Confronting the Complexity of Loss

Christian groups have also faced violence during various stages of Sri Lanka’s recent
history. Specific violence against Christians on a wide scale is a relatively new
phenomenon and is yet to be carefully studied. The colonial roots of Christianity may
underscore certain historical antagonisms between Buddhists and Christians. Many of the
English-speaking elites were in fact Christians, who in turn enjoyed economic
favouritism and the political patronage of the colonial administrators. Yet it is possible to
argue that contemporary tensions between Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists and certain
Christian groups hinge on the question of propagation. Christian evangelical aims to
propagate the religion remain fundamentally at odds with Sinhala-Buddhist aims to
protect and foster Buddhism. Thus any attempt to propagate religion in Sri Lanka has
been perceived as a threat to the socio-cultural dominance of Buddhism and has been
strongly resisted. Occasionally, the resistance has turned violent, as it did on 12 January
2014, when mobs led by Buddhist monks attacked churches in Hikkaduwa. 40
The foregoing discussion reveals a complex environment that has shaped relations
between ethnic and religious communities in Sri Lanka. At the centre of these relations is
a struggle for space, and consequently, power. Each community has struggled to gain and
maintain space to further political, social and economic agendas, which have often led to
tensions, conflict and violence. The Sinhalese-Buddhist community became invested in
constructing a narrative of historical entitlement, which steadily marginalised other ethnic
and religious communities. The Tamil community responded in what is often described
as ‘defensive nationalism’, which was averse to violence at first, but became
fundamentally violent eventually. 41 These two forms of nationalism, along with youth
unrest and ideological struggles (discussed in the next section), form the essential
backdrop to the violent events that took place in Sri Lanka during its recent history.
2. A Chronology of Key Events
Three timeframes in Sri Lanka’s history of violence are considered in this study. First, the
period of the ethnic war, which was fought mainly in the North and East alongside
incidents of violence in the rest of the country; second, the period in which the second
JVP insurrection took place in the South of the country; and third, the post-war era in
which certain human rights violations have taken place.
2.1 The 30-year ethnic war
The history of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka needs no retelling. It is a reasonably wellchronicled
‘event’, which spanned nearly three brutal decades. With the rise of Tamil
militancy during the 1970s, sporadic violence and assassinations had begun to take place
in the North of Sri Lanka. One of the early incidents of violence was the assassination of
Alfred Duraiappah, the Mayor of Jaffna, on 27 July 1975. The incident heralded the
arrival of the LTTE, an organisation that would eventually become a central party to the
ethnic war and the incredible violence and loss that accompanied it. Several incidents of
40 ‘Video: Buddhist Monk Led Mob Attacked Christian Church’, colombotelegraph.com, 13 January 2014,
https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/video-buddhist-monk-led-mob-attacked-christian-church.
41 Wilson, op. cit. at 115.
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