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New Year Greeting Message - 2004
[Father Xavier, Canada]

This is my New Year 2004 Message. Along with my family I wish you all a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

My message to you takes the form of informing you about what is taking place in Sri Lanka. I fear that the president of the country, Chandrika, is trying to mislead the world community. Hence this is an attempt to present to you the reality in a creative manner.

I will try to do this analogically in relation to a film that I saw last week: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. I hope you will see this film before long. It is, indeed, a great film, the third of a series. The first, The Fellowship of the Ring, screened two Christmases ago and the second, The Two Towers was shown last year this time. The author of the three books was J.R.R. Tolkein, a brilliant scholar and linguist who created a magical, mythological world that inspired generations of fans. I encourage you all to see this film, as it provides a vehicle for reflection on the ways that the hunger for power can corrupt individuals and communities. In the paragraphs that follow, I will offer my reading of several parts of the film as they relate to the current struggles in Sri Lanka.

In Tolkein’s world of Middle Earth, the Ring is the source of all evil; it is all-encompassing, political power. I see president Chandrika as the current possessor of this Ring. She is greedy for power, even though her party lost the elections. She hampered the elected prime minister and his cabinet from carrying out the PEACE PROCESS, which was signed by the Liberation Tigers of Thamil Eelam –LTTE and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinha, in January 2002. Because of her continued hunger for power despite the consequences on the people around her, Chandrika is much like the creature Gollum in the film. She has depreciated into an emaciated creature in her obsessive quest to keep possession of the Bandaranaike dynasty. She blatantly lied and blamed the Tamil Tigers and the prime minister for an imagined break of the country. Chandrika along with the Marxist JVP and the Sinhala Urumya party, she worked against the Peace Process. She made it so difficult that the peace negotiator, the Government of Norway, withdrew temporarily until the President and the Prime Minster were able to settle their conflict. Subsequently, she snatched three ministries from Ranil’s government and made him utterly powerless. Just as Tolkein’s Gollum tried to turn the hobbit Frodo against his best friend Sam, Chandrika will stop at nothing to keep Sri Lanka divided. In Tolkein’s epic, the hobbit Frodo realizes his error in distrusting Sam, and I expect that Sinhala leadership will likewise realize the genuine motives of the Tamil People in moving towards a peaceful resolution under the leadership of Prapakaran.

In the climactic scene of Return of the King, Frodo and the creature Gollum wrestle on the edge of a fire pit—the place where the Ring was created, and where it must be destroyed to save Middle Earth. The Norwegian government and the international leaders are involved in helping with the peace process, and they are now witnessing a similar Sri Lankan battle on their international screens. In a last-ditch effort to secure governmental power, Chandrika has—like Gollum does to Frodo—desperately bitten off the very ring finger of her assailant. In the film, it is this final convulsion that causes Gollum to lose his balance and plunge into the lava, destroying the Ring. In the hearts and minds of most Sri Lankans, Chandrika is already perished. We must ensure that her fate is the same in the minds of international audiences.

The Tamil National leader, Veluppillai Prapakaran, might be compared to the character Aragorn, who arbiters a treaty between two kingdoms of men in the film. Although sometimes perceived as a rogue and a guerrilla by the world community, it is this man who must emerge and be embraced by the new Sri Lankan government. Like Aragorn, it is he who initiated the alliance and gave his hand of peace to the government on behalf of the Tamil people. Like Tolkein’s brave new King of Gondor, Prapakaran showed remarkable selflessness in throwing away his aggressive, separatist agenda in order to submit a federal plan similar to that of the Canadian government. This is powerfully articulated in Parpakaran’s Heroes Day speech on November 27th this year. I cannot help but see Aragorn’s speech at the conclusion of the film as a similar call for living peace and harmony.

In the conclusion of the film, the tragic hero is Gollum, who perishes in the fire for the unity of the humans to take place in Middle Earth. Chandrika, already long-dead in the minds of most Sri Lankans, must now also perish in the hearts and minds of the world community. Just as Gollum’s fiery death signals a return path for Tolkein’s King Aragorn, Chandrika’s fall must be the last step towards a revised view of our country in the eyes of the world audience.

Obviously, there is more to our struggle than can be seen in any comparison with a Hollywood blockbuster. In any case, my interpretations enrich my continued faith in the cause. I thus encourage you to see the film. We must remember to seek inspiration and motivation in even the most unlikely of places. Such readings can strengthen and encourage us in our determination to work for our cause and for genuine peace with justice.

May God bless you with a peaceful and prosperous New Year 2004.