by Ron Ferreri
photos by Ken Gavin, SJ
The Qatar Airways jet touched down at the Colombo, Sri Lanka, airport on December 11th, nearly 24 hours after Fr. Ken Gavin, SJ, national director of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA (JRS/USA) and I had departed from Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. We exchanged the cold, dreary capital for the hot, humid monsoons of Sri Lanka. Although we breezed through customs and immigration control, the airport itself bristled with heavily armed soldiers and police.
|
|
Thousands of Sri Lankans have been driven from their homes due to hostility between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. The Jesuit Refugee Service/USA has lent a generous hand to efforts to build homes and schools for all in need in the country. |
We were met by two Jesuits, P. S. Amalraj and Kamal Andradi, who whisked us away on a seven-hour drive in a Jesuit Refugee Service van to Mannar, a northwestern city, stop one on our week-long journey.
Gavin and I arrived in Sri Lanka nearly three years after the tsunami devastated much of its eastern and northern coasts. We were there to observe how the $800,000 JRS/USA had provided the tsunami-ravaged country was being used in constructing and reconstructing homes.
JRS has helped to build more than 300 homes in Sri Lanka, in Mannar on the northwest coast, and in Batticaloa in the east. In the latter district, Gavin inaugurated and blessed a new housing development funded with JRS/USA support. During our visit we also attended several dedications of new housing developments built with JRS money. We toured JRS schools, preschools, and life skills centers in the country as well.
But another reason for our trip was to get a better understanding of the factors causing the displacement of many Sri Lankans. Some members of the dominant Sinhalese group are recipients of JRS/USA aid, but most of the recipients are members of the minority Tamils. Since the British departed in 1948, the Sinhalese majority has run the government and enacted laws that the Tamils have felt to be discriminatory. Such feelings by the Tamils have led to bloodshed as Tamils formed paramilitary groups, most notably the Tamil Tigers, to defend themselves.
Thousands of people have been driven from their homes during the conflict. Many have fled to avoid having their children conscripted by rebel groups. JRS got involved in this situation in Sri Lanka in 1994, though a Jesuit presence existed in the country far before this. JRS has worked with the displaced people in the country for nearly two decades and thus was on hand when the tsunami struck in 2004. Yet, JRS has also paid a price for its involvement. In September 2007, a diocesan priest who served as a district coordinator for JRS was killed by a remote-controlled mine.
|
|
JRS/USA's efforts have allowed the construction of simple homes for some of the displaced, many of whom have been forced to move multiple times before finding such havens. |
We interviewed people who had been displaced due to the conflict. Several of them had been displaced as many as eight times in five years. One man, who presently works for JRS, witnessed the murders of his uncle and two brothers when he was thirteen, prompting him to join a rebel group in retaliation. Another related that he and his family fled their home because the Tamil Tigers approached their town, forcing young boys to become soldiers. In order to protect their sons, they fled their town and took up residence in Todavelli, a small village in the Mannar District. While they await a JRS house (three rooms plus a kitchen area and toilet facility) they are living in a ramshackle hut with their children and grandchildren.
Certainly their children and all of the children in Sri Lanka are of utmost concern to JRS. Education will play the greatest role in freeing them from a life of second-class citizenship. The English Academy, which educates adolescents in Mannar, is a case in point. During his comments at the dedication of the academy, Amalraj, the regional director of JRS South Asia, emphasized the importance of speaking and understanding English for their future careers.
JRS-sponsored education, however, occurs at many levels. Nearly 380 preschool and elementary education programs exist throughout the country. In the Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts as well as Mannar we visited several of these education facilities.
But vocational training may be the most important service that JRS offers, particularly to young women who often find it necessary to fend for themselves. They learn tailoring and baking–marketable skills in Sri Lanka. JRS has also provided start-up funds for income-generating activities. In one of these programs, a group of women who returned to Sri Lanka from India have begun to raise poultry for the market.
The struggle for a better life remains a great challenge for displaced people in Sri Lanka. The cease-fire has ended, and tragedy stalks the land. A Tamil member of parliament was recently assassinated in Colombo, the capital, which has seen increased violence in recent months. The next day, a Tamil bomb killed four soldiers on a military bus. Since then, a government minister was assassinated and bombings have claimed the lives of hundreds of people, including children, riding public buses. The end does not appear to be in sight. Meanwhile, JRS works to ease the lives of the tens of thousands of displaced people in a country that was once primarily known for tea production.
Author Ron Ferreri, the director of development for Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, also worked as vice president for development at Spring Hill College in Mobile.
Photographer Ken Gavin, SJ, the director of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, is the former provincial of the Jesuits' New York Province.
For more information go to www.jrsusa.org