The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : SRI LANKA AND THE TSUNAMI

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 05, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

SRI LANKA AND THE TSUNAMI

SRI LANKA IS no stranger to large-scale death and destruction. But the death and destruction caused by a 20-year-old internal conflict could not have prepared the country, often described as the "teardrop island," for the devastation of the tsunami. The giant waves left an estimated 40,000 dead in two hours, more than half the number of people killed in two decades of the ethnic conflict. No reliable estimate of the damage to property is available at this juncture. All that is known is that the sea inundated several villages and towns along Sri Lanka's elliptical coastline, from the Tamil North to the Sinhala South. This was the country's biggest natural disaster; after Indonesia, it was the worst hit by the giant waves that the under-sea earthquake triggered. For a people trying to rebuild their lives and their country utilising the window of opportunity provided by the ceasefire between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — the truce will enter its fourth year next month — the calamity is a brutally unexpected setback. The tsunami has devalued the few other tangible dividends of the three-year-old truce.

At such a time, one should expect a country bitterly divided along political, ethnic, and of late, religious lines, to stand united and endeavour to rebuild and bring back a semblance of normality to the lives of the people and to the areas affected by the tsunami. It is disturbing that the LTTE should use a disaster of such epic proportions to underscore Tamil separateness by unreasonably demanding that foreign donors should channel all aid to the North-East only through it and not the Sri Lankan Government. The LTTE's desire to be the sole administrator of relief operations in areas under its control is evidently also driven by its fanatical determination to maintain secrecy about the fate of its military installations, especially the Sea Tiger base in Mullaithivu, one of the places reported to be badly hit by the tsunami. However, for the people living in LTTE-controlled areas of the North-East, a far more urgent requirement at this juncture is the LTTE's full co-operation with the Sri Lankan Government. There is no other way of speedily reaching relief that is pouring into the country to the region, and beginning the task of rehabilitation. As President Chandrika Kumaratunga said in her address to the nation last week, "it is not possible to deal with a massive calamity of this magnitude separately as Sinhalese, Muslims or Tamils." In this sense, there could be a silver lining to the tsunami. A unity forged now will surely recharge the stalled peace process with positive implications for a settlement of the country's Tamil question.

It is to India's credit that despite its own share of tragedy from the tsunami, it was the first to respond to its neighbour's distress, a demonstration of the warm relations between the two nations. Indeed, Indian relief supplies arrived at the island faster than they reached some badly affected parts of the Tamil Nadu coast. New Delhi has pledged a generous Rs. 100 crore ($25 million) as assistance. Hearteningly, several other countries have joined the relief effort. In the coming months, Sri Lanka will need all the international help it can get to rebuild its coastline. Many times during the last two decades of conflict, the people of Sri Lanka have shown tremendous grit and resilience in the face of the most testing situations. They can certainly overcome the present crisis.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

SRI LANKA AND THE TSUNAMI

FUEL FOR THOUGHT

Need for a universal EGS

War budget dwarfs aid spending

J.N. Dixit - a tribute

The tsunami relief effort

The Sindh controversy

Rebuilding lives

Why the prejudice?

Don't blame them