Sri Lanka News - A Personal Perspective

We are told that celebrations have broken out in the Sinhala community in Colombo. That is understandable, but it should be a celebration marked with sadness as well.

The north of the country has been devastated - there will be no pictures on state controlled television of the dead and wounded, the villages destroyed. I can remember some years ago a senior government official expressing shock at the physical destruction in and around Jaffna when he paid a visit after the ceasefire. "I had no idea it was that bad". I expressed deep surprise that he didn't know, the hospitals and schools destroyed, the homes wiped out, the sheer scale of the physical destruction.

"The war is over", the crowds will shout. But there is a difference between a war ended by agreement and a war ended by death and destruction.

If there is no magnanimity in victory there is no victory. I think of the possibilities of peace in the years after 2000 and I weep at the lost opportunity, the lost lives. So many dead now that were once alive, debating the possibilities of peace.

I shall go back to the Vanni, because the effort must still be made. But it is hard not to cry at what has been lost, how much life has been destroyed. And what must still be done to bring justice to the peace that is being proclaimed so loudly.