Anti-Muslim Violence: Through The Scorched Frames

By Afrah Niwas –MARCH 20, 2018

An attempt to flesh out and give voice to the numbers and figures we have at hand of the recent anti-Muslim violence unleashed in the Hill Capital; through a collection of narratives and images of the affected Welekade area of Kandy district.

Flowers made of cloth that had survived the fires which consumed a house

I walked into a pocket of Muslim houses in a village in the district of Kandy with a tiny voice in my head seeking for splinters of something to hold on to as hope; amid the burnt homes and livelihoods. It seemed almost unnatural and unforgivable that I had sought so. For what I encountered, beyond the scenes of destruction, was a bitter cry far more critical and sad. It was evident we have, as a community and as a country, passed the threshold to yet another mayhem of misery and impending bloodbath – if matters are left unchecked. It felt as if a finite period of “state of emergency” had dawned among the Muslims and the other communities in this country, who wish to live in peace.

“After burning the vehicle parked in the front, they burnt the small children’s bicycle. They even broke the children’s toys…what kind of beings were they?” A resident of the affected area wondered in dismay.

“Only our clothes are different, everything else is the same….,” the first woman I spoke to from the affected area began the conversation thus. The Temple and the Mosque lay within a 100 odd meters’ distance on either side of the main road. My first instinct as we entered the area was to think like the many reports I read online, perhaps this community too had worked together to prevent the violence. However, when we had spoken to some of the residents it became clear that the attacks on this community was very much unexpected. It happened on the morning of 7th of March, almost two days after the initial attacks in the Teldeniya and Digana areas. The elderly woman I first spoke to continued to provide her own account of the attacks. She also stated that a Sinhala woman took so many of these women into her house and sheltered them during the attacks. However it was sad to see that a shadow had fallen on the state of ‘normalcy’ that these communities experienced and their relations with each other. “There were no issues between us previous to this. But nobody came to us to at least to say a word of consolation. We are yet to meet them face to face. I do not know what they will say now. But before, whenever we see each other we speak referring to one another “akka”.” , her voice trailed on with hurt and acknowledgement of the more than physical damage this violence has brought on.

A burnt car under a burnt Katu Anodha tree

A recurring image in my thoughts are the words and the sight of a small school boy whose house was completely brought down by the arson attacks. When they had heard the on-coming mobs, he said he fled the house with his elder sister and their younger brother; their mother had passed away some time ago and their father was at the hospital undergoing a major surgery at the time of the attacks. Standing on the wreckage, fighting the brimming tears while trying to be the ‘man’ of  what was now the skeleton of a house; he related using the past form “Dhatha da kalyaanatha next month wechirunthom – we had planned to have our elder sister’s wedding next month”. It took me some effort to descend those broken steps and leave him alone there; in the backdrop of his devastated house.

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