In the country of Sri Lanka, we had noticed a massive problem with racism and xenophobia for a long time. Sri Lanka started by the native Indians who immigrated; there are two major ethnic groups, the Sinhalese and the Tamils, major religions are Hinduism and Buddhism. For many years, the country has not formed any identity. The people of this island had taken cultural traits from India. This country has no ideal religion or ethnicity. In 1983, an internal war happened and was caused by the Tamils, to be specific, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Until 2009 the civil war has ended, and 40,000 had died.
With the diversity, the country dealt many problems with racism and even lead to the UN in 2014, there was an adopted resolution on “Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka (A/HRC/25/L.1/Rev.1)”. In these few years, we had decided to enforce the idea of human rights, drafted bills for those who victimized. In 1989 we formed the IMADR Asian Committee and joined the community to fight racism. Since after the war. People are hugely affected by internal conflict and who are internally displaced persons (IDP). So, the IMADR Asian Committee decided to help them by providing and taking care of them.
Even though Sri Lanka isn’t the best right now as Tamil people are being treated as second class and abused by the authorities. It is all because of the internal war that happened in Sri Lanka that we have a great belief in what the Tamil acts. There were bombings and attacks as the suicide bombing that targeted Christian Church and luxury hotels — ten years of peace, disappeared by an explosion. Then there is a bombing clash between Muslims and Sinhalese. The conflict cannot continue and become another civil war, this must prevented, and there are committees, and even people are trying from continuing.
- May Hseuh
