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CFA enters into 2543 days today. |
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| 'Still' Speaks |
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| Hero's day Statement |
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Commendable Quote | |
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 Europe which has a total population of 800 million is made up of 45 language based nation states. South Asia which has a total population of one billion, (1000 million) is comprised of four states. Who is preventing and therefore benefiting by limiting new nation-states in South Asia?
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| December HR Release |
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Fifteen year old Ashok’s commitment to his tsunami affected family“I was away at tuition class. The tsunami swept my entire family, father, mother, and three brothers and dropped them in the jungles. Mother died without recovering from her unconscious state. My baby brother’s body was never recovered. Father suffered a stroke ten days later and needs full time care. I stopped school to take care of my father” says Ashok now 17.Ashok was 15 when the Boxing day tsunami hit the eastern coast of the island. Ashok was studying for his GCE OL at that time. “I kept my mother in the Jaffna hospital. She was unconscious for three days. On the fourth day she spoke and then she passed away”. Ten days after his wife’s death, Ashok’s father Arunthavarasa suffered a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body.
“I kept my father in the Jaffna hospital for three months. They told us to take my father to Colombo hospital. We couldn’t because we did not have the means for it. We went to the Ponnambalam hospital in Mullaithivu. He is better now in the sense that he can feed himself. But he has no control of his bladder or bowel movement. That is why I am unable to go to school” says Ashok. The family had suffered similar fate many times before and after the tsunami. Ashok’s father Arunthavarasa was a fisherman supporting his young family in 1990. With young Ashok just a baby, the family displaced from their home in Vaththirayan in the east coast of Jaffna. In 1990 the reason for displacement was aerial bombing by the Sri Lankan Air Force. The young family moved to Chempianpatru, also in the east coast of Jaffna, where they stayed for seven months with relatives. They moved back to their home in Vaththirayan in 1991. A few months later the family displaced again to escape shelling by the Sri Lankan Military that had just landed. This time they returned to their home in Vaththirayan only a year later. In 1996 they displaced yet again, this time to Maththalan in Mullaithivu because they feared roundup by the Sri Lankna military that had moved near their village. They lived in the Maththalan jungles in makeshift huts put up with forest sticks. This time they had three children and life was hard without any earning. This life in forest stretched out for almost five years. They returned home only 5 years later in 2002. Within a couple of years they were again swept away by the tsunami. Young Ashok stopped school to take on the family responsibility, providing full care to his now disabled father. Family lived in temporary tsunami shelters build by international agencies. They did not get a permanent home as promised to the tsunami victims.
The saviour to the family is the income Ashok’s grandmother receives from the LTTE as the standard payment to Maveerar families. Her daughter is a Maveera (LTTE fallen hero). Grandma’s husband also died in the tsunami. In August this year the family displaced again to 10th Milepost junction in Tharpamuram in Mullaithivu to escape Sri Lankan military shelling. They live again in a makeshift hut in a relative’s back yard. “We get very little relief here. TRO which used to provide relief is now unable to do so. If my mothers income stops that is it. Ours will be like those in Jaffna, starving” says Arunthavarasa.
25 December 2006
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