Sri Lanka: “The life of my husband can’t be brought back”
There is no point in fighting and claiming more precious lives of the people and making more widows like me
( March 8, 2018, Kandy, Sri Lanka Guardian) Thilaka Pushpakumari, widow of the 41-year-old driver Kumarasinghe said that fighting can’t bring back the life of her husband. “There is no point in fighting and claiming more precious lives of the people and making more widows like me. My husband was so innocent and everyone in the village adored him.
Working as a driver, he looked after me, his mother, our disabled son and the daughter. We have become so helpless now. We have no future now. Honestly, we don’t have much hopes and confidence that the Government will support us,” she said.
The ugly head of racism rose its head recently in Digana and Teldeniya areas following a death of H.G. Kumarasinghe, a 41-year-old father of two, who succumbed to head injuries sustained during an assault.
Even though this was an isolated incident, which had nothing to do with racism, the incident later raised fears of renewed ‘racist campaigns’ and violence targeting minority communities.
Social media which has turned itself into powerful source of media in Sri Lanka, has been used by many parties with the aim of spreading false messages and painting a ‘racist’ picture regarding the incident.
The road incident took place on February 22 (Thursday). An exchange of words between the late Kumarasinghe, who was driving his lorry accompanied by his assistant, and four other people, who were travelling in a three-wheeler , occurred when the two vehicles met face to face, while taking turns in a junction in Teldeniya. The seconds-long argument had led to a brutal attack. Before the attack, the lorry driver had not allowed the three-wheeler driver to overtake his vehicle and the two vehicles were stopped near a filling station in Teldeniya where the four people in the three-wheeler started assaulting Kumarasinghe. Kumarasinghe who sustained severe head injuries was admitted to Teldeniya Hospital from where he was later transferred to Kandy General Hospital. After nearly 10 days in the Intensive Care Unit, Kumarasinghe succumbed to his injuries on 3 March (Saturday). Subsequently, reprisal attacks, which triggered off on March 5 afternoon, set the Digana town ablaze. Dozens of shops were burnt down causing colossal damage to their owners.
By March 5 evening, Police curfew was declared in Digana and schools were declared closed in the entire Kandy District. Over 1000 policemen, 300 STF personnel and 300 Army troops were deployed in Kandy to control the situation and prevent it from turning into an inter-communal catastrophe.
( The writer works for Colombo based Daily Mirror from where we adopted the above excerpts from the article first appeared)
