ASIA/SRI LANKA - Why did the tragedy push peace in Sri Lanka further away? What if the tsunami fails to stop the war …

Monday, 10 January 2005

Colombo (Fides Service) - Everyone hoped the tsunami tragedy would unite the people of Sri Lanka where for decades the two main ethnic groups Sinhalese (74%) and Tamil (12,5%) have fought a war of hatred and reciprocal acts of violence.
Missionary and local Church sources in Sri Lanka told Fides that peopled hoped that united efforts to help the victims of the tragedy would overcome ethnic, cultural and religious differences and make violence and twenty years of civil war a thing of the past. For two years the situation has been one of impasse with a cease fire treaty but no proper peace agreement.
However it would seem that violence and arms have won yet again. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) accused the Sinhalese government in Colombo of using the tragedy as an excuse for sending more government troops to Tamil majority areas in the north and there are strong suspicions that rebels are rearming and have resorted back to abduction of children for use as soldiers. Two weeks after the tragedy, tension in Sri Lanka has increased considerably and clearly emerged by the fact the UN General Secretary Kofi Anan had to cancel his planned visit when the Sri Lankan government said it could not guarantee his safety.
The island is split in two with the centre and south under the government and the north mainly Tamil area under the LTTE rebels which have fought Colombo for 20 years. The conflict was worsened with the advance of an ultra nationalist policy started thirty years ago in former Ceylon: when British colonialists departed the Sinhalese gradually took power pushing Tamils from key posts in politics and society.
In the 1980s Tamil violence coagulated in a secessionist rebel movement, and a few political parties, triggering a war characterised by lulls and peaks (such as the assassination attempt in 1999 against president Chandrika Kumaratunga) which put the country on its knees with regard to the tourist industry which collapsed while expenses for defence absorbed a greater part of the state resources with disastrous social consequences.
After arduous mediation, the cease fire agreement signed in February 2003, and still holding did not lead to a lasting peace agreement which should entail self-administration for the north in a federal framework. The situation of impasse in peace talks was dangerous as Fides sources said in the past: the slightest spark could make things precipitate. That tsunami might have been that spark.
Besides more than 30,000 dead and more than one million homeless, Sri Lanka risks an even greater tragedy: a degeneration of the conflict which has already cause immense suffering to the civilian population of the island . (PA) (Agenzia Fides 10/1/2005 righe 37 parole 389)


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