She tried to hold them back in vain, but slowly tears streaked down the cheeks of W. M. Priyanthi as she waited near the tsunami memorial in Pereliya, a southern coastal village 90km south of the capital, Colombo.
Her son and daughter were by her side, motionless, quiet. The family had gathered for the third successive year to remember the two minutes that changed their lives in a matter of seconds in December 2004.
It was hard for Priyanthi to relate the tragedy that befell her sister and her two children on that 26 December. “They were on their way to our place, they were in the train when the tsunami hit,” she told IRIN. Her sister and her two children were among over 1,500 people who perished when the train was knocked over by huge waves.
The train disaster with its massive loss of life attracted the world’s media attention, and Pereliya came to symbolise the worst suffering of the Sri Lankan people from the Asian tsunami.
Priyanthi had been at the memorial at 9.25am on 26 December last year and the year before. It is the officially designated time when the waves began lashing Sri Lankan coastal communities. This year she made it there early to avoid the rush and waited for other relatives of hers to arrive. She clutched a bouquet of red flowers.
This year, however, the commemorating crowd was small and there were no government or non-governmental dignitaries at Pereliya - unlike in 2005 when the first-year commemoration was held under the patronage of President Mahinda Rajapakse.
Lasting pain
“I can’t forget the pain,” Priyanthi told IRIN. “I couldn’t even recover my sister’s body. Who knows, she may be buried there,” she said pointing towards a sandy shrub where bodies were buried en mass, just next to the plot where the memorial now stands.
As 9.25am approached not more than three dozen people were in attendance at the memorial. They included several journalists and a couple of curious tourists. “We seem to have forgotten the tragedy very, very quickly,” Pallane Dhamarathana, a Buddhist monk who led the commemoration, told IRIN.
At the designated time, he gathered the little group of mourners and chanted from sacred scripts in memory of the dead. “It is the least we can do,” the monk said. “So many died here, there was so much death, so much pain,” adding, “We should not forget this, ever.”
According to government statistics, the tsunami left 35, 000 dead and caused approximately US$3 billion in damage nationwide.
Interest waning
Some of the mourners felt that this year, government as well as relief agencies had shown less enthusiasm to organise events to mark the tragedy.
“In the last two years there was a lot of attention on the tsunami, there was lot of support by the government and others,” R. P. Magaleen who lost her two daughters in the train and never recovered their bodies, told IRIN. “This year there’s nothing!”
A tsunami commemoration event was held this year by President Rajapakse in Matara District, 70km further down the southern highway, where he dedicated a new six-lane bridge, the country’s widest.
In a speech at the event, he called for national unity, saying: “As we were united in rising from the destruction caused by the tsunami… let us also build an era of peace and harmony where people of all communities, regardless of caste, creed or religion, live together as one nation.”
The country has been beset by violence as a result of renewed conflict between government forces and Tamil Tigers since December 2005. Many observers say it has significantly slowed the post-tsunami reconstruction process in conflict areas of the country.
Some of the victims’ relatives at the Perilya commemoration felt that it was inevitable that the national interest in the tragedy would wane. “It has been three years, it has dominated the headlines, maybe people are fed up with it,” A. P. Manoj, who counts 17 dead from the tsunami in his extended family, said. “If there is less attention on the anniversary maybe it will help to heal the wounds
“Interest has shifted elsewhere, with the war and politics and it seems a long time ago,” Sugala Kumari, a coordinator at the People’s Planning Commission, a non-governmental organisation that assesses public sentiment on the reconstruction effort, told IRIN. “Unfortunately, next year there will be even less interest than this.”
“It is painful, but it is time to move on,” Manoj said as he looked back at the memorial.
Forgetting, however, did not come easy to Priyanthi, as her children and other relatives gathered around the mass burial site; she broke out in anguished cries. Her daughter tried to console her, but she fainted and fell next to the red anthuriums she had placed on the mass grave a few minutes earlier.
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions