The international community will be looking at Sri Lanka in September, as the European Union prepares to bring its case against the conflict-torn country before the UN Human Rights Council, a body which counts Sri Lanka amongst its members.
The Council’s 6th session takes place one month after the visit of an international ecumenical team that expressed solidarity with local churches and learned about their peace efforts amid a conflict that has over the past 25 years claimed 70,000 lives on both sides of the ethnic divide between the Sinhala and Tamil communities.
"Your visit at this crucial time shows we are not alone. We feel encouraged that people outside Sri Lanka are concerned about the churches and people here," the Rev Jayasiri Peiris, General Secretary of the country’s National Christian Council (NCC), told the six-member delegation from the World Council of Churches (WCC).Sri Lankan ethnic Tamils, most of whom are Hindus, account for 18 per cent of the country’s 19 million population, while ethnic Sinhala, most of whom are Buddhists, make up 70 per cent. Christianity and Islam are minorities in the country.
The bloodshed started in 1983, when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) launched an armed campaign for autonomy of ethnic Tamil areas in the north and east of the country. In February 2002 a ceasefire was achieved, but the fragile peace process soon collapsed as both parties frequently violated the truce. The renewed violence has claimed at least 5,000 lives since November 2005, when incumbent Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse was elected president with the support of Sinhala nationalist groups.
The August 4-14 visit of the WCC team to the troubled Indian Ocean island was the first of a series of “living letters” missions planned in the framework of the 2001-2010 Decade to Overcome Violence. The visit was hosted by the country’s NCC, a grouping of eight Protestant churches and five ecumenical organisations.
The WCC delegation included representatives from Indonesia, Kenya, South Korea and the USA as well as WCC staff members from India and Ethiopia.
The delegation traversed the entire north and east of the island while meeting with church leaders, social activists, representatives of political parties and civil rights groups, Buddhist leaders and two ministers of the national government. They learned about the human rights situation, the churches’ efforts to bring about peace and reconciliation, and the expectations of religious and civil society actors vis-à-vis the international community.
Mannar and Batticaloa
