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Journalism of Courage
COLOMBO, April 13: After the last bomb to hit Sri Lanka’s capital killed more than 40 people, counsellors offered to hold meetings with the wounded, widowed or simply frightened. No one was interested. Two years ago, following one of the first deadly rebel bombings in Colombo, dozens of people came to the group therapy sessions organised by the National Council on Mental Health. But today, council director Narme F Wickremesinghe feels people have grown used to living with violence, fear and distrust.
After 15 years of ethnic fighting, attitudes as well as emotions are so hardened that many find it difficult to see ahead to a time without war. Yet people who can imagine peace are needed perhaps nowhere as desperately as in Colombo where the national newspapers that shape the debate and where politicians rise in Parliament, fan hatred between Sinhalese and Tamils.
“What can we look forward to, I don’t know,” said Wickremesinghe, who is Sinhalese. “The amount of trust I have in my Tamil friends, I knowthe next generation won’t have. How are you going to overcome it? I have no idea. It’s gone on too long.”
Even though the front is far to the north, what is universally known as “simply this situation” is part of the rhythm of daily life in Colombo. Doctors and nurses at the main hospital regularly go through security checks.Every time 21-year-old Tamil business student Sanjitha Satyamurthy approaches one of the police checkpoints that dot downtown, she braces herself. Her Sinhalese friends are waved on after producing national identity cards. But once officers see her Tamil name she’s usually asked for proof, whether she has a reason to be in Colombo, in the form of an affidavit from her local police station. “Okay, fine, I carry my police report everywhere. Asked to produce it, I produce it,” she said, her words clipped and bare of emotion. Extremists say the Tamil minority and the Sinhalese majority can’t live together on this tropical Indian Ocean island of 18 million people, though the two ethnicgroups have done just that for centuries.The two groups are so similar even most Sri Lankans can’t tell a Tamil from a Sinhalese when they pass each other on the street.
