Faith
Robert Go
After three years of living and working in Sri Lanka, I am about to say farewell in mid July 2007. Two events have defined my time here. First, the Boxing Day tsunami killed more than 30,000 Sri Lankans and forced half a million people to flee their homes. Then throughout 2006, conflict between Sri Lanka's government and the LTTE flared up again after a ceasefire in 2002, and imposed more suffering upon the country's ordinary folks.
Today, each side of Sri Lanka's conflict commit countless atrocities and gross violations of human-rights principles while pointing fingers at the other. During the past year alone, at least 300,000 people lost their homes because of the growing conflict, and there is no certain figure for people who became the victims of abductions, extrajudiciary killings, harrassment and torture.
People in the rest of the world don't seem to care, and the vast majority of them definitely don't know enough about what's going on here. German tourists still rush to pool chairs before breakfast to lay down their towels and claim their spots for the day. Prominent writers come to Galle, a tourist town, to celebrate their craft and toast each other even if a couple of hundred kilometers away, people huddle into holes in the ground to avoid getting killed by mortar shells. The perception some people here want to create, and others outside seem to want to see, is that of Sri Lanka as a beautiful paradise on earth.
Well, that view is real enough. Parts of Sri Lanka are beautiful. They're colorful, bright, sunny and warm. But there is a flip side to this coin, and it's far from pretty.
This project is my farewell to Sri Lanka. Of the six images, some are pretty and nice, while others are ugly and harsh. This has been my Sri Lanka experience.
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