Witnesses of Mercy for Peace and Reconciliation

72 WITNESSING MERCY FOR PEACE AND RECONCILIAT ION he brutal war of three decades in Sri Lanka ended on 18th May 2009. The untold suf- fering of people who lived particularly in the north and the east of the country during those 30 tumultuous years are immeasurable. The fear and tension caused over that time is still preventing them from regaining normality. The language spoken there is primarily Tamil and the people belong to Tamil and Muslim ethnicities, now being called “minority communities”. The war that began as a result of the struggle for securing equal rights enjoyed by the majority Sinhala community left behind a legacy of many tragedies. What I am about to share with you is a story of a brutal post-war experience faced by the Tamil people in the North. During the war, many perished, some survived, many experienced the misfortune of witnessing their loved ones being killed in front of their eyes, some were arrested, others went missing. Yet they believed that some relief would come their way at the end of the war. 2011 was the year in which people affected by the war were attempting to rise from the ashes and rebuild their lives. The war destroyed their homes. It was the year in which they began to live in makeshift houses built in temporarily given lands. Many, mainly women were barely recuperating from the trauma caused by war. They knew that their men and children ran the risk of being taken by the armed forces at any moment despite the fact that the war had ended. They had to live in the surroundings of the army and naval camps and were constantly being checked by armed soldiers. The control of the armed forces was supreme with a conspicuous absence of civil administration. Fear and mistrust within the communities living in those localities was spreading unchecked. There had been unbridled sexual violence against women. Hardly anyone dared to bring rape cases to court. Even when they were brought in, they were ignored or hidden. Crim- inals roamed with impunity and the women became powerless within this culture. Most of these women were eking out a living of daily labour to look after their chil- dren. Most of them were without their husbands who were either killed or went missing during the war. Within this culture of impunity, another series of events was unfolding, bringing fear to the people in the north. It was the phenomenon called “grease devil” ( Krees Pootham in Tamil; Thel Yaka in Sinhalese) – men who smeared grease onto their bodies and wore black masks, forcibly entering villagers’ houses in the night and scaring or harassing the women. When the women screamed out of fear, they ran away, but without being caught because of the grease on their bodies. In this melee, people began to find that the “grease devils” were running towards the army and navy camps in the vicinity. Many of these inci- dents began to emerge in the city of Jaffna in the north of Sri Lanka. The “grease devil” stories were soon spreading widely while women lived in mortal fear. The media were stifled by the armed forces in order to prevent people from knowing too much about this mysterious phenomenon. The armed forces claimed that these fearful acts were by unknown elements in society to bring disrepute to the armed forces. Although people tried to lodge complaints, they were not taken seriously by the police. One of the incidents took place in the village of Nawan- thurai, Jaffna district, on 22nd August 2011, where people ran after five “grease devils” who went to hide in the local army camp. The people began to protest in front of the camp but the army started shooting into the air, scaring people to run away. The following day, 23rd August 2011, the army raided the village and arrested 150 people and assaulted them. They were handed over to the police and 18 were admitted to hospital as they were in a bad condition. 95 were remanded in police custody. We learnt about this incident by noon on 23 August. An organization working on human rights issues relayed this incident through social media and telephone messages. We at the Centre for Peacebuilding and Rec- onciliation (CPBR) thought that we needed to act swiftly but cautiously. As a result, we initiated a dialogue with the human rights organization concerned. We moved promptly to discuss the matter with sev- eral Buddhist monks who had been working in the CPBR interfaith dialogue initiative. The interfaith team decided to visit Nawanthurai to meet the affected people and share the empathy of the Buddhist community in the south. Eleven Buddhist monks were brave enough to join the Prof. Jayantha Seneviratne T