RSSJAFFNA, Sri Lanka (UCAN) – Tamil Bishop Thomas Savundaranayagam has visited the civil war’s final battlefield for the first time since the fighting ended, and said rebuilding lives and churches in the area was an “unbearable burden” on the people there.
The bishop is the first to be allowed to visit the war zone after fighting ended last May. The government still prohibits civilians, UN agencies, NGOs and the media from visiting the area.
At this week’s feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in Jaffna, he appealed to Tamils not to spend lavishly during church festivals but help displaced people instead.
Bishop Savundaranayagam, visibly shaken by his unpublicized visit to the war zone on Jan. 29, described the chaos he found there, particularly in the Catholic fishing village of Mathalan on the east coast.
“Devastation is everywhere” and threatens our people’s future, he said.
Thousands of people were killed, injured or disabled in the final battle near Mathalan and some 300,000 were forced to flee the area.
In Jaffna diocese alone, 110 churches belonging to 17 parishes and 15 Religious houses have been abandoned.
The bishop said many had already been reclaimed by the jungle.
“Villages and rice fields are covered with jungle and undergrowth,” the bishop said.
“People have lost their life savings. It is going to be an unbearable burden to our people to rebuild,” the bishop told UCA News.
He said he saw the final battlefield where Tamil Tiger rebels had been cornered by government forces and also visited devastated villages nearby.
He described a barren landscape:
• Church buildings are demolished.
• Religious statues are all damaged.
• Rice fields are overgrown with shrubs.
• Herds of cattle and goats have disappeared.
• Homes have been reduced to rubble.
• Heaps of burned vans, buses, cars and motor cycles clog the roads
An emotional Bishop Savundaranayagam wondered whether civil life could be restored.
The Tamil prelate also traveled with the army to the farming villages of Mankulam, Oddusuddan and Puthukudiyiruppu.
The government announced recently that people would be resettled and places of worship reconstructed, work which had already begun, according to Pandu Bandaranayaka, the Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs and Moral Upliftment.
But the scale of the task is enormous.
Jaffna diocese and the nearby Mannar diocese have 148 abandoned churches. Apart from those hit by the fighting, some churches inundated by the 2004 tsunami have not yet been renovated.*
*This paragraph has been corrected. The earlier version inadvertently suggested Mannar diocese alone has 148 abandoned churches.
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