Spirit in Action

Risking All for Peace & Justice in Sri Lanka

K. M Rukshan (Ruki) Fernando is chair of Rights Now, a collective of human rights defenders in Sri Lanka, monitoring & documenting human rights violations of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Ruki received the Justice & Peace Award from the Bishop Tji Hak Soon Foundation in Korea in 2009, and he works as a columnist on firsthand human rights, justice and peace issues for online citizen journals, newspapers & religious publications. And much more....

Broadcast on:: 23 Jun 2013
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ We've got a great guest for today's Spirit in Action. But first, I wanted to mention a word or two about the work that we do at Northern Spirit Radio. Me, other hosts, the volunteers, are board of directors. On the website, you'll read that Northern Spirit Radio promotes world healing by broadcasting inspirational voices of peace and social justice using the language of personal story, music, and spirituality. Keep parts of that are that we want to share with you inspirational voices. While we need to know the bad things that are happening, and we should be thankful to the folks who expose the defects that need to be addressed, a continuous diet of disaster leads to cynicism and loss of hope. So we do something different when you listen to Spirit in Action. We find people making a difference and share with you their story and their spirit, especially in the hope that it will encourage you to be part of the chain of transformation linking the world together. Today's Spirit in Action guest is a great example of that kind of inspiration. The end of April, Eau Claire, where I live, was fortunate to have a visit from Tlukla Suria, Marius, Ruxian, Fernando, commonly called Ruki, a Sri Lankan human rights activist currently serving as the Chair of Rights Now, a collective of human rights defenders in Sri Lanka. Ruki visited the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, but also spoke at a public presentation hosted by Eau Claire's Unitarian Universalist Congregation. Ruki's work extends well beyond Sri Lanka to other countries in South Asia, like Nepal, Thailand, and the Philippines, providing training and support for workers for peace and justice through nonviolent means. I'll let him explain the full scope of his work in a bit, but first I'd like to thank Reader Webb and Steve Spina for their roles in bringing Ruki to Eau Claire, and for facilitating my interview with him. Right now, I'd like to have you sit in and listen to a few excerpts from his talk at the UU back on April 21, 2013. Here's a tiny bit of what Ruki Fernando shared that night. The primary reason I am very happy always to speak and to talk and have conversations with people from the United States or any other country for that matter is because I strongly believe that human beings generally care about other human beings, whether they are US citizens caring about Sri Lankan citizens or Indians or Malaysians or British, or whether they are Buddhist or Hindus or Ethist or whatever, that we care about each other. So I think that's why I think I find it meaningful to have conversations about what happens in the United States or what happens in Sri Lanka with people who not necessarily have been there. Some of my work in the past has been protecting journalists who are facing life threats. So like, for example, I used to come, I've been lucky to come to the United States like almost once a year and sometimes twice a year in the last several years. So one of the things that I always try to do is to visit some of my friends who are in exile who left Sri Lanka because they felt that they could not live safely in Sri Lanka. So in fact, from here I go to Washington DC to meet one and to New York to meet another good friend. So one of my friends in Washington DC is a journalist who wrote about the war in Sri Lanka. He wrote about children who were recruited forcibly to work as child soldiers. He wrote about the population that faced starvation because of the war, because our government deliberately stopped food from reaching those populations during the war. And this journalist was arrested and detained for almost two years. And he was released primarily because of the massive international pressure. That's what I believe. And in fact, it was very interesting that on 3rd of May 2010, when this journalist was still in detention, your president, President Obama, talked about press freedom and he particularly cited three journalists as examples. One was from China and the other one was my friend. His name is Tissa. So President Obama talked about these three people. I can't remember who was the third one. And for us, that was very important because we thought that was one major reason why this journalist got his freedom. And then when he was actually released, he was very sure that he could not live safely in Sri Lanka. Even if he managed to live safely, he could not behave or he could not write the way he used to write. So he would have to give up his independent style of writing. So he fled Sri Lanka and he lives now in Washington, D.C. Another journalist that I will visit in New York is someone also who came to U.S. in 2010, I think. That journalist also used to write very critical things about our government. And he used to work for a Singales newspaper, one of the local languages that we speak. We have two languages. And he was threatened. He got lots of threats. So he fled to India in 2009. And then after some months, he left with some other journalists. He decided to come back to Sri Lanka because his wife and daughter were still living in Sri Lanka. His other colleagues and friends told him, "Don't go back. No, you'll be in deep trouble if you go back." But he was kind of stubborn. He didn't listen. And he was the only one who went back to Sri Lanka after being in exile for three, four months. And a couple of months after he went back, he was abducted when he was travelling by bus. He was taken to a very lonely place. He was beaten up very badly. And we think that he was left almost to die. But luckily he was found by some coincidence by some people. Very badly beaten up, unable to walk, unable to use his hands. And then he was treated in hospital. And then even after that he was threatened very badly. And then for the second time he decided to go into exile and he came to the US. So that's the story of many of my friends and colleagues actually. So if I go to Paris, if I go to India, if I go to Switzerland, if I go to England, most of the people I visit are these exiled activists and exiled journalists. And for me it is very sad because in a way I have helped some of them to leave actually. That's been part of my work that I try to do to help people who feel unsafe to leave Sri Lanka. But I'm also very sad about the fact that I helped many of these more people with a conscious who cared about other people and who were very courageous and brave to write about the bad things our government was doing. And the bad things that the Tamil tigers, the rebel groups were doing, that these are the people who had to leave Sri Lanka. So in fact I think I've been responsible to send some of the best Sri Lankans out of Sri Lanka. Which is sad. But I hope that the time will come when some day that some of them can come back. Some years back when the rebel group, the Tamil tigers who were fighting, who claimed to fight for the liberation of the minority ethnic community in Sri Lanka. That was the way they looked at things as well. They thought that anyone who was very critical of them should be eliminated. And they had actually killed many such dissenting people, critical people from their own community, who were certainly not with the government. So both these groups who fought the war in Sri Lanka did not like people who criticized them. They did not like peaceful democratic criticism. And the other thing that they both these groups, the government and the rebels did not hesitate to do was to target civilians. And I think you in the United States have had your fair share of bombings, and we've had many of that in Sri Lanka as well. The rebel groups thought that this is a very good way to get attention. And maybe some of them thought that this is a very good way to get revenge. Attacking civilians in trains, in buses, in railway stations, in many places where they were just plain civilians. So there was a time in Sri Lanka, fortunately not now, that parents thought that it's better for the mother and the father to go in different buses to work. Because it was better that if one person would survive, a possible bomb blast. And then at the same time, our government treated all the people from the particular ethnic community, the Tamils, as terrorist suspects. So it was fair game to basically to arrest any Tamil and say that, "Oh, you, I like you to be a terrorist." So you can be arrested, kept in prison for a long time, five years, ten years without any charges. Now you can be tortured, and it's quite fine to be tortured, to be beaten, to have your fingernails removed, to lots of other horrible things, just to get information. Or just for revenge, because someone else belonging to your community would have done, would have been responsible for setting off a bomb. So both sides thought that it's quite okay to attack civilians. And I think the sad thing is that the two ethnic groups, the people all thought it was okay to some extent. Many people thought it was okay. I usually say that we have different ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. And when I say different ethnic groups, I mean that we dress very differently when we don't dress in the western way. Now our traditional dresses are very different. The food we eat is very different. The way we celebrate our weddings are very different. The way we have our funerals are very different. Even now architecture is very different. So that's why we feel that we have very different people. We have very different identities. And the language we speak are very different. One group speaks singleist, the other group speaks Tamil. And we even have different characters for our two languages. They struggled for equality. First, I think in the 1960s in particular, in a very peaceful democratic way, they borrowed, I think, from Gandhi, the terminology. They used the word Satya graha. But they were very badly treated when they had the peaceful protest. And I think that led the failure of peaceful protest led to armed militancy, which as I mentioned later on became very brutal, very violent. This is Spirit in Action, a Northern spirit radio production. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet and this program. And eight years of other programs are available at northernspiritradio.org for listening and download. You can also order CDs of the programs, post comments, find links to our guests, and of course, you can make a donation. And your generous donations make all the difference. Especially, I'd like you to remember to support your local community radio station, bringing you music and news and programs the rest of the media gloss over. Thanks to them for carrying this program. And please show them your appreciation and support. We were just listening to a few brief excerpts from a speech by Ruki Fernando on April 21 hosted by Eau Claire's Unitarian Universalist Congregation. Two days later, I sat down with Ruki, Sri Lankan human rights and peace activist and organizer to fill in the picture of his work and that which motivates and supports him on the front lines of the Sri Lankan conflict. Ruki, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you very much for inviting me and I'm very happy to join. It's wonderful for you to make this trip. I understand you've done a number of trips to the US and I think probably the rest of the world. How did you get started with these international trips? Do you have a special connection that facilitates your visiting throughout the world? Well, I think there are people around the world who are interested in me personally who are concerned about me and interested in what I do. But there are more broadly, there are lots of people in the world who are interested in the people of Sri Lanka and what's happening in Sri Lanka. The bad things and the good things that are being done to fix the bad things. So that's why I get invited to talk about those things. And I'm always very happy to go and talk to people and have conversations. And are you independently rich that you can afford to travel all across the world like this? Not really. I think all my trips overseas, except I think three within Asia, which I've been providing as an organization of a friend like that. Everything else has been paid for by whoever would invite me. I've been very lucky to have that. I was very interested in a number of the things that you said as part of this talk at the Unitarian Universalist congregation. Amongst the things that you didn't talk about that I'd like to hear more about is what are the specifics of this piece work that you're doing? How do you actually do it while you're there? I mean, I know you can come here and talk and that gets some support. Is that your main function or do you go accompaniment? What do you actually do? Well, I think if I wasn't doing anything much back in Sri Lanka, no one would be interested to invite me. I think that's the very simple thing. So most of my work is actually 80%, 90% would be in Sri Lanka. So in the last six years or so, one of the things I've been trying to do is to try to document in detail what's been happening in relation to the war. And after the war in Sri Lanka to the people who were most affected by the war. For example, people who were displaced, people who had family members killed, people who had family members disappeared, people who are in prison and they are family members. So I would go out and talk to these people and sometimes families of those people as well and visit those areas and spend a lot of time in the areas affected by the war, which is particularly the north and eastern part of Sri Lanka. Then I would try to talk about those stories when I go back to my own place. So what I have seen, what I have heard, when I go back to Colombo, my own place, I would talk to my friends, I would talk at conferences or events. I would talk to media sometimes, giving interviews. I would write myself, although I was never a professional journalist. But I basically like to write what I hear, what I feel and think about, what I see in here. And that's the same thing that I essentially do when I travel abroad as well. I talk about these things. But in addition to that, I have also been doing some protection work. You had many people in Sri Lanka who actually had their lives in danger, particularly journalists and human rights activists. Some of them actually happened to be my good friends and colleagues, and that's how I actually got involved in that dimension of my work. Because when a friend of mine, a colleague who was an activist said that, "No, I am scared and I am being hunted. I need a safe place to stay." So I had to respond to that. So I tried to ask around and see where such a possible place could be. And then more and more people asked for that kind of support. And then other people who I didn't know personally and who didn't know me personally also maybe heard that I was involved in doing that kind of work. And they also asked me for support. So we helped large number of people actually essentially hide within Sri Lanka. And some of them I helped to send abroad as well. A couple of them are actually in the US. And I will be visiting them a couple of them later on after my visit here in Eau Claire. And another part of my work has been to physically accompany some of those people. Because if they are scared to travel alone, they feel safer if you have someone to go with them. So I have personally accompanied some of them. I also had a group of friends and colleagues who I used to work very closely with who used to do that kind of accompaniment. We had some people from outside international organizations who used to do that. We had some even members of the diplomatic community in Sklambo who used to help us with that kind of accompaniment. I also used to do training programs on human rights to provide ranging range of people to lawyers to other human rights activists to journalists to students in schools and universities to religious clergy. And then I also ran an internship program where I would welcome and invite young people, particularly those teenagers 18, 19, 20, early 20s to come. Some after school, some in university, some after university. So they can experience some of the work that I was doing. But also the background to the work that I was doing, which was essentially the very tragic and the bad things that has been happening in Sri Lanka. So a very important part of the internship programs was for these young students to see for themselves and hear for themselves. So I would take them along with me to the war affected areas to see the damage that has been done. And I would take them with me when I would visit people affected by the war, political prisoners in prison. So they would have to go to prison to visit them. They would have to meet with families of people who had disappeared or families of people who have been killed. They would have to meet with journalists whose life is at risk. So that was my main focus of the internship program. And after seeing and hearing all those things, I would encourage them to get involved in some small way. At the beginning, when they're with me, they would be working on the things that I would be working with. But some of them have gone on to do their own things afterwards and I'm very happy about that. Some of those students are also from overseas, but I think 80-90% of my interns have been Sri Lankan. That was my main aim. But I also welcomed people from abroad. So part of my work also turned out to be in the last two years or so to facilitate visits by various people. So for example, student groups from the US and also from other countries would contact me and say we like to visit and do some research on people who are displaced in Sri Lanka. People who have disappeared in Sri Lanka are people, journalists who are at risk in Sri Lanka. So I would try to help them to come to Sri Lanka and make arrangements and particularly take them to areas, the war affected areas or arrange interviews with people who are directly being affected, sometimes helping translation. And that has been journalist researchers from international organizations, sometimes even diplomats, sometimes student groups and writers, artists, all kinds of people. In your talk, one of the things that you said is that you're lucky. I mean, a number of the people had to flee the country, go outside and you have a company to help them, help protect them, you have accompanied them. Why do you have special immunity to the forces of repression or suppression in the country? Is there something special about you that is your visibility high enough that they won't bother to take you down? Well, people who are much more prominent as human rights activists as journalists have been killed and have been attacked, much, much more prominent and who have been working for many more years than I have been working. So I don't think that is by itself is a guarantee. But I certainly think my connections locally in Sri Lanka with some church groups, with lawyers and also my international connections with the friends I have, with international organizations that I work with the UN, some of the UN officials I know, some of the diplomats I know. I think acts as a little bit of a deterrent. But I would say very humbly that actually the main reason is that maybe the government thinks that they would be doing more harm to themselves by doing something bad to me, then actually the damage that I do to their work. So that means my work has some effect, but not a very strong effect to do serious damage to the government. So that's why maybe they think that it is better if they allow me to do the little that I'm doing. I'd like it, Ruki, if you could say some of the things about how the government there works. I believe it's been run by Buddhists, at least in the past. And one of the things that we tend to think here in the US is if you're a Buddhist, you're going to be fair and peaceful and you couldn't have problems. So the fact that this conflict in Sri Lanka came up, do the Buddhists have their part in it, as well as the Hindu, perhaps Muslim, the Christian group, which you represent? Is there something that the Buddhists there do wrong? They're not perfect? Well, I have a little bit of understanding of Buddhism. And from my understanding of Buddhism, the way our rulers who are predominantly Buddhists, function is certainly not Buddhist. It's not a Buddhist way. Neither is it a Christian way or a Hindu way or Islamic way or a Sikh way or any other religious faith tradition that I know of. So it's very, because I believe that the Buddhist way, like you said, is very peaceful, non-violent, based on Ahinsam, it's Karuna. I don't certainly see that in the policies and the laws that we have. And I don't see that in the practice and the behavior. I don't think Buddhist rulers could wage a war that was so brutal as we had in Sri Lanka with absolute disregard for civilian lives. I don't think they could take people in rest and detain people without any charges for so long, for years and years. I don't think they would torture people in prison by the way they do in Sri Lanka if they were real Buddhist. One of the questions that sits with me, the government has enough power there that if they don't want to have your voice have ears to hear it, they can make you disappear, they can close you down, they maybe have laws about what can be presented in the media. How does that function, what limitations are there, and in the US we're used to thinking we have freedom of speech? Well, we do have freedom of speech to some extent. The problem is we have very little freedom after speech, especially if that speech, whether it's writing or talking or expressing views in another way, happens to be very critical of the present government, then we have very little freedom. So, there are people who are still very critical of the government who like to write and report as they see it and as they feel and think, but they are very, very few. Because in the past the government has killed many journalists, many activists who spoke their mind, who reported as they saw it and as they heard it, and they have threatened many others, assaulted the journalist very seriously, they have put journalists and human rights activists in prison. So, because of all that many people who managed to survive have subjected themselves to self-censorship. They think why should we write all of these things and suffer so much and be killed is better to a softer line, and not to say things as we see it and as we hear it. And they also face pressure from their family members. There are many mothers and fathers and husbands and wives and even children who tell their journalistic or activist family member, don't do all of these things. You will get killed, see what happened to X and see what happened to Y and Z. Do you want that to happen and do you want us to suffer? My family members also tell me that. So, there is pressure also from within your own family and your own friends not to go to that extent. One of the things that you mentioned in your talk is that maybe you are a little bit different than the average activist and that you don't have wife and kids. And so, maybe that gives you a little bit more freedom, you have maybe brother's sister's parents, but I guess if you're worrying about your kids, would you feel less free to be outspoken, to risk disappearing if you had kids? Well, I think it's difficult to put myself into that situation and answer that. I think I'll have to play it by year if that situation comes. But what I do know is that many people who have kids who are my friends and colleagues are actually very, very worried and that always becomes a factor. But then the other part of it is that there are many activist and journalists who have kids and who have spouses, husband or wife or partner and then they are still as active or even more active than me. So, I guess it works a lot on the individual's own position. And there are family members who are very supportive. I know some family members like some parents, some children, some partners, they really encourage people to go out and do what they would like to do. What they would like to do, what they are conscious tells them to do, what they believe in. What are the means for you to get out your message? Is it all word of mouth or do you have access to TV, radio, newspapers, magazines? Are all those places where you can put out your word? Because as you say, the government doesn't like to have stuff that's critical of it out there. And even in the US, we don't recognize how much self-censorship as well as perhaps government influence plays in there. So, what are the ways in which you can get out the word? Well, I write quite regularly to a Citizens Journalism website in Sri Lanka. So, I think that's one of my main ways of getting word out. But some of my articles, interviews have also been carried in mainstream newspapers in Sri Lanka. Although, that's very, very rare. A couple of times I've gone on TV. Again, that's very, very rare from my memory only twice actually in the last six years. But I also get involved in lots of other smaller discussions and conversations like 10 people, 50 people, 100 people. Where I give talks like public seminars, workshops in schools, villages, in churches. So, that's another means that we get the word out. We also try to have like some public events like exhibitions, commemorations, which are more means of getting a message out. Do most of the people in Sri Lanka know or believe what you have to say about the abuses by the government? By the tunnels or do they all vast swaths of the population? Do they just believe that the other people did some bad things? They don't understand that my people did bad things. I think you're very correct. Most people in Sri Lanka, particularly the Singalese community, very rightly believe about the abusers committed by the Tamil militants, particularly the LTT or known as the Tamil Tigers. But many Singalese people don't believe that the government and the military, which is predominantly Singalese, committed abusers. So, it's very difficult to convince people that actually the military is responsible for a large number of abusers, particularly against the Tamil people, but also a number of Singalese as well, who have been critical of the government. But there's also large number of the population, society, that think that some of these abusers may have been committed, but it's justified because these terrorists were so bad that was the only way to deal with it. And in that process, collateral damage or killing innocent civilians, arresting them, torturing them, disappearing them is inevitable, so that we should not complain about such collateral damage to innocent civilians in the name of the greater good. So, there is this part of the population as well who think that there is no other, there would have been no other alternative. And what were the complaints, the concerns, the demands of the LTT, the Tamil Tigers, what was it they were looking for? Is it independence or what did they actually hope to achieve? Well, the primary demand was a separate state. They wanted a separate country. That was what they were fighting for. But I want to take the chance to elaborate a little bit more. I think the Tamil community in Sri Lanka was always discriminated. They were harassed and there were various atrocities committed against them, particularly in areas such as language, education, employment, land. So, they are, although they are minority in the whole of Sri Lanka, the northern province, the majority are Tamil. And the majority of the eastern province is also Tamil, historically. So, they wanted a degree of self-governance for those two areas. They did not want a separate country. In fact, in the 1960s, when they have a peaceful democratic legitimate protest for equality and for power sharing, the demand was for a federal system of power sharing autonomy for those two regions. And the name of the main Tamil party, the political party was also the federal party. And the name itself suggests what they were demanding for and asking for. But because the peaceful and the non-violent protest were crushed very violently by the government in the 60s, early 70s, and because there was no sensitivity and no response for a demand for power sharing and autonomy, these two, the demand for power sharing autonomy became a demand for a separate state. And the peaceful way of struggling turned into a violent way of struggling with armed groups coming up. So, I think it is important to understand that context, although personally, I still do not feel that a separate country is a viable option right now for us. And I still, I strongly believe that the violent and the armed way of struggling does not work, and it is not the correct way. But I think it's important to understand how those two came about and what went before that. In your talk, you referred, Ruki, to how very differently the end of the war is viewed. By some, it's viewed as, "Okay, we've got peace, we're no longer struggling." As some people, it's viewed as defeat and annihilation. So, yeah, we've got peace because all of the people who had our concern were killed. How widespread, by what percent of the population are those various viewpoints held? I think a large number of the singleist population, the vast majority of the singleist population believes that the ending of the war is something to celebrate. And the vast majority of the Tamil population believes it's something to mourn and grieve. And then there is the exceptional few which believe otherwise in both communities. But by and large, the singleist community turns the line of the government. The singleist is about three-quarter of the population, and the Tamil's are about, I think, sixteen, seventeen percent of the population now. Could you say something about the organization or how organizationally this, I guess, self-examination and peace work is carried out through the nation. Is it just individuals here and there doing this? I mean, you have people you work with, you certainly know other activists. Can you work as an organization or does the government clamp down as soon as you're part of an organization? Well, there has been organizations like nongovernmental organizations that have been established a long time ago. Like the organization I was working from for five years, 2007 to 2012, was established, I think, in 1982. So, they have been there for a long time, and there are many such organizations in the capital Colombo, but even in the war affected areas like Jaffna in the North, even in other parts of the country. And most of these organizations have full-time staff working, like I worked full-time as a staffer for five years. But then there are also other voluntary organizations who don't have staff, who don't have even an office maybe, but who are members and people who are interested who are part of that movement or that group work. So, it's a combination of all these things. Then we do have some professional organizations like groups of lawyers, groups of journalists who get together and form their organization, groups of judges, trade unions, student organizations, there are faith-based organizations, there are interfaith organizations. So, there are a variety of groups, very diverse groups, and we have managed to work despite the restrictions and the threats and intrusions from the government. Of course, I know you grew up Catholic, identifies a Christian, which in some ways put you religiously in extreme minority in the country. I also wondered, in the U.S., I think because there's been a government hype really, about how bad Muslims are, that the Islamic faith is somehow a warrior faith that all they want to do is holy war, so they go and kill people. The Islamic portion of Sri Lanka is pretty small, I think. Do they tend one way or another? Do they just tend to stay out of the issues? Is there some kind of united voice or position that they carry within the nation? Well, I have very close Muslim friends and I have worked very closely with them. But I think Muslims, by and large, in Sri Lanka, in the context of the war and the conflict have been victims. They were not asking for anything like the Tamils, at the beginning of the war. They just wanted to be left alone and do their work, carry on with their lives. But the Tamil militants, particularly the LTT, has been very violent towards the Muslims. There was about almost, I think, 100,000 Muslims living in the northern province. And in 1990, the LTT asked all of them to leave. It was like ethnic cleansing. And then the LTT also attacked mosques where Muslim people were praying and killed many of them. So the Muslims, in many way, were victims of the war. And in that context, they tried to say that no, our aspirations, our needs should also be taken into consideration. So now, for example, they are trying hard to go back to the northern province after the end of the war. And they are asking for assistance and they are also appealing to the Tamil community to recognize the fact that they were chased away and to welcome them back. So it's not only providing them the physical housing and that financial assistance to start livelihoods, but it's also the more emotional mental kind of feeling and that they are looking for a feeling of being welcomed back from a place that they were very unjustly and very tragically chased away from. And the Muslims are about eight percent of the population, I think. And they are a little bit unique because they identify themselves as ethno-religious group in Sri Lanka. They identify themselves as a particular ethnic community. And they say, "We are not singlies. We are not Tamils. Don't say we are singlies or don't say we are Tamil." Some of the Muslims speak Singalese. Some speak Tamil. Some speak both. Some speak English as well. But they say that is a language we speak. That does not mean we are Singalese or Tamils. We are Muslims. Whereas for the others, for Singalese, there are Buddhists and Christians. For the Tamils, there are Hindus and Christians. And then again, Christians are the religious community in Sri Lanka that cuts across both the Singalese and the Tamils. That brings me to something that is really important for me to understand, Rooki. And that is how you got involved in this. As you mentioned in your talk, there are plenty of Christians who don't take your point of view. Perhaps they react very strongly against your point of view and wish you would shut up. So, how did you get so involved with this? Is this something you get from your parents? Is it church teaching? Or is there some seminal experiences that changed your point of view? My involvement started with being part of a student group called YCS, Young Christian Students. So, I was a member for about five years while I was in school. And then after that, I worked about three, four years as a volunteer. And then later on, I also had the chance to work full-time as the Asian coordinator, at which time I was based in the Philippines and traveled a lot in Asia. So, I think that was my starting point. And I was also very lucky to encounter some mentors, particularly Christian clergy. There was a one priest called Father Tisa Balasuri, who passed away in Jana Viridesya, who was very dear to me and who was certainly one of my mentors. And there were many others like that. There were people I had not met, but I had only read about. So, they all had a big influence on me. There were certainly church teachings, Catholic social teachings, and the Biblical various things in the Bible. But the interesting thing is that I used to go to Sunday school, follow Catechism. I used to follow learned Christianity in my school as a religious subject. My parents were Catholic, very devoted Catholics. But I only started to learn about Catholic social teachings, about the liberation dimension of Christianity, about loving your neighbor and about social justice and all that, after I joined the YCS, the student group. So, it is almost a very wealth-kept secret of the broader Catholic church. I never heard about this when I went to Mass every day, every Sunday. I also used to work in the church as an altar server and all that, but that wasn't what inspired me. I also grew up Catholic, and I actually had a very good experience of it. Like you, I didn't hear a lot about that social dimension, although there is a whole strong portion of Catholicism in the United States, which is very peace and justice activist, and very involved in that. So, I know that that portion existed and exists, and I'm very thankful for it. One of the things that I found as I went on, and one of the reasons I became a Quaker, is my theology, it didn't match my theology that I internally was discovering. Does the theology play much in your view? I mean, to some degree, as you mentioned in the talk, there are good people, Buddhist and atheist and everyone doing good work. Do you think that Catholicism plays some important part in understanding, motivating you and supporting you in this work? Certainly, you know, I think it's my faith is what gives me motivation and also gives me strength, particularly when I feel very upset and threatened, and it's what keeps me going. And also the broad community. I work with some church-based groups, not Catholics, but also Anglicans and Methodists and others, more ecumenically. And there are lay people, women, men, priests, even bishop, who is very supportive towards my work, with whom I work very closely with. And I actually think that my strong links with some parts of the institutional church gives me also some physical safety. And in fact, when I was facing physical threats, there were many church institutions which offered me shelter. And many of the people that I have helped to hide, Buddhist, atheist and all of them, Hindus, I have asked help from church institutions and may have been many priests, many sisters, many lay people who have been willing to offer them shelter. Of course, many have refused because they were scared. But I would like to highlight the many, maybe not so many, in the overall context, a small percentage in the overall context, but still a significant number who have been willing to do that and who offer me and many others support. And together we offer each other support, I think. I want to come back to talk about Buddhists again. We have this perception in the United States. And I think it's a perception you share that Buddhism teaches this peaceful way. So it's all the more lamentable that people who represent themselves as Buddhists, in positions of power, and we think power corrupts, right, that they, as Buddhists, are doing horrific things. On the more local level, the Sangalese that you know, who are Buddhists, who are devout Buddhists, is that likely to raise their concern about the bad things that the government does, or like so many Christians in the United States, they say, "Well, it's Christian. It couldn't be bad." And just, do they engage in that kind of self-examination and governmental examination? Well, unfortunately no, because I think for many Buddhists, they go to the temple, they do the puja, but that's it. They don't apply it to the day-to-day lives and the lives of people around them. And I think he's not a problem limited to Buddhists. I think he's a problem also with Christians and Hindus and people who are Islamic faith and various other faiths. The faith or the religion is very separated from day-to-day lives. So that's why I very strongly believe, and I think I mentioned in one or two of my talks, that it's very important to politicize spirituality, or to politicize our faith, or to politicize our religions, because our religions has to be linked to issues like education, to health care, to housing, to war and peace and all of that, to gun control or to immigrants or refugees. All of that is very linked to our faith and to our religion and our spirituality. So that is what I mean by saying, politicize religions and spirituality. And on the other hand, the challenge is then to make our, to spiritualize our politics so that our political decisions, our decision-makers, our laws, our policies, our practices, our institutions reflect Buddhist values, our Christian values, our Hindu values, which will care about all people, which will treat with all people equally, which will respect the dignity of each and every person, irrespective of that person's color or religion or anything. And for me, it is very easy to reflect about that from a Christian perspective, because for me as a Christian, I think I should live well in this life, and when I finish this life, I'm going to be asked, "What did you do to the person who was hungry? Why did you do to the person who was in prison unjustly?" I'm not going to be asked, "How many times did you go to church? How many hours did you pray?" And I'm not going to be asked, "What was the religion of the prison at prisoner? Was he a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Christian?" I'm not going to be asked, "The person who was hungry? Was he or she a Buddhist or a Hindu or Islam? Was he a Sri Lankan or an American?" Those are not questions that I'm going to be asked according to my religion. I'm just going to be asked, "The person who was hungry, the person who was in prison, what did you do?" You probably get some pushback from some of my listeners. Some of the folks who listened to spirit and action, while very much on the same page with you with respect to peace and justice. I'm sure that many of my listeners probably validly think that religion is too easily used to manipulate the masses. You've certainly heard the phrase, "I've heard it far too much from my own comfort." God bless America. God bless America obviously has this other side of the statement that isn't completed. And nobody else. I mean, it's like bless us and we pray for victory of our army. Well, that means that we're praying that they lose and get killed. Mark Twain wrote a wonderful short story called "The War Prayer." You should look it up. It's delightful, ironic view of how that prayer looks from the other side, maybe from the divine side. So some of the pushback that you'll get would be people saying, "No, as soon as you put religion in government, including Buddhists in government, it becomes corrupted and it becomes a tool to manipulate the masses." Well, I mean, I don't mean religious as religious clergy or religious institutions should get directly involved in direct governance. What I'm saying is that religious values that we proclaim, or we claim to adhere to, should be reflected in governance. Should be reflected in the laws that we have. So if there's any particular law that we feel is against Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism, we should change that law to make it more Buddhist or make it more Christian. But that effectively means that making our laws care about human beings and treating everyone equally and respecting their dignity and treating everyone as your own brother or sister, as your own daughter or son or your own mother or father or your own partner or also. That's what it means in the end, I think. You said that when you die, the question you'll be asked, it'll be, you know, "Who did you feed who did you visit in prison?" You won't be asked American, et cetera. The way I was raised as a Catholic, and this has, I think, changed significantly since my childhood. So I'm not saying this is true of Catholics today, but I'm pretty sure when I was a child, I was told that you're going to be asked, "Were you a Catholic?" Admission to Paradise is only if your answer was, "Yes." So that question is no longer operational for you. Are you some kind of a universalist Christian? Do you think that Buddhists get accepted too? I mean, Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and atheists, do they all get welcomed in the afterlife? I think so, because according to the criteria that I have learned, and this is not mine, this is in the Bible, this is what it says in the Bible. And I think we moved at least some of us and a large number of us, in Sri Lanka to accept any other countries as well, to accept that we don't have the one and only truth. For far too long Christians, particularly even within the Christian community Catholics, thought that we have the one and only truth. We are superior and others are a little bit lesser than us. But I think some of us at least are moving away from that and learning to accept that, "Yes, we think we have the truth, but others think the same." So we may both be right, we may both be wrong. So let's accept that and let's value and respect and appreciate. And also go beyond and let's allow ourselves even to be enriched by Buddhism and by people who are at least by indigenous people's spiritualities. Let us be enriched. Let us not only be enriched by the Christian heritage. I love the work that you're doing, Ruki. I'm wondering if maybe you feel optimistic from day to day or pessimistic from day to day. How much hope do you think there is for a true healing of the spirit and healing of the rifts in the different communities? Do you see a time down the road 10 years, 20 years, where you think that the healing will have taken place? Actually in Sri Lanka, I don't see anything happening very soon, very sadly. I think it will take a long time in my country for us to have real serious reconciliation where the communities will really relate to each other at an equal level and respect each other and appreciate each other. I also feel there for our government to change, it will take a long time. But I think we've had other countries in similar situations. We've had countries like Philippines, which have been under dictatorships. We've had South Africa under apartheid. We had countries like in Latin America, like Argentina, Guatemala, many others, under very brutal dictatorships. Things are not perfect in those countries, but they've certainly moved on. And I think they are not as bad as they used to be, certainly in Argentina, or in South Africa, or in Philippines. So those processes took a long time, decades, and it involved many sacrifices by many people who were committed to bring about that change, even if they thought that they would not see it in their lifetime. So I, on one hand, I get inspired and I get some hope and courage from that. What's happened outside my own country? But also the small things that are happening in my country, like I said, no, the many, or rather, the few journalists who still dare to write the truth as they see it, as they hear it, and as they think. The few judges who defy the threatening phone calls, they get from politicians and give decisions that they think is based on law and based on their conscience. The lawyers, few lawyers who defend people who are accused of being terrorists and who try to promote rule of law. So the few clergy, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, who try to apply their faith to everyday problems that we face in Sri Lanka and other parts of the world. So I think there are many people like that who are signs of hope and who give me some positive hope. When I feel very hopeless and when I feel very frustrated, which is quite often, actually. And from within Sri Lanka, when people like who live outside Sri Lanka, Americans or Indians or Malaysians or whoever, who are still interested in what happens in Sri Lanka, who care about in Sri Lanka, and who have helped in a variety of ways, give me hope. And how should those people connect with you and how can they be of support to what's happening in Sri Lanka? People from the US, people listening to this program, there's a number of spirit and action listeners. So I'm sure their hearts go out to you. How can their hands and mouths be also of support? Well, I think by listening to this program, their ears have been reached out to me and to Sri Lanka and to people I work with and to all the people in Sri Lanka. So that's the first step already. And I think I would be very happy to be in touch with any listeners. So I can tell my email, it's r-u-k-i-i. That's r-u-k-triple-i@gmail.com. I would be very happy to be in touch and communicate with any people. And I think it's one important thing is to be more aware of what's really happening. And that's very difficult. That's not easy as I make it out to be. For American living in Wisconsin or anywhere else to know about what's really happening in Sri Lanka. Because your newspapers don't report it, your TV and radio, the mainstream ones don't report it, possibly not even the mainstream news websites. So you really need to make an effort if you want to really know what's happening in Sri Lanka or for that matter in any other part of the world. So that involves effort and energy and sacrifice of your time. So I would encourage people to actually to make that sacrifice if you're interested. Go to some websites that gives alternative news about Sri Lanka. Go to a website like Amnesty International Human Rights Watch, which are very well known organizations. And of course if someone writes to me, I'll be able to give a lot more links and websites that people could get information from. And then visit Sri Lanka. I know people like to go for holidays and Sri Lanka has been named the number one towards destination by the lonely planet. A couple of years back by the New York Times as well. But I would encourage people to visit, but also not to just to become the very conventional tourist who will just go to the beach and the mountains and the historical sites. And just say, "Oh, this is a wonderful land." It is actually, it's a very beautiful land and there you'll find many hospitable people who are very friendly and helpful. But there are also people who are suffering, there are also people who are subjected to a lot of injustices. But I think people who visit as human beings, not purely technical tourists, should also see that part of Sri Lanka. And again, I'm very happy to help people to see that part and hear that part by arranging meetings, visits, making suggestions and all that. If anyone actually wants to do that. It can be individual, one person, it can be two people. It can be a group of 10 people who come as a group, as a tour group. So I think it's very possible to do kind of alternative tourism, which will help you to learn about really what's happening. That can potentially lead to a higher involvement. You can do some volunteer work for one week or one month or whatever. You can come back to US and have an exhibition about some of the photos you've taken in Sri Lanka about the situation of people who are displaced, about the families of people who have disappeared. You can write to a blog or to a letter, to a editor, so you can do things like that starting off. And I would encourage, particularly if there are any young students, also to visit and to see about whether you can write about look at Sri Lanka in terms of the research that you do, your assignments and things like that. And in fact, the main reason I'm here in Wisconsin is because a group of students from the university here came to Sri Lanka last year to do that kind of research, to see what the interfaith initiatives there are in Sri Lanka after the war, and they are writing about it, talking about it. Some of them made presentations in their community about what they saw and heard, and they invited me to come here. So that's the kind of thing I think that's possible. Of course, I understand it's not possible if I ever want to do big things. But I think small things and being sensitive and being in touch and looking for alternative information is possible. Well, we're thankful, rookie, that there are people like you doing big things, dedicating their lives in a direction that's going to make healing of Sri Lanka, and I think inspiration for the world. I don't know that when Gandhi was doing his work in India, or the Bachakan, when he was doing his work and what is now known as Pakistan, I don't know that when they were doing their work, they were thinking of changing the world, they were thinking of changing their communities. So it's a blessed event to see you working to make your community the best community, and perhaps to become, and may you live long enough to see this, inspiration to the world. So thank you so much for that work and thank you for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you very much for inviting me, and this in itself is a sense of encouragement and support, being invited to share and have this conversation. So thank you again and all the best. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World," performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You