The Sri Lankan government’s near-rout of the LTTE has been accompanied by an iron-fist policy that has forced an eerie silence over the island nation. But there are some in Colombo who spoke to MUZAMIL JALEEL about lives shattered in a conflict that is yet to be resolved

Every evening, devotees gather at this ancient temple, which stands tall and beautiful behind a line of shops on a busy Colombo road. Kathiresan is one of the oldest temples in Colombo and thus a de facto place for its Tamil population to assemble. Every evening, they light a lamp in the compound, sit in groups and speak in whispers. With the war in the north, the flow of devotees has increased. “Prayer,” an old man says “is the only thing we can do for our people.” Lean and gnarled, his forehead is painted white and his face looks grim. The temple is enveloped in a strange silence as men and women kneel on the stone floor. “Talking is not a good thing these days. Silence is the only way,” he adds. Then he walks to a corner and with his frail hands gestures to me to follow. “It’s not the puligal (tigers) that we are worried about. We are worried about the thousands of people whose lives are shattered. I have relatives there and nobody knows what happened to them,” he says. “Every day we wait in front of the television—they (the government) show the camps and we hope we may see them.” He talks about the dead who were bundled together on tyres, plastic and bedding—and lit. “They didn’t even get a pyre,” he says. “There are families separated from each other, injured, lying alone in hospitals. The entire community is in jail. This is not just the defeat of the LTTE, it has become much more than that.”

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