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Recurring 'tsunamis' devastate Sri Lanka

BY Nimmi Gowrinathan

True idealists and apolitical pacifists often convince themselves that the corrupt world of politics exists in a vacuum detached from pure humanitarian work. But in my ancestral homeland of Sri Lanka, where I recently spent three weeks, wretched politics pervades every action and interaction, entrenches every perception and prejudice, and is inextricably linked to the tsunami relief efforts underway across the island nation.

The aid effort is tainted by residual political tensions of the past, the dispersion of funds is inhibited by bureaucracy and government corruption, and international workers find their arms tied by U.S.-imposed directives and stereotypes. The impact of these factors is felt most poignantly by the surviving rural children, who have been left to overcome far greater obstacles than the 30-foot tsunami that swept their shores this past Christmas.

Walking through rows of tents erected for the victims in the nation’s war-torn northeast, what’s striking is not the living conditions that seem to lie on the border of some human rights violation.

Rather, it is the similarity between these camps and those that have existed for years. The issue here is not about children orphaned by the tsunami, but the tens of thousands of war orphans that the disaster left homeless. The issue is not the helplessness of refugees crowded into makeshift shelters, but their disorientation at having their prior camp of eight years washed away, and their efforts to regroup in a shelter away from the ocean but closer to areas possibly infested with landmines.

It is difficult for anyone to reconcile the innocence of children with the corruption and inefficiency that have left the eyesight of a 7-year-old girl failing from severe vitamin deficiency, or a diminutive 13-year-old boy easily mistaken for a preschooler. How to assess the trauma of children who fear the sight of soldiers? Or the ocean? Or loud sounds, whether they be waves crashing or bombs exploding?

Questions left unanswered hang in the stale air: What is to happen to all the fathers who lost their wives to the tsunami and have never participated in childcare? What will happen to the children in their care? And if significantly more women than men lost their lives as a result of the first wave snatching their saris, leaving them naked and hesitant to run toward town, is there a lesson to be learned about the stringent gender rules of Sri Lankan society?

What makes these questions complex is the fact that tsunami victims suffer from a pervading sense of acceptance of their misery. Behind the melancholy faces that have come to characterize them lies the belief that their lives have been predestined, that there is no higher standard for their existence, that violence, untimely death, displacement and disease are not anomalies that can be warded off but catastrophes to be expected.

A generation of children is growing up under passive guardian figures whose spirits have been broken. That these children are learning not to question authority, not to resist injustice, not to demand basic rights and dignities is far more devastating to the society of Sri Lanka and to the humanity of our globalized world than any tsunami might have been.

Gowrinathan, a graduate student of political science, is Sri Lanka project manager for Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based aid organization.