Just as Saint Francis took to the seas to speak to the sultan about
peace in the most personal of unarmed crusades to the Holy Land, the
first Pope to bear the name Francis may follow the Saint’s example by
visiting the tormented Asian island of Sri Lanka, shaken by violence
once again only recently. The signs of the civil war are very much still visible, a war fought from 1983 to 2009 between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels who were demanding the independence of the region where their ethnic group is a majority.
After Francis intimately shared his desire to visit Sri Lanka in 2014 during the press conference held with journalists on the flight from Rio to Rome, a great amount of expectation has built up in the country, which is still suffering as a result of the long and bloody civil war which tore it to pieces.
The wounds are still very much open following this war, one which rapidly escalated into an ethnic conflict, since it pitted the Sinhalese people (Buddhists who live predominantly in the South) against the Tamils (Christians and Hindus, mainly living in the North and the eastern regions).
In the last few days, hundreds of Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims – both religious leaders and members of the laity – converged on Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, to condemn the attack on Weliweriya, where the army has been shooting civilians who were protesting for drinking water, leading to the deaths of three young people.
The conflict came to an end with the defeat of the Tamils, and has left behind what the Catholic Church defines as an “ethnic problem”, as outlined in the Aid to the Church in Need report on religious freedom. Furthermore, when analysing the situation, one should not forget that the country still has over 200,000 refugees, or IDPS (Internally Displaced People) who live in refugee camps without any hope of returning to their homes or being transferred to other places to live.
Two figures dramatically illustrate the facts: in the Jaffna peninsula alone (North Western Province, one of the areas worst hit by the conflict), there are 39,000 war widows who receive no financial aid of any type and who are without stable work to support themselves.
Secondly, in the area of Mannar, communities denounce the fact that the authorities have not accounted for almost 12,000 people, mainly men, who have quite simply disappeared.
This is despite the fact that after relentless campaigning by human rights activists and interventions from the Catholic Church, President Mahinda Rajapaksa established the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), a body tasked with investigating the final stages of the conflict.
At the end of December, the LLRC published a 400-page report, which says, “in the final stages of the civil war, national security forces did not attack civilians in a deliberate manner, whereas on the other hand, Tamil Tiger rebels committed grave violations of human rights”.
As a matter of fact, this report came in response to another, compiled by the UN in April 2011, in which the Sri Lankan government was accused of having killed thousands of civilians during the final stages of the conflict.
The UN report made specific reference to a vast air raid which allegedly killed over 40,000 people. In particular, United Nations officials delineated a No-Fire-Zone which the authorities then crammed full of 330,000 civilian prisoners (who were then killed with a shot to the head), where women were raped and where mangled bodies of children could be found. The UN report also accuses the Tamil LTTE rebels of having used civilians as human shields during the air raids.
Sr. Eliza is a Mother Teresa sister who was accused of selling children at the end of 2011.
This scandal shook the Catholic community across the country. Never before had the Mother Teresa Congregation seen one of its sisters imprisoned. The facts are that in mid-November, the Police received an anonymous phone call accusing Sister Mary Eliza of selling off children at Prem Nivasa, a hostel for young mothers in Moratuwa in the outskirts of the capital, Colombo.
On 23 November, a group made up of police officers and public servants from the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), swooped on the building in order to carry out investigations on the guests at the hostel. At the end of the raid, the building was repossessed and all adoptions halted.
Two days later, on the evening of the 25th, a handful of agents arrived to take Sr. Eliza away along with two fellow sisters. They were taken to the home of a judge in Ja-ela. The details from then on are unclear, but Sr. Eliza was transferred to another car, which took her to Welikada prison, while the other two sisters were accompanied back to the convent.
The nuns’ arrest was sparked by pressure from Anoma Dissanayake, Chairperson of the NCPA, an independent body which answers to the office of the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Many expressly accused the chairperson herself of premeditating the media and legal onslaught against the Missionary sisters at the hostel, in order to favour Buddhist orphanages.
After four days in prison, late in the evening of 28 November, Judge Yvonne Fernando ordered the release of Sr. Eliza, setting bail at 7,500 rupees (roughly 50 euros) for each charge against her (illegal adoption and child trafficking), as well as an additional bail of 50,000 rupees (about 330 euros).