The past few days have been one of only a few times when I can say that I’ve been utterly lost for words. The events of Easter Sunday in my beloved homeland of Sri Lanka are as heartbreaking as they are beyond belief. Our country only 10 years ago emerged from a bloody civil war which ravaged our economy and divided us on lines of ethnicity. I wasn’t old enough to understand the scale of the devastation at the time but still understood that the scars of warfare were everywhere to see.
Officially the war ended in 2009, but the proceeding years were still encountered with a level of fear and anxiety that was the natural hangover from 30 plus years of outright warfare. It was only recently in the last few years that Sri Lankans had truly started to feel safe and genuinely believe in our country’s freedom from such abhorrent violence. 2019 began with Lonely Planet naming our tear dropped shaped island as the number 1 travel destination for the year. It would be safe to say that all of us were beginning to believe that finally after all these years our country was on the path to growth, to stability and to true freedom.
Cut to Easter Sunday 2019… our dreams have turned into the most devastating nightmares that one could ever imagine. The sense of sadness, of loss is as indescribable as it is baffling. Our beautiful homeland has been brought to its knees in which its bloodstained tears threaten to drown us whole.
When I speak of my country people who are not Sri Lankan struggle to comprehend the passion I feel for my homeland. What I’ve come to realise is that we Sri Lankans are quite unique in the sense of love, of patriotism and of pride we have for our country. This is all because we know the beauty of our lands, we have felt the kindness and welcoming nature of our people. We understand how much we have been tested in the past but how we have endured. We have been battered, bruised and beaten. We have fallen to our knees, been lost in a sense of despair but we never lost hope because we believed in our country. We understood that our little island was a true gem; paradise on earth which had been tainted by hatred, greed and intolerance.
I stand here today knowing all these things so well. I am heartbroken, I am devastated and I mourn for those we lost over the weekend with such a heavy heart. But I also stand strong in solidarity with my country and with my compatriots; Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists and everyone in between. I draw on my identity as a Sri Lankan irrespective of faith, religion, caste, creed or ethnicity and I promise that I will not forsake my country or my people when they need me the most.
We will rebuild, we will recover. I say this confidently because we have been through so much and yet we still survive. We are a resilient people whose love for our country will outweigh the seeds of hatred sown by a disenfranchised few. Together we stand in solidarity and declare that we will not be divided, we will not be broken, our country, our people are strong. We will not allow hatred and intolerance to rule how we act moving forward. We will support each other, comfort each other and hold onto the hope we have for our beautiful homeland. We will protect her together, united as one people.
Sx
I blog for Change. 