Word: jeevatharsini
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Like her country, Sinnathambi Jeevatharsini is beauty torn. Just 9 years old, she has long black hair tied up in two loose knots on either side of her head, and a smile that explodes across her face, as if someone has switched on a spotlight. She's smart, too, likes social studies best, and especially learning about different cultures in far-off lands. Crouched on a mat in a refugee camp on Sri Lanka's east coast, flicking the pages of a schoolbook, pencil by her side, she looks like a normal kid. And then you spot it: Jeevatharsini...
...Jeevatharsini lost the arm in artillery shelling five months ago, says her father Loganathan Sinnathambi, who farmed rice until the family was forced to flee fighting between government soldiers and rebel forces in their hometown of Trincomalee last July. They headed south, but each time they found shelter with a relative or in a camp for internally displaced people, as refugees within their own country are known, fighting would erupt again and they would be forced to move on. Last November, the family was cowering inside a tent at a camp in the town of Kathiraveli during a bombardment when...
...Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans share Jeevatharsini's scars. In 2002 the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.), as the rebels call themselves, signed a cease-fire designed to lead to a political agreement. While the rebels want a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka's north and east, the government wants to keep the island whole. A federation seemed a possible compromise. But peace talks sputtered and then collapsed (both sides accused the other of being insincere), and since December 2005, Sri Lanka has again been at undeclared war with itself. The latest...
...solve it through talks," says the Venerable Athuraliye Rathana, who heads the Buddhist group. "But we cannot tolerate [the Tigers'] terrorist activities. We have to destroy [them], and then we can talk." It's the mantra of a nation: kill or be killed. In the camp outside Batticaloa, as Jeevatharsini finishes her schoolwork, her father ponders what he will do next: "Because of the losses I have [suffered], the depression and frustration," says Sinnathambi, "sometimes I get the feeling I should also resort to violence." In Sri Lanka, the reason...
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