Bitter tears for a resplendent island

The civil war in Sri Lanka has lasted 17 years, and shows no sign of ending. It is basically between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, to which 75 per cent of the population of 20 million belong, and the Tamil Hindu minority, which accounts for less than 20 per cent. Christians, most of them Catholic,who account for about seven per cent of the population, belong to both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Ceylon, as it was then called, was colonised by the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century, then handed over to the Dutch East India Company in the late seventeenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century it was ceded to the British, under whom it became a Crown Colony. In 1948 Ceylon declared its independence from Britain, but remained a member of the British Commonwealth. A republican constitution was adopted in 1972, and the country was re-named Sri Lanka (Resplendent Island). Legislative power is exercised by a National Assembly with executive power remaining in the hands of the President.

Ethnic tension

From the beginning of its existence as an independent state Sri Lanka was plagued with ethnic tension, and in an effort to defuse this, eight provincial councils were set up in 1978. The council for the North-East was won for the Eelam (Sri Lanka in the Tamil language) People's Revolutionary Liberation Front, and the others by the United National Party, the ruling party of the day. In the South of the country in the 1980s severe conflict broke out between Sinhalese extremist forces and the Sri Lanka army, in which 100,000 were estimated to have lost their lives. Serious though that was, it was minor in comparison with the war waged by the so-called Tamil Tiger guerrilla bands and the Sri Lanka government forces which has lasted from 1983 to this day. The aim of the Tamil Tigers is no less than self-rule for all Tamil majority areas. In practice this means the Jaffna peninsula in the North, and areas on the Eastern side of the island. For several years between 1987 and 1990 the Sri Lanka government was forced to ask for Indian help in suppressing the uprising against the government, but once the Indians had left, opposition became greater than ever.

Tamil Tigers on the offensive

In the general elections of 1994 the ruling United National Party lost to the People's Alliance led by the woman who has since become Sri Lanka's president, Chandrika Bandaraike Kumaratunga. But the change did not lead to any decrease in the fighting. In the early nineties the Sri Lankan army drove the Tamil Tigers back into the Jaffna peninsula. In successive major offensives in 1996 and 1997 the Tamil Tigers were ousted from Jaffna by government forces, and since then they have fought to capture it again. At present, the Tigers are besieging government troops inside Jaffna; they have seized the all-important Elephant Pass on the neck of the peninsula, where a huge army base exists, and are threatening the 40,000-strong Sri Lankan army garrison. It is reckoned that the struggle has cost the lives of at least 70,000 people, while a million have been driven from their homes and another 600,000 forced to leave the country. The BBC has recently announced that the country sending the largest number of refugees and asylum-seekers to Britain is no longer Bosnia or Slovakia, but Sri Lanka. A typical case of senseless destruction was the recent shelling of the shrine of Our Lady of Madhu, in which 44 people were killed - neither side will admit responsibility for it or take care of the thousands of refugees still streaming into the shrine in search of shelter from the relentless artillery bombardment. Nor has the bloodshed been limited to the war itself. At the beginning of June, for example, a suicide bomber, thought to be a member of the Tamil Tigers, embraced the Christian Minister for Industrial Development, Clement Victor Gooneratne, at a parade in Colombo, killing himself and 21 others, including the minister and his wife, and injuring 50 others. And so the spiral of violence goes on.

Attempts to reach settlement

An offer by the Norwegian government to mediate between the two sides in the dispute is at present being explored. While this may seem a desperate throw, it is worth remembering that it was representatives of that same government who first made the breakthrough in the Middle East peace process, still the blue print that everybody is working on. Another initiative has been taken by representatives of a number of non-government organisations worldwide to end the conflict immediately, with guarantees for the safety of members of the armed forces and civilians. Among the signatories to this document are directors of Conciliation Resources, London, the Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong, Pax Christi International, Brussels and CAFOD, London. CAFOD and the Vatican aid agency Caritas are already heavily involved in relief to Sri Lanka. The Catholic Church, which has condemned the violence in Sri Lanka, has also been embroiled in the conflict. One of the more serious cases is that of Fr Aparanan Singrayer, who was imprisoned for five years for allegedly helping the Tamil Tigers in the late 80s. While in prison, Sinhalese prisoners attacked the Tamils, and Fr Singrayer and his friends defended themselves with the table-legs of the altar on which he said Mass. His name has become legendary among Tamil separatists.

Tissa Balasuriya excommunicated

Another legendary Catholic priest, for quite different reasons, is the theologian Fr Tissa Balasuriya OMI, who was excommunicated in 1997 on the grounds that, in the words of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had deviated from the integrity of the truth of the Catholic faith and cannot therefore be considered a Catholic theologian. The notification was issued because Fr Balasuriya had failed to sign a profession of faith specially drawn up in regard to his alleged errors. The CDF first sent this profession to Fr Balasuriya in November 1995, after one of the Sri Lankan bishops, Bishop Malcolm Ranjith of Ratnapura, had expressed concern over doctrinal issues in Balasuriya's book Mary and Human Liberation. The doctrinal queries concerned revelation and its transmission, Christology, soteriology and Mariology, according to the notification, although Balasuriya, not surprisingly, maintained that what he wrote was within the limits of orthodoxy, and claimed that his writings had been misinterpreted and misrepresented. The case rumbled on for a year in a welter of attacks and defences, claims and counter-claims, appeals and explanations. The head of Balasuriya's own order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), Fr John Camillus Fernando, criticised the excommunication and said the whole process against Fr Balasuriya has been heavily flawed from the beginning by the failure to dialogue with him. The president of the Sri Lanka bishops' conference, Bishop John Vianney Fernando of Kandy (no relation of Fr John), thought the bishops were right to take action because they had a duty to denounce writings which harm correct faith. In a booklet defending the bishops' handling of the case the bishops identified four glaring errors in Balasuriya's writings : downplaying Church tradition, minimising the validity of faith, presenting original sin in a way that cast doubt on Jesus's divinity and role as saviour and Mary's role in salvation history, and implying that religion's role was basically to aid humanistic liberation. A year after the excommunication came the retraction. The excommunication was lifted on 15 January 1998. The act of reconciliation between the priest and the Vatican required compromise on both sides. From the Vatican's point of view the most important gain was perhaps Balasuriya's signing of Pope Paul VI's profession of faith without a clause he had insisted on before excommunication. This was achieved only after six days of intense discussions between Sri Lanka and Rome. It must be said that the Vatican's decision to lift the excommunication came only after sustained criticism from bishops, clergy, theologians and lay groups around the world. In his statement of reconciliation Balasuriya said he truly regretted the harm this has caused...the entire episode has been very painful for me.
The Catholic Church has a special position in Sri Lanka. Being rooted in both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities it transcends Buddhist-Hindu rivalry and conflict, and Catholic bishops and clergy have, with few exceptions, managed to remain on good terms with both religions, taking the side of neither. In Sri Lanka, for example, there have been none of the wanton attacks on Christians that have so marred the Hindu record in India.

Buddhist criticism of the Pope

It was all the more shocking, therefore, to Buddhist opinion that no less a man than Pope John Paul II himself should seem to have criticised Buddhism in his book Crossing the Threshhold of Hope shortly before his first visit to the country in January 1995. Buddhists complained that in the chapter of the book entitled Buddha the author said the doctrine of the Buddhist tradition, and the methods deriving from it were almost exclusively negative. The author, they said, went on to claim that the 'enlightenment' experienced by Buddha came down to the conviction that the world is bad, that it is the source of evil and suffering for man. To liberate one's self from this evil, one must free one's self from this world. These and other comments about Buddhism were criticised by Sri Lankan Buddhists for being both incorrect and limited. The Sri Lankan bishops' conference rushed forward with apologies, assuring the abbots that the Pope had not intended to criticise their doctrines or wound their feelings, drawing attention to the Pope's well-known respect for other religions, the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate and the Assisi meeting of world religious leaders. But apologies and explanations did little good, and the Pope's long-awaited visit (the first time a Pope had made a full-scale visit to the island) began under a cloud, the more unfortunate since the first half of his pastoral tour, which began in Papua New Guinea and went on to Australia, had been enormously successful.The Pope tried to heal wounded feelings, anouncing himself at the Presidency as a pilgrim of good will with peace in my heart. At the main event of the visit, the beatification of the seventeenth-century Portuguese Oratorian priest Joseph Vaz, he again drew attention to the Catholic Church's wish to cooperate with others: The Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in other religions, he said. A few Buddhists did attend that service, but most of them boycotted the visit. The Tablet commented that without a Buddhist presence at many of the events the Pope was forced onto the defensive, and the chance of genuine interreligious dialogue, which could have had a significant impact on the civil war, was lost.

Time for action

It is surprising that this festering sore of civil war should be allowed to continue in such an enchanted island and among peoples so naturally creative and peace-loving. It is as though our world has not appreciated the fact or the enormity of this wholly pointless war, but that, if it were to do so, it would be settled. What is needed is the authority of the United Nations, the financial power of the international community and the initiative of strong political or religious leaders to bang some heads together. The Norwegian government should be encouraged to continue with its efforts at mediation, and the European Union should play its part too. It was, after all, the colonial powers of Europe - Portugal, Holland and England, all now members of the EU - which opened up trade with Sri Lanka, and profited enormously from it. Since Sri Lanka seems incapable of putting its own house in order, perhaps it is those powers who should take a lead in helping it in the direction of a less tragic future. With all the tears there are to be shed, it is perhaps fitting that Sri Lanka should be shaped like a teardrop.