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Opinion
Frst things first: the tsunami did not vent its fury on a Sri Lanka that was placid or passive. It was, instead, a country torn apart by a 30-year-old civil war and other sectarian strife. If there was an absence of armed conflict, it was because of the fragile ceasefire brokered and overseen by a foreign country.
The magnitude of the disaster managed to mute the shrill cacophony of the ‘urumayas,’ and even strike the ‘peramunayas’ speechless. President Chandrika Kumaratunga, meanwhile, pointed out the futility of fighting over small pieces of territory when the very existence of humanity could be snuffed out by nature’s wrath.
We also heard of acts of courage and altruism by the army when it rescued hapless Tamil fisher folk fighting the surging waters of the tsunami. It was more or less the same story in the east. While the Tamil government agent (district secretary) of Batticaloa was going around in circles holding one meeting after another without spending the Rs.10 million already allocated to him to commence relief assistance, it were Sinhala people from Polonnaruwa and the Muslims from Valaichenai and Ottamavadi, who fed and clothed displaced Tamils from Batticaloa. Even in Amparai there were instances of the LTTE hierarchy thanking the STF for their prompt rescue of stranded civilians.
It was also the time when shiploads of assistance began arriving in Sri Lanka to be distributed in various parts of the country. All this made the more optimistic among us wonder aloud whether we had indeed turned the corner regarding state-Tamil relations.
But it was not to be. When people emerged from shock, events began to take another turn as they habitually do in Sri Lanka. First it was a murmur of dissent from the north that state assistance was not flowing into that area as fast or as equitably as it should. It was followed by more protests, this time from the east (especially Amparai, which boasts of providing five or six MPs of ministerial rank) that no relief aid was reaching the worst hit areas that stretch from Sammanthurai to Kalmunai.
