Letters to the Editor
View(s):Easter Sunday tragedy: Where’s the sincerity towards reconciling and healing?
“The strife is oér, the battle done;
Now is the Victor’s triumph won;
Now be the song of praise begun
Hallelujah!”
The hymn on Christ’s resurrection, on that glorious Easter Sunday morning was cut short by the sound of blaring sirens. Telephones started to ring, the singing tapered off, and looks of uneasy despair and doubt on the faces of the worshippers changed the day of Christ’s victory into man’s defeat.
Now after four months, the rest is almost history. The churches have been repaired, the worship services are going on as usual on Sundays, the media seems to have forgotten with the new preoccupation of elections and the voices that echoed sentiments of love and care, forgiveness and reconciliation and healing are getting dimmer by the day.
Man is consumed by the events of the day, of the moment. But there are the victims who have survived to whom it will be a day that will not leave their memory. There will be scars of physical and emotional injury that will not be erased even with time.
What is it that strikes us when we bring this event and the aftermath of the event into perspective? Have we as a nation, as a community, as a congregation and as a family relegated this incident into oblivion? Do we continue on our happy journey till the next catastrophe crosses our path? Small as we are as a nation, the divisions that we cling to have totally eroded our inner feelings, to reconcile and heal the wounds of our brothers and sisters.
Look at the divisions amongst the Buddhist believers, among the Muslims in their diverse faiths, the caste system in the Hindu faith and finally and disgracefully among the followers of Christ. The divisions are so great that even to identify one’s nationality as a Sri Lankan has become an issue.
So, in this backdrop where communal, religious, cultural and economic differences are pronounced, emphasising the gap between the haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor, where do we introduce reconciliation and healing? We heard religious leaders attempting to preach forgiveness and patience, political leaders capitalising on the situation and paying lip service to forgiveness and yet others trying to defuse the situation to avoid a backlash. In the larger picture of the communities throughout the nation what have we done to reconcile and heal the wounds of conflict? One can ask the question are we genuinely concerned or sensitive to reconciliation and healing.
Aren’t we still a defeated nation where communal disharmony, mistrust, doubt and disagreement between communities are rife within us. We are apprehensive and sensitive to be honest with ourselves. We all find the excuses and frivolous reasons why we are justified in nurturing and harbouring the differences but take very little or no effort to dispel these differences.
Do we try to inculcate the necessity to live in harmony to the next generation? It is not peculiar to Sri Lanka, it is so in every nation but manifests itself in different forms. At least here in this country we are fortunate not to have colour differences and other physical differences which are prevalent in most other countries.
Reconciliation and healing; so where do we start. Is it possible? Is there a solution? Or are we pulling the wool over our own eyes?
The common platform that is currently stable and strong is religion. There have been sporadic attacks on Muslims and Christians in different quarters of the country but that seems to be more the exception and also provoked by politicians rather than by the faithful. The reconciliation between the different sects of all the religions in the country, whilst respecting their own forms of worship could be a starting point to display our will and determination towards reconciliation. It is an accepted belief that there is one Jesus Christ, there is one Lord Buddha, there is one Prophet Mohammed and there is the galaxy of Gods whom the Hindus worship and revere. Therefore if the followers of these religions are united and reconciled with each other within their own faith, it is but just one small pragmatic step towards the larger effort of reconciliation.
The nation has been looking at the entire theory of reconciliation with a Nelsonian eye. Reconciliation comes through healing. Where then is the healing if we have ignored what every religion preaches, the concept of love. One cannot profess to reconcile without extending love to your neighbour. Reconciliation with God which is a vertical relationship has to precede the lateral relationship with man. In the world there are social, economic and political forces that have facilitated new relationships among people but there are other forces which have broken the bonds of love and solidarity within the human family.
In the follow-up of an act of the nature of the Easter bombings many complexities develop in terms of security, reconstruction, safety, peacebuilding and so on. When reconciliation has to be juxtaposed within the framework of the foregoing it tends to get weary and tired. The state services would prefer to look at it as a duty and not as one coming from within the heart. Moreover the efforts of reconciliation have been localised to the affected areas. That is understandable in terms of the immediate follow-up but more importantly reconciliation and healing has to be taken to the rest of the country to form the foundation of building the platform to negate future conflicts of race and religion. Unless there is developed such a platform, the downside could be the economic conflicts where hunger and thirst can overtake conflicts of race and religion.
Many have been the pseudo leaders who professed in the name of reconciliation and peacebuilding that this was the last chance that the nation had to build bridges and bring communities together. Nothing could have been more further from the truth than such insincere and hypocritical statements. We don’t need incidents of bloodshed and murder and death and destruction to commence reconciliation. What there must be is love and sincerity of purpose; the recognition of people’s aspirations and their suffering; poverty and ill health; homelessness and hunger.
That is reconciliation and healing.
Sunil Peiris Via email
A few politically inclined docs playing with the lives of suffering patients
A short supply of life-saving medicines and medical supplies in the Health Department is causing a serious problem to patients.
As a practice so many cancer patients and those after colostomy operations have been given a monthly quota of colostomy bags by the National Hospital under the signature of the OPD Doctor in Charge of the division. However, during the last few months, patients coming from even far-off places had been turned away saying that the Medical Supplies Division had not supplied them to the Dispensary and to contact the Medical Supplies Division. Only these patients know the utter inconvenience of not being able to replace this vital appendage. These items are not freely available in dispensaries and if available are beyond the capacity of ordinary patients to acquire them.
This chaotic situation of a short supply of vital medicines and medical items is a recent occurrence where the trade unions are blaming the Ministry and vice versa, while the poor patients are suffering untold agony. An angry patient commented that the medical profession had seriously deteriorated due to a few politically oriented medical officers who are leading this hallowed profession into disrepute. Indeed the majority of those in the medical profession are to be greatly admired.
Considering the suffering of patients in so many ways including strikes and utter inefficiency, the government should seriously consider making the Health Services an essential service.
Worried Via email
Another election: Start caring and hope for the best
Here we go again! Yet another election. Is it just me or are we moving further and further down the barrel. I’ve been voting for nearly 16 years now and every time, I feel the country has got a little bit worse. Now we can blame the politicians but there are two things to consider before you start blaming the player.
1. You selected them
2. They are part of the community you live in
Personally I don’t think we can do better than the folks we have already put in the driving seat. We’ve tried illiterates, businessmen, social workers, celebrities, professors, none of the combinations seem to work. The entire clan is rotten.
It may be because the set from which we select the candidates is also bad. You can’t hope to find diamonds in rubble. So let’s just brace for the worst. Following the advice of Dr. Seuss all I can say is, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better, it’s not. So start caring. Believe me, it’s the best thing you can do right now.
Jayanka de Silva Moratuwa