indi.ca

Kilinochchi years ago. I’m told it’s changed

Reconciliation work is happening in Sri Lanka. Simple roads and economic reconcilation are one thing, and not negligible. My main contact in Jaffna is thru a friends soccer club, those contacts are real. What up Vicky. Touch and feely recon work is also going on. Here’s a few examples from just Saturday thru Monday.

A retired Brigadier told me how he washed a man’s feet in kovil as part of some ceremony. That (Tamil) man turned out to have lost during the war, and that contact with a military man had softened him in no small part. That’s reconciliation. That Brigadier, L.C. Perera is holding a forum on Monday which I’ll attend.

Right now, literally write now, I’m in a jeep heading up to Kilinochchi through the Puttalam rains. Last I went to that former LTTE capital it was full of bullet holes and downed water towers. I’m told it’s a wide road now, functional buildings, theoretically functional people. I’m going with Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne of Sarvodaya for a large meeting they’re having there, which also includes people from the south.

Too much news of Sri Lanka is bad news, and artificially bad news, recycling the war with an eye towards recriminations. Reconciliation is less sexy, but ultimately more productive. The government sucks at it, but it is going on.