The photo above shows the view from the Sri Lankan Independence Memorial Hall in Colombo. The flag flying is the Buddhist flag. I took the photo last November. The Memorial Hall is very much a centre of national events in Sri Lanka. Annual Independence celebrations are held there. It is a very peaceful place. When I visited, children played in the hall while families sat admiring the sunset.
That peacefulness is very much a keynote of Sri Lanka. The majority Buddhist religion is pervasive in its emphasis on meditation and spiritual development. The people of Sri Lanka are generally very peaceful, easy-going and welcoming to strangers. While I was there, there was a full blown constitutional crisis ongoing, with the President and Prime Minister involved in a stand-off which was eventually settled (in the Prime Minister’s favour) by the Supreme Court. If you weren’t reading the news, you wouldn’t have known that anything was awry – life went on peacefully and cheerfully as usual across the country.
It is cruel blow that such a generally peaceful people, albeit recovering from a bloody civil war, should suffer the unspeakable horrors of the last few days, and that such horrors should be shared with visitors.
Our hearts go out to the nation of Sri Lanka and particularly to all those affected by the Easter atrocities.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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One Comment
I’m very disappointed that, in a statement about an attack deliberately targeted at Christians for their religion, Paul somehow managed to avoid mentioning the ‘Ch’ word.
The mention of Buddhists is even odder; imagine if in the horrendous attack targeted at Muslims in New Zealand Lib Dem Voice had released a statement failing to mention the Muslims targeted at all, but talking about the majority Christian population of the country. They would have been rightly criticized
Bizarre.