War and Grief, Faith and Healing in a Tamil Catholic Fishing Village in Northern Sri Lanka Kaori Hatsumi Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Kaori Hatsumi All rights reserved ABSTRACT War and Grief, Faith and Healing in a Tamil Catholic Fishing Village in Northern Sri Lanka Kaori Hatsumi Sri Lanka‘s thirty-year civil war brought about tremendous suffering upon the lives of the Tamil civilian population in northern Sri Lanka. In May 2009, when the war ended, not a single civilian remained within the Vanni, the former rebel territory, as they had all been killed or displaced. More than one hundred thousand civilians were dead or disappeared and three hundred thousand survivors were held in so-called ―transit camps‖ without freedom of movement. The data for this dissertation is based on extensive anthropological field research conducted in northern Sri Lanka during the last phase of the civil war and into its aftermath over a period of two and a half years between July 2007 and May 2010. It sets out to explain the experience of suffering among a Tamil Catholic fishing community, which, due to the war, had been displaced from its coastal home, Perunkalipattu in 1999, and has been relocated to the City of Santa Marta, an internal-refugee camp. Between July 2007 and May 2009, this community was part of the four hundred thousand Tamil civilians trapped in so-called ―no-fire zones,‖ where they suffered violence at the hands of the state as well as the rebels. This dissertation takes a unique approach to the exploration of the community‘s suffering by incorporating the effects of the war on the community‘s Catholic devotion and the possibility of healing of traumatic experiences of war through that devotion. The study thereby opens up a new field of anthropological investigation of displacement, social suffering, faith and healing. It contributes, among others, to the anthropology of violence, South Asia studies, and the anthropology of Christianity, and provides unique materials for anthropological reflection on ethnographic writing and the art of fieldwork. CONTENTS List of Illustrations ii Acknowledgments iii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Village and Camp 27 Chapter 3 War, April 2009 65 Chapter 4 Grief, November 2009 113 Chapter 5 Burial, November 2009 142 Chapter 6 Easter in Perunkalipattu, April 2010 176 Chapter 7 Conclusions 212 Bibliography 227 i LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1 Map of Northern Province and the Route of Displacement 3 Figure 2 Map of Sri Lanka 16 Figure 3 Map of Mannar District 26 Figure 4 ―Perunkalipattu‖ 31 Figure 5 A framed image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus 213 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 0819336. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. In addition, the author received financial support from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (International Travel Fellowship). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions of this dissertation are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies or the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This dissertation documents one of the cruelest human tragedies that the world witnessed in the 2000s: the suffering of a civilian population trapped in the fighting between the state and the rebels in Northern Sri Lanka. Without the individuals who supported me intellectually as well as through friendship for the past nine years, I would not have been able to document the tragedy that befell the people of Northern Sri Lanka nor to write this dissertation. First I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Valentine Daniel for bringing me to New York from Japan in 2005. As my advisor at Columbia, he has led me through the process of academic training with care, patience, and intellectual support. Secondly, I would like to thank Prof. Elizabeth Povinelli, without whose advice, my work would have lacked intellectual and theoretical value. My sincere thanks goes also to Prof. Paul Kockelman, who, since my very first years at the department, supported me as a great teacher and a friend. Prof. Barnard Bate read all iii of my earlier manuscripts and encouraged me to write. Without his support, I would have stopped writing long ago. And last but not least, my sincere thanks goes to Prof. Sharika Thiranagama, who valued my work against all odds, and saw in me a fellow scholar. I thank the people of ―Perunkalipattu,‖ both Catholics and Muslims, for welcoming me into their homes, permitting me to remain in their camps, and sharing with me the stories of their lives. I thank especially ―Vera,‖ ―Isabel,‖ ―Peter,‖ and ―Tambi‖ for giving me shelter and food. I thank ―Andreas‖ and ―Savio‖ for permitting me to write about some of the most personal aspects of their lives. I also thank ―Gabriella‖ for all intellectual conversations we had about the living conditions of the people in Northern Sri Lanka. It is for them to judge whether I have done justice to them and their loved ones in my writing. The names of these individuals as well as the names of the village and the camps appear in pseudonyms in this dissertation. Throughout my stay in Northern Sri Lanka, I am greatly indebted to Sister Nichola Emmanuel, who, from our first meeting in 2003, until the very end of my extended fieldwork in 2010 provided me with shelter and care. Without the risks and responsibilities she undertook on my behalf, I would not have courage to conduct my fieldwork. I am deeply indebted as well to Rev. Father ―Augustine‖ (pseudonym) and Rev. Father V.P. in Mannar. Father V.P., like Sister Nichola, always welcomed me and gave me shelter. I thank the Bishop of Mannar, Most Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph, for my stay among the people of ―Perunkalipattu‖ in Mannar. My heartfelt thanks goes also to the people of Al-Mannar Camp in Kalpitiya (Puttalam) and the people of Munnakkaraya in Negombo. My fieldwork among these Muslim and Tamil- speaking Sinhalese communities broadened the scope of this project. I thank especially Mohamed Casim Abdulla Sahib and his family in Al-Mannar Camp and John Cyril Fernando and his family in Munnakkaraya. Both these families ―adopted‖ me as one of their own and iv shared with me whatever they had, which was not even enough for their well-being. This dissertation and all of my work to come will be for all the people who helped me in Sri Lanka— in Mannar, Puttalam and Negombo—and for their children and grandchildren. Additionally, in Colombo, I am indebt to my Sinhala auntie who gave me shelter, food and protection. In New York, I was supported by loving friends. To name a few: Ann Adachi, James Urbom, Margaret Schehl, Ramona Tougas, Gajendran Ayyathurai, Amudha Ganesan, Henry P. Burn and Susan C. Summer, Juana Cabrera, Andy Blanton, Mythri Jegathesan, Elizabeth Gelber, Maya Mikdashi, Manuel Schwab, Thushara Hewage, Joel Lee, and Darryl Wilkinson. A big thanks also to Nathaniel Roberts, Zoe Crossland, Adriana M.Garriga-Lopez and Maria del Rosario Ferro, my best friend. I thank Rainer Habermeier in Germany for his fatherly love; my parents in Japan for the financial support; and my Swiss family for their long-standing friendship. Finally, I thank Jude and his mother Selvin-amma in India, to whom I owe my whole life. v To Jude & (in memory of) Amma vi 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ―[I]f for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.‖—Primo Levi1 ―Before there can be a science of man there has to be the long-awaited demythification and reenchantment of Western man in a quite different confluence of self and otherness.‖ —Michael Taussig2 War in the Vanni The thirty-year conflict between Sri Lankan government forces, dominated by the island‘s Sinhalese majority, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a guerilla group fighting for an independent state for the island‘s Tamil minority, ended in early 2009. When the last battle began in June 2007 in the western part of the Vanni in northern Sri Lanka, there were more than four hundred thousand Tamil civilians living in the rebel territory. By January 2009, government forces, far superior in military power to the rebels, and equipped with forty-thousand ground troops, Kfirs, artilleries and cluster munitions had successfully cornered rebel fighters to a narrow coastal strip in northeastern Vanni called Mullaitivu. The LTTE, in a desperate attempt 1 Primo Levi 1996, 157-8. 2 Taussig 1987, 134-135. 2 to retain its hold on Tamil Eelam (―homeland‖), took all the civilians in its territory as human shields, forbidding them to flee to government territory. As a result, during this last battle in Mullaitivu, the entire Tamil civilian population was trapped with the rebel fighters in so-called ―no-fire zones.‖ The government rained bombs upon both the civilians and the rebel fighters. With the killing of the rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran the war ended on May 18, 2009. By then, more than one in five civilians had been killed and many more disappeared in the ―no-fire zones.‖ This dissertation sets out to explain the effects of Sri Lanka‘s prolonged conflict on the lives of Tamil Catholic fishing villagers, who had been displaced from their native coastal home, Perunkalipattu, by the war in 1999, and have been living in the City of Santa Marta, an internal- refugee camp in Mannar in northwestern Sri Lanka.