Seven years after end of civil war, Sri Lanka treads cautiously on path to peace

For seven years, the ethnic Tamil housewife has waited for news of a son who vanished near the frenzied end of Sri Lanka’s quarter-century-long civil war. After so much time, she has little faith that the Sinhalese-majority government will help solve such mysteries and heal old wounds.

“There is no place I haven’t gone in search of him,” said Shantha, who like many people in this teardrop-shaped tropical island nation goes by one name. She last saw her son in March 2009, when he was 23 years old and injured in the crossfire of fighting. The military promised to take him to safety. She never heard from him again.

“The government just talks about good governance, but no good seems to be coming,” she said, weeping.

For the hundreds of thousands of minority ethnic Tamils like Shantha, the government’s repeated promises of post-war reconciliation ring false, even as authorities take tentative steps toward fulfilling some of them.

Tamil rebels demanding self-rule fought the government from 1983 to 2009 before being crushed by Sri Lanka’s army. While the United Nations counts some 100,000 people killed in the fighting, rights groups believe the number was much higher, including some 40,000 civilians believed to have been killed in the war’s final months.