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Voices of hope and doubt echo as the blue and white train takes the message from Colombo to Vavuniya
Peace on track
By Feizal Samath
Children waved, women - washing clothes on stones alongside village streams - looked up with amusement while rice farmers with sarongs tucked at their waists raised their heads as Sri Lanka's first peace train chugged towards the north.

To many residents, the train - colourfully painted with peace signs and symbols hoping to raise the country's peace process to higher levels - reflected little more than curiosity. But in weeks, perhaps months, according to the organisers, the diesel-powered train to Vavuniya, about 250 miles from Colombo, would mean much more.

"People on the railroad and at railway stations would hopefully recognise this as Sri Lanka's peace train and what it symbolises," noted Sujeevan Perera, programme director of the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust (NTT) which organised the project with financial assistance from the Canadian International Development Agency.

It is an encouraging step in the government's efforts to end the ethnic conflict which has raged for nearly 20 years and cost innumerable damage plus the loss of some 64,000 lives since 1983.

"Many villagers are thankful for the tranquillity in village homes as there are fewer sons and daughters coming in body bags. There is relief all around," said Sunil Shantha, a railway employee and leader of a railway union, who was travelling on the peace train.

Most soldiers who died fighting with the rebels are sent home in body bags that carry their shattered remains. Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council says that in the past five months of relative calm, some 1,500 lives have been saved.

"We normally have an average of 10 people dying as a result of the war. This is a tremendous saving in terms of human life due to the ceasefire," he said.

However the lack of a wider civil society movement - apart from smaller initiatives like the peace train - in promoting peace, is seen as a serious drawback in the current process.

"We need to create a civil movement towards peace and that is absent unlike in previous occasions when there was a peace process," noted Ven. Baddegama Samitha, from a temple in Baddegama.

He said that due to the peace process being shrouded in secrecy, people were unaware of what was happening and showed little interest. "There is a public vacuum and that's not a good thing. People's participation is essential if the peace process is to succeed," the monk, who is also an opposition parliamentarian, said while travelling on the peace train.

Film maker Vasantha Obeysekera, also an invitee on the peace train, reflected on the conflict, saying: "This is a futile war. Sinhalese youth are getting killed. Tamil youth are getting killed. No one benefits."

The well-known film maker, who has produced some films and documentaries on peace and conflict themes often highlighting the futility of war, noted that the younger generation was far less communal minded than the older folk. "The older generation is imprisoned by caste, creed and race conflicts and they find it hard to alter their views."

He blamed Colombo's intelligentsia for "being cowards and without a backbone" as they had failed to put pressure on politicians to end the conflict. "Except for some artistes like us and some intellectuals, few people in Colombo are ready to stand up and say enough is enough."

Somasunderam Sriskandarajah, a 60-year-old Tamil pensioner, said the peace train gave some hope for the future but he had doubts whether the peace would last. "It has never worked in the past," he said, looking out of a window of one of the carriages.

Another Tamil woman passenger, who planned to take a bus on the journey to Jaffna from Vavuniya and declined to be named, was also not too optimistic. "I can't see this (peace process) getting us anywhere. I hope I am wrong."

Some 60-odd artists belonging to a group called Artists for Peace spent two days painting the train in the Colombo railway yard over the weekend before the peace train's first journey on Monday. More than 250 litres of paint were used. The Railway Department first painted the train white, over its normal red and the roof blue.

"We wanted blue and white to reflect the skies while the artists painted flowers, doves, other birds, butterflies on the engine and carriages. These are pictures that children like and we wanted to show children and innocence in the messages of peace," said Kumudini Samuel, an NTT trustee and peace activist as she looked closely at a message that read "For tomorrow without fear of war. Give peace another chance today."

More carriages are expected to be painted by artists with peace symbols and images and fitted to trains plying on other routes to the south and central regions. The NTT is hoping, with the help of grassroots groups, to encourage children to paint carriages in suburban towns.

"This is an effort that needs the people's participation. The peace train should be the work of the people not individuals," said NTT's Sujeevan Perera. The trust was set up last year in memory of TULF MP Neelan Tiruchelvam, who died in a bomb blast triggered by the rebels. At that time Tiruchelvam had helped draft a government proposal aimed at providing reasonable autonomy to the northeast region.

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