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Grace Review – A Monthly Journal of the News from the Grace Care Center
By James A. Mitchell, VeAhavta Press Officer

In late July, Grace Care Center Manager Diane McLaughlin welcomed her eagerly awaited VeAhavta visitors from Michigan and California. They hoped for a productive and enjoyable visit for both the travelers and residents, which they had.

But they also held a ringside seat to what may be a renewed civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In early August, the Tamil Tigers took control of a water distribution point near the village of Muttur – just six miles south and across the harbor from the Trincomalee home of Grace Care Center. Government troops launched a two-day offensive initially designed to regain control of the irrigation canal in GoSL-controlled territory. Targets were also selected to the north of the seven-acre orphanage, putting Grace Care literally in the middle of a war zone. For two days, the longest period of silence between explosions experienced by the VeAhavta volunteers, residents and staff was perhaps 10 minutes.
Ann Arbor Dr. Cheryl Huckins said that the sounds near Grace were deceptive, and it took some time to distinguish between the echo of artillery being fired and the explosion of targets being hit. Still, the serenity of Grace Home provided a sense of peace.

“The strange thing was that we never really felt afraid,” Huckins said. “We knew we weren’t the target.”

The fighting in and around Muttur and Trincomalee wasn’t the only military action; the renewed war in Sri Lanka moved to the north, near the Tiger-base Jaffna region. By the second week of the month, casualty figures were more an estimate than a report, and incidents that claimed international attention included the discovery of 17 relief workers with the French agency “Action Against Hunger” who had been killed in Muttur, and an air raid that left at least 19 – perhaps as many as 63 – killed near Killinochchi in a GoSL air raid (see “Heaven on Earth,” below, by VeAhavta president Eric Parkinson).

The deaths of the relief workers – 16 Tamil and 1 Muslim – were declared by international monitors on Aug. 29 to have been the responsibility of government troops – a claim the GoSL denies. The air strike in northern Sri Lanka also remains a topic of debate: The government claiming the target was a Tamil Tiger training camp; northern Tamils alleging that the compound was a children’s home.

Responsibility, as with an accounting of the month’s damage, will wait for history. No matter how the incidents are interpreted, August 2006 was the deadliest month yet since the 2002 ceasefire accord was signed, and poses the greatest risk of sending the weary island nation back to full-scale civil war. By month’s end, continued battles were waged between the government and the Tigers, mostly in the north although a renewed Tiger push to take over government-controlled regions near Muttur further strained the hopes for peace. The Tamil Tigers claimed on Aug. 29 that 22 Tamil civilians had been killed in troop attacks; that accusation was denied by the government, just as the Tigers dismissed the claim that the LTTE was responsible for a June mine attack on a civilian bus that killed 68 people.

Both sides deny any charges of killing civilians; the factual number of deaths remains the same. Along with an undetermined number of military and civilian deaths since January, the activities in recent months – notably the battles near Muttur and along the Eastern coast – have left more than 200,000 people displaced. The “refugee” crisis now threatening the country eclipses that caused by the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami, considered among the worst natural disasters in history.

To fully understand the devastation of the number of people involved, it should be remembered that Sri Lanka is approximately the size of West Virginia, with a population of about 19 million. Before the 2002 ceasefire accord was signed, the war claimed an estimated 65,000 lives; the tsunami an additional 35,000. 

Through it all, the spirit of Grace – and the people of Sri Lanka – bravely face an uncertain future. Birthday parties are held, babies are born and people get married, hoping that personal plans aren’t interrupted by renewed war.

“This is their everyday life,” said Huckins, who spent time in early August with the elder residents of Mercy Home. “This is the background they live in; every day, you just do what you can.”

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