Author’s Note

I first visited Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka, when I was a kid of sixteen, travelling the world in search of adventure. The country at that time was known as Ceylon. From the deck of the ship, the city looked like the most thrilling destination on earth. The sun was setting and the whitewashed buildings of Ceylon’s colonial era turned a bright orange, then a more subdued pink. Dozens of small wooden craft crowded around the ship, each boat packed with fruit and fabrics for sale to the westerners gazing down from the deck. The vendors sang songs celebrating their wares, and called out to the tourists above. ‘Many fine mangoes for you, sirs and ladies! Pineapples so tasty, indeed!’ The noise the vendors made was like an orchestra of voices, the music rising and falling. At that time, the island was at peace. I thought, Such a beautiful land.

When I next visited Sri Lanka in 2005, peace was the last thing that came to mind. The shocking violence of a civil war that had been raging since 1983 had left a dark cloud of suspicion and resentment hovering over the island. There was still great beauty to be seen in this vivid green land, but wherever I went, I met people who were sorrowing for what had become of Sri Lanka’s civil society, and sorrowing, too, for sons and daughters, husbands and wives killed in the fighting. At that time, a truce had been proposed, but I did not meet anyone, Tamil or Sinhalese, who believed for a moment that the war would soon be over. I came across raw hatred and I heard angry denunciations, but more often I encountered sadness and regret.

The war in Sri Lanka pitted Sinhalese against Tamils, the two major ethnic groups of the island. In 2014, the overwhelming majority of Sri Lankans are Sinhalese (around seventy-four per cent), and largely follow the Buddhist faith. The Tamil people, including immigrant Tamils from southern India, make up approximately fifteen per cent of the island’s population, and follow the Hindu faith, for the most part. Both Sinhalese and Tamils have inhabited the island for millenia. The age-old Tamil population was joined by some hundreds of thousands of Tamils from southern India in the nineteenth century. These ‘newcomers’ were recruited by the colonial British to work in tea plantations.

The Tamil population tends to be concentrated in the north of the island, and along the east coast. Like minorities in other lands, the Tamils feel more secure living close to each other, forming communities where the Tamil religion and culture dominate. But wherever people live as a minority in their homeland, such security can often feel under threat. After Sri Lanka achieved independence from Britain in 1948, the Tamils of the island felt increasingly marginalised by a government dominated by the Sinhalese. Tamils claimed that a whole range of government policies were designed to restrict their access to education, to employment in the public service and to the securing of finance for businesses. In 1956, the Tamil language itself ceased to be recognised as an official state language. In the 1970s, militant Tamil groups emerged to carry the fight for equality beyond peaceful protests. The dominating figure in Tamil politics was Velupillai Prabhakaran, who would one day lead the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in an armed struggle to establish a Tamil state in the north of the island.

It might have been predicted as early as a decade after independence that civil war would break out in Sri Lanka, given the grievances of the Tamil people and the mounting impatience with their political claims among the majority Sinhalese. But I doubt that anyone at that time would have foreseen the extraordinary brutality of the war. For this was one of the most savage conflicts fought since the end of the Second World War in 1945. Although the war is usually considered to be three wars, with truces in between outbreaks, each stage of the conflict was equally violent and bloody. Terrible war crimes and atrocities were committed by both sides in the conflict, including the massacre of civilians, torture, and the destruction of entire villages. Further killings were carried out by bandit groups. Unarmed civilians were considered no different to armed combatants. Children were killed in great numbers. And this was the war in which the world first heard of ‘suicide bombing’: human beings, strapped with explosives, blowing themselves up in crowded areas.

The armed forces of the Sri Lankan government gradually gained the upper hand over the LTTE from 2006 onwards. The LTTE surrendered in May 2009 after a series of terrible defeats. In the final months of the war, Tamil civilians in great numbers became trapped in enclaves in the north and east of the island and many died during the final assaults of the Sri Lankan Army. Human rights groups had been calling for an international investigation of war crimes over the entire period of the civil war, and have recently succeeded in having the United Nations Human Rights Council agree to an enquiry.

Today, many thousands of Tamils remain displaced within Sri Lanka, and a number of the issues of discrimination against Tamils that led to the civil war still persist. I recall particularly two comments from my last visit to the island in 2005. The first is that of a young man I questioned about his views on the war. He said, ‘Tamils do not belong in Sri Lanka. India is their home. They should leave.’ The second is the voice of a much older man, a shop owner in Colombo. ‘Robert, what can I say to you about this war? I can say this: heaven forgive all of us. All.’

I have written about wars and the refugees they create in a number of books, but I hadn’t written about Sri Lanka until the opportunity came to tell the fictional story of Malini. I wanted to show, in the character of Malini, that courage is not something we either have or don’t have, but something that may come to life in our hearts just when the need is greatest.

Timeline

1815 Ceylon becomes a British Crown colony. Tamil plantation workers arrive from India.

1948 British Ceylon gains independent Dominion status. D.S. Senanayake becomes first prime minister.

1956 Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike elected on wave of Sinhalese political nationalism. Sinhala Only Act denies official recognition of the Tamil language and increases tension between majority, Buddhist Sinhalese and minority, Muslim Tamils. More than 100 Tamils killed in violent protests.

1958 Anti-Tamil riots leave estimated 200 people dead and thousands of Tamils displaced.

1960–1965 Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world’s first female prime minister, governs Ceylon.

1970 Sirimavo Bandaranaike returns to power and extends nationalisation program. Ethnic riots continue as official discrimination against Tamils escalates.

1972 Ceylon becomes Republic of Sri Lanka with Buddhism as the official religion, further antagonising Tamil minority.

1976 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as Tamil Tigers, forms with Velupillai Prabhakaran as military commander. LTTE demands a separate state in Tamil-dominated areas of the north and east.

1981 Sinhalese policemen accused of burning Jaffna library containing over 97 000 books and manuscripts – a major turning point in ethnic riots. Tamils demand government protection for cultural heritage.

1983 First Eelam War. Civil War erupts when LTTE ambush Sri Lankan Army (SLA) checkpoint on Jaffna Peninsula killing 13 government soldiers and sparking ‘Black July’ anti-Tamil riots in Colombo and elsewhere. Estimated 3000 people dead. Many thousands of Tamils flee abroad.

1985 LTTE control Jaffna and most of Jaffna Peninsula.

1987 SLA launches ‘Operation Liberation’ to secure Jaffna Peninsula. Indo–Sri Lanka Peace Accord grants concessions to Tamils. Tamil becomes an official language. Indian troops begin ‘peacekeeping’ operations in north-eastern Sri Lanka but are quickly enmeshed in three-year war with LTTE.

1989 Ranasinghe Premadasa assumes presidency and requests Indian troops leave.

1990 Second Eelam War. Indian troops withdraw. Violence between SLA and LTTE escalates in Eastern Province. SLA attempts to retake Jaffna. LTTE controls large areas of northern Sri Lanka and expels thousands of Muslims from Jaffna.

1991 Estimated 5000 LTTE cadres surround SLA’s Elephant Pass military base. More than 2000 killed. Government forces fail to retake Jaffna. Suspected LTTE suicide bomber assassinates Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

1992 LTTE destroys Palliyathidal village. An estimated 240 people killed in one of the worst massacres of the civil war.

1993 President Ranasinghe Premadasa killed in LTTE bomb attack.

1995 Third Eelam War. LTTE sinks naval craft. Jaffna falls to government forces. LTTE sets up new ‘capital’ in Kilinochchi and compels more than 350 000 civilians to flee to Vanni region.

1996–1999 Civil war rages across north and east of Sri Lanka: 200 000 civilians flee violence. LTTE launches ‘Operation Unceasing Waves’ and wins the Battle of Mullaitivu. LTTE bombings increase with loss of many civilian lives, including bombing of Sri Lanka’s holiest Buddhist site, the Temple of Tooth.

1999–2001 LTTE presses towards Jaffna, cuts all SLA supply lines and captures Elephant Pass military base. Human rights groups estimate more than one million internally displaced persons.

2002 Sri Lankan government and LTTE sign Norwegian-mediated ceasefire. Decommissioning of weapons begins. Jaffna Peninsula road reopens. Government lifts economic embargoes on LTTE who drop demand for separate state.

2003 LTTE pulls out of peace talks, but ceasefire holds.

2004 Tsunami devastates Sri Lankan coastal communities. More than 30 000 people killed, 2.5 million left homeless. Mahinda Rajapaksa elected president. State of emergency declared after suspected LTTE assassin kills foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar.

2006–7 LTTE and government forces resume fighting in north-east in worst clashes since 2002 ceasefire. Government steadily drives LTTE out of eastern strongholds. Peace talks fail in Geneva.

2008 President Rajapaksa pulls out of ceasefire agreement and launches massive offensive against LTTE, progressively retaking critical LTTE strongholds in Vanni heartland.

2009 January–April SLA captures Kilinochchi and most of Jaffna Peninsula. LTTE’s new base at Mullaitivu also falls. Increasing brutality from both sides results in mounting civilian casualties. Sri Lankan military sets up ‘no-fire zones’ for civilians in Mullaitivu district. An estimated 350 000 civilians end up trapped in ever-shrinking 14-square-kilometre zone. Sri Lankan government rejects United Nations (UN) call for ceasefire and accuses LTTE of using civilians as human shields. UN estimates 6500 civilians killed and 14 000 wounded. More than 100 000 internally displaced persons in camps in Vavuniya, Jaffna, Mannar and Trincomalee. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights accuses both sides of war crimes.

May Estimated 15 000–20 000 dead in final four months of civil war. UN describes fighting as a ‘bloodbath’ for civilians. SLA captures last LTTE-held section of coastline, retakes Kilinochchi and declares victory. Velupillai Prabhakaran killed in final battle. Estimated 70 000 civil-war related deaths and hundreds of thousands more displaced by conflict.

2010 Sri Lanka holds first presidential elections in twenty years amid international allegations of war crimes. President Mahinda Rajapaksa re-elected.

2012 Estimated 370 000 internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka.

2013 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passes resolution urging Sri Lanka to conduct independent investigation into alleged war crimes.

2014 UNHRC votes to open international investigation into possible war crimes by both Sri Lankan government and LTTE in final stages of civil war.