Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Sri Lanka: Targeting Blood Donors

Maura R. O'Connor, for the Pulitzer Center

Below image courtesy of a doctor in northern Sri Lanka.

During the last two months, over 7,000 wounded civilians have been evacuated to the port city of Trincomalee from the front lines of the ongoing battle between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE).  Those who have arrived in Trincomalee have been trapped in the north for months with an estimated 150 to 190,000 other civilians in the shrinking conflict zone. They represent the most desperate cases among thousands of people being wounded by mortar attacks exchanged between the two sides.

The situation facing these civilians is desperate. “Many patients need to have a limb amputated because of a shrapnel injury,” described a surgeon for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who is working in Trincomalee. “We also treat injuries to other parts of the body, sometimes to remove shrapnel. I have seen many patients with heavily infected wounds, sometimes in the area where the amputation is required. Infections set in rapidly when a wound is not treated with antibiotics or a dressing cannot be changed. On some patients arriving here, strips of sarong or tee-shirts have been used instead of dressings. Pieces of wood are often used as splinters to immobilize a fracture and spare the person a lot of pain.”

In a letter sent on March 16 to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health Care and Nutrition, medical personnel located in the north said, “As the ongoing battle becomes more and more intense and destructive since the last months of last year, the number of war wounded has been steadily increasing with a proportionate increase in the demand for essential medicines, especially anesthetic, antibiotics, analgesic, and IV fluids.”

Sri Lanka: Paramilitary Politics

Maura R. O'Connor, for the Pulitzer Center

Republished at WorldFocus

Driving through the narrow streets of towns in the east it begins to seem like every concrete surface, telephone pole, or fence is plastered with political posters or covered in spray painted acronyms: “TMVP,” “SLFP,” “UNP,” “SLMC,” “TURLF,” “EROS,” “UPFA,” “TDNA,” “TELO.”

To an outsider, some of the graffiti is just cryptic code. No one except a local who lived through last May’s volatile elections would know that the image of an apple followed by an “X” is the faded remnant of a political alliance between the Ealam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), Ealam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), and the People’s Liberation Organization for Tamil Ealam (PLOTE).

These last three political parties have also acted as paramilitary forces in the north and east of the country for decades.

Sri Lanka: Risking Lives for Information Exchange

Maura R. O'Connor, for the Pulitzer Center

The other morning I went to a local church in Batticaloa to meet with a priest who has been involved in human rights work for several decades. We drank cold orange juice in an attempt to fight the heat, already sticky and oppressive at 10 a.m., next to a yard with clucking chickens and cages of parakeets. A few meters away was a coconut grove and then the shore of the lagoon, where earlier in the morning my translator had given me detailed instructions on how to bait and kill a crocodile. “How big are they?” I asked him. He pointed to a 14’ foot long fishing canoe nearby and said, “Like that.” Then he told me how the Sri Lankan government’s Special Task Forces (STF) in the area are not allowed to kill the crocodiles. Why? Because, he said, they’re a deterrent for Tiger cadres who might be thinking of crossing the lagoon. Then we just stood there and I’m pretty sure both imagined a platoon of anti-terrorist crocodiles employed by the STF lurking under the surface of the water.

One thing I’ve noticed over and over again in Sri Lanka is how valued information and the exchange of information is. When I talk to someone, they’re not only eager to relay recent events, facts, hearsay, history, opinions, and sources, they want to check everything against what you think and know. Maybe the great value placed on this exchange is directly related to the extent to which the media has been compromised in the country, over a long period of time but especially in the last six months. Without a trusted, independent source for information, people act as aggregators charged with the task of determining accuracy and spreading news themselves.

Religious protector from ethnic strife

Maura R. O'Connor, for the Pulitzer Center

Unlike other parts of the Eastern Province in Sri Lanka where ethnic Sinhalese constitute up to 20 percent of the population, the only Sinhalese to be seen in the district of Batticaloa are wearing camouflage and carrying guns as members of the Sri Lankan Army, Navy, or Special Task Forces (STF). The presence of a Sinhalese civilian here is so rare I’ve seen it elicit more interest from Tamils than the site of an American or European. (Westerners in Batticaloa are a common phenomenon after the tsunami brought hundreds of NGO workers from around the world.) 

That’s why it’s extraordinary to see a Buddhist temple in the center of Batticaloa town, replete with stupa, Buddha statues, and scarlet robes drying in the sun. The Sri Mangalarama Viharaya Temple is run by a lone Sinhalese priest, the 39-year-old Rev. Ampitiya Sumanarathana Thero. For the last ten years he has lived amidst the Tamil community, first when it was under LTTE control and now, since July 2007, under the Sri Lankan government’s control. During the intense period of fighting in 2007, the temple was a sanctuary for hundreds of civilians seeking refuge from shelling, including dozens of pregnant women.