 2½-year-old ceasefire continues.
A secretive often lethally repressive movement, the LTTE claims allegiance of all Tamils but also brooks no opposition.
Peace negotiators have tried to sell both sides on a federal state, the Canadian model closely studied, but Sri Lankan politics is not strong on compromise, so renewed war is still possible. The nation is so divided, the LTTE's chief political minister, S.P. Tamilchelvan, has spurned a post-tsunami request to meet the government.
"As far as our leadership is concerned, we don't want to mix it up with politics now. This is not the time to delve in politics," he says.
He does not rule out post-tsunami progress on peace, but equally stresses the disaster may increase Tamil power demands.
S.P.Tamilchelvan
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"All these incidents have made us even more determined in our search for a life of freedom and dignity. We could have protected our people more effectively if we had the necessary resources and sovereignty in our own hands. The natural disaster has made us even more committed to our goal, which is ensuring for ourselves self-respect, peace and complete freedom," Tamilchelvan says.
In northern areas like Mullaittivu, the evidence of recent war is mingled in with the tsunami damage.
Surely one thinks further strife after all this should be impossible, but Sri Lankan politics are highly dysfunctional, caught between the authoritarian LTTE-run North and the chronically chaotic squabbling of southern parties.
Even tough battle-tested President Chandrika Kamaratunga believes Tamils would buy into a loose federalism but wonders if the South can ever deliver the needed consensus.
"Even large numbers of those have told us secretly, professionals, please bring this federalism fast because we know that a vast number of people will be satisfied and LTTE would also be forced to accept it and move away from the politics of violence and all that," Kamaratunga says.
Chandrika Kamaratunga
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"But somehow, the South, because of the conflict between the two major parties, the National party and my party, the leadership has not risen to it. When one leader rises, the other leader refuses to get together and say this is the solution to the Tamil people, the solution would be there."
The hopeful sign is the disaster mobilized vast numbers of moderate civic groups and citizens who previously avoided politics during the dangerous conflict. These may now throw their weight behind the search for peace.
"This is an opportunity that should not be lost in terms of enabling some new kinds of interaction between the LTTE and the government, and between people from the South and people from the North and East to talk about a shared process of rebuilding," Abesekara says.
"So those political issues will quite automatically come on the table whether we like it or not, and this is providing us with a space, you know, which we can overcome the previous kind of standoff, you know, because earlier on all we heard was the LTTE wanted this interim, self-governing structure and the government said no, and so there was no discussion possible."
The tsunami unleashed the need to work together, and this may yet push a torn country towards a peace needed to mend. That's the hope that still flickers.
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