Original subtitles

Let us take you now...

To the island of short memories

and the small village of fat hopes.

It hardly featured on any map.

But, thanks to the civil war of lies,

the small village of fat hopes had grown

in importance

for all the wrong reasons.

They spoke in color in the village

as they did in most parts of the country.

The cost of living made people purple.

People often felt marooned,

and the jokes were always black.

♪ I took a walk through this beautiful world ♪

♪ Felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪

♪ Found something good in this beautiful world ♪

♪ I felt the rain getting colder ♪

♪ Sha la la la la Sha la la la la la ♪

♪ Sha la la la la la Sha la la la la la ♪

The war is over.

At the old hotel,

the 50 caliber in the tower next door

is wrapped up and attended by one sleepy guard.

The main enemy today is not the soldiers,

guerillas, fighters, and suicide bombers of the LTTE

but the black crows

who hover ominously over the breakfast buffet

on the veranda.

A man with a slingshot patrols the lawn,

driving them away with an occasional shot.

Colombo, capital city of Sri Lanka.

Unlike the last time I came here

nearly a decade ago,

this South Asian island nation of 20 million

does not feel on lockdown.

There are no longer the military checkpoints

and heavy equipment, sandbags or barbed wire

in between the airport and the center of town.

There's a new democratically elected government

voted in by a coalition of former adversaries.

Everywhere you look, construction, expansion,

new hotels, foreign money,

something that looks a lot like hope.

Hundreds of thousands of dead and missing later,

the country is at peace,

and we can go where we want.

Hopefully, people will be able to talk about their lives.

Last time, they couldn't.

So this is the Galle Face Green.

It used to be a place for the English families

to come and hang out on Sundays.

And it was also the home

of the first golf course in Sri Lanka.

This is our Central Park.

Ah.

What are we eating today by the way? What's good here?

So this is all Sri Lankan street food.

These kitchens are run by Muslims.

So, there's no pork dishes. A lot of seafood.

Dharshan runs several popular Colombo restaurants,

including The Ministry of Crab.

When not catering to the needs of his customers,

he enjoys simpler fare.

♪

So what distinguishes

Sri Lankan cuisine and Indian?

I think our curries are lighter,

and I think it's the access to seafood.

If you look at Mumbai, it's 20 million people.

The ocean's under pressure.

Here it's so clean we can have access

to great seafood any time.

When did the war get bad?

It got really bad I think 2005 onwards,

it was really bad.

Yeah, we were last here

in 2008.

I mean, just to get to the hotel,

I remember, from the airport

we had to go through

one security cordon after another.

During those times, we had no idea

when it was going to end.

I've done business in this country

never knowing what a peaceful time would be.

How long have things been quiet?

Well, the war ended in 2009.

It's been eight years.

It takes time for things to happen.

Things have happened though.

The city's not overgrown.

We aren't overpopulated.

The oceans are still clean.

Whatever the underlying problems were,

do you think they are being addressed

or will be addressed?

I think they are being addressed.

Maybe a bit slow.

But I think you will find a difference.

So the world has changed,

and it's great to see stuff like this.

♪

Evening fell

upon the small village of fat hopes.

Suddenly, they heard a noise

that filled them with dread.

Ah! Ah!

There was honestly such a culture of fear.

An incredible amount of self-censorship.

We had death squads,

people, journalists, so many being disappeared.

This kind of white van phenomenon

where, you know, your loved ones were taken from you

and you never heard from them again.

They're still so many of those cases going on,

and just a real feeling of fear.

From 1983 until 2009,

Sri Lanka's bloody civil war

divided the island in two,

splitting the country along religious lines...

Buddhist Sinhalese majority in the South

versus Hindu Tamil minority in the North.

Years of mistreatment and suppression

led to the formation of the LTTE,

or Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam

and their campaign to seek an independent state.

The conflict ended in 2009,

but an enormous number of internally displaced persons,

or IDPs as they were referred to,

remain in refugee camps.

Ladies and gentlemen, appearing now

and before it is too late,

the traveling circus of refugees.

Colombo native Tracy Holsinger is the founder

of Mind Adventures Theatre Company.

Not long ago, to even talk politics

let alone stage a play deemed controversial,

could be dangerous.

The play that you've been doing

came from a book or...

"Speaks in Numbers" by Mike Masilamani.

It was first performed in November 2009.

- Controversial would you say? - A little.

The play is about internally displaced people.

After the end of the war,

we had over 300,000 people in camps.

The largest one of them

was built to house 100,000 people

but ended up housing 227,000 people.

Tents that were designed for maybe five people to be in

had 10 to 15 people in them.

There were no toilets in the camp.

There were just these big pits.

Living conditions for these people

was intolerable.

There are some communities, Anthony, in this country

that have been displaced for 25 years.

That means since the '80s

they haven't had a home.

Hurry up! Don't waste my time.

What's in the bag? It's just some-

- Can't take anything inside the camp.

Search this. Hurry up, next!

It's a play that was staged at a time

when all this was so raw for us.

And there is no way to speak directly

about what happened.

I think it's still very difficult

not just for us but for people to acknowledge

that these terrible things were done

to part of our community and our people.

Was this a perilous thing to do?

And how was it seen at the time?

You know, I didn't think

about whether it was perilous or not,

and that's probably bad on me

because I involved all these other people.

That scene is done. We're moving on.

For me, the important thing was making sure

that in whatever form it got out there

the play's out there and it reminds people

that this happened.

We found the person responsible

for trying to poison the minds of all you good people

with these lies!

She was sleeping amongst you.

Living amongst you.

And there are many others like her.

Let this be a lesson to you all.

This is how we deal with traitors.

Take her away!

No, please, please.

- No! - Please!

So, are things getting better?

I would say in one sense

we're not so afraid.

You're not afraid to speak out.

But also I wouldn't say everything is wonderful.

It's not... I think things are slowly being pushed,

but it's too slow.

So, 20 years from now,

are you optimistic, pessimistic?

What do you think?

Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon,

was once the crown jewel of the spice trade.

Its cloves, cardamom, pepper, nutmeg,

mace, ginger, cinnamon, chilies, and curry...

...the envy of the world.

These spices built empires.

Wow.

- Chicken curry. - Marvelous.

Then you have potatoes that are spicy.

- Right. - Then you have the beets.

This is one of the traditional samples of Sri Lanka.

Right.

Kumar Lopez is a Tamil

who works for the Sri Lankan Press Institute.

We sit down for lunch at a local rice and curry joint.

So, last time I was here was nine years ago.

Things have changed a lot.

I think, yes.

I think the fact that we're able to eat today

without even thinking that there could be a bomb

that could go off at any moment

is the best peace that you could expect.

But I believe that peace can go to another stage,

another level.

In the mindset of those who have been impacted

by the war,

I think there needs to be

further work to be done.

After World War II,

the British left Sri Lanka.

Over time, the Buddhist Sinhalese majority

both excluded and repressed

the mostly Hindu Tamil minority

channeling populist fervor

to turn discrimination into law.

What is the generally accepted underlying reasons

for the conflict in the first place?

The main cause or the main objective

was to have a separate land for the Tamils.

The underlying reason for that being

there was discrimination, there was racism,

and that basically brought them to this stage.

By 1983, the situation reached its boiling point.

The LTTE began waging what would become

a 25-year guerilla war

before government forces crushed them

in a brutal final offensive.

I mean, the war was won militarily.

Is everybody speaking now?

I think the underlying objective

is definitely to bring about lasting peace.

They actually encouraged some of the [indistinct]

To invest in the market to give job opportunities.

So, peace is something that everybody is looking for.

So, I'll be taking the train to Jaffna shortly.

This is a big deal.

Oh, it wasn't running probably for the last 30 years.

Whoa, whoa, it hasn't been running for 30 years?

Right, not been running a minimum of 20 years.

- Because of the conflict? - Because of the conflict.

Wow.

With the war over,

Sri Lankans can now travel freely across their country

all the way north to Jaffna.

Last time, we couldn't go there.

Today, we will.

Early morning, Colombo Station.

The platform's bustle is a mix of commuters,

long distance travelers, and the occasional tourist.

Breaking free from Colombo's gravitational pull,

the landscape opens up.

The second and third class compartments

host a mix of people, smells, and slices of life.

Commuters get on at one station,

off at another.

Others like me are in for the long haul,

ten hours to Jaffna.

That the Jaffna Queen runs at all

is a symbolic move towards reunification.

As the fight for an independent Tamil state

in Sri Lanka's north intensified,

the LTTE destroyed these tracks.

For the last two decades of the war,

Jaffna was all but cut off from the rest of the world.

♪

The LTTE, unable to match the military might

of the Sri Lankan Army,

fought their war by other means,

every means they deemed necessary.

Acts of terrorism, suicide bombings,

political assassinations

brought government retaliation.

And collective punishment

of an equally terrible kind

and enormous in scale.

The North suffered massive bombardments

of civilian areas.

Hundreds of thousands of Tamils

ended up in refugee camps.

By the time it was over,

war crimes had been committed on both sides,

those caught in the middle paying the ultimate toll.

In the final weeks alone,

at least 40,000 people were killed

in a war the outside world knew little of.

Nearing the end of the line,

weary passengers awake to find themselves

in a different world.

Out the window, the air is thick

with the smell of salt and sea.

Jaffna is about as far north as you can go

without hitting India.

This is the homeland

of Sri Lanka's Tamil ethnic minority

and during the civil war

base of the LTTE Tamil Tigers.

Remnants of the conflict are hard to miss.

But on any given day down by the coast,

the fish market buzzes,

a hive of activity and commerce.

Fresh product comes in,

deals are made, money changes hands,

life goes on.

Initially before the war,

the North and East contributed 40% of the GDP.

- And now? - Three percent.

There were so many industries here.

Everything was destroyed.

There was no electricity for a long time.

I had a coconut farm, about 100 acres,

and it was completely destroyed during the war.

There's not even a single tree with a bullet hole.

Like many Sri Lankan Tamils,

Janna was born here

but with considerable regret

spent much of his life abroad.

The fighting has stopped. Absolutely, that's true.

What's changed?

A lot of things have been rebuilt.

Slowly now they are focusing on rebuilding infrastructures.

They are renovating all these ponds

and lagoons,

and now slowly business is thriving

in this part of the country.

The underlying discontent,

the given reasons for the war,

is there a sense that those problems

are being addressed?

The war was very brutal,

and people after 30 years everybody's tired of it.

We have a very affected population.

There are about 30,000 war widows

and close to 25,000 orphaned children,

about 15,000 people who were landmine victims.

From the government side, they are still a bit scared

that there may be war popping up again.

But slowly now they are addressing issues

like employment-wise, opportunities-wise,

and there are a lot of occupied lands.

Now they are slowly giving it back.

So, hopeful?

Yeah, I see the progress.

What I see here is the human resilience,

like after going through this war for 30 years,

how quickly people here can rebuild.

So, what's happening today?

First of all, where are we?

This is a Kali temple.

And Kali is?

Kali is the destroyer of evil.

People go and pray

and have Kali temples in villages

because it destroys evil power.

Both good and bad?

- Yes. - Protector?

- Protector, destroyer, yes. - Destroyer.

Because Kali's also known for courage and valor.

Like when people go to war and things like that,

they go and pray to Kali

to give them the confidence and the courage

to go and fight.

After decades of cultural suppression,

Tamils take great pride in their customs,

traditions and religious festivals.

Around here, the Madai Festival

is the most auspicious day of the year

for Hindus to balance their spiritual debts.

Believers show devotion through suffering,

enduring acts of great pain and hardship

called kavadis or the burden debts.

Kavadis can take many forms.

You can make a pilgrimage to the main temple

on shoes made of nails.

Or roll there on the ground

often for a distance of several kilometers.

These are some of the ways

believers express gratitude to Kali

or implore her for help.

Ritualistic body piercing is another such expression.

It's a very interesting thing.

They prepare for a long time... 28 days, they fast.

And they condition themselves mentally.

And when they come to the temple,

and there's a special ceremony which takes place.

And they kind of chant and play drums and everything,

so you get into a trance.

The greater the pain, the greater your dedication

to your higher power.

Well, let's just say viewer discretion is advised.

The islands off Jaffna's coast

were holdouts during the Tamil resistance

and saw heavy fighting.

The people who remained, like the landscape itself,

bear heavy scars.

This was a conflict that left

more than 80,000 women widowed.

The whole island is very quiet.

You do not see shops filled with people

or children playing in yards

or people in fields.

It felt very, very, very quiet.

Is that a good quiet or a bad quiet?

It's an area that has been severely depopulated

as you would have noticed when you came here.

Now, when you say depopulated,

people fled, people were killed,

people were disappeared.

Within three hours in 1991,

the entire area was evacuated of its population.

People have only started coming back

to live here relatively recently.

A very small percentage of the original population

that has come back.

In Tamil society as in much of the world,

women have few rights,

no official system to look after or support them.

The North Ceylon Community Project

seeks to address that problem

providing a home and training for women

who might otherwise be living on the street.

Guari is from this area

and one of the organization's benefactors.

Culturally, a woman who's a widow

who has lost her husband

is a total social outcast

and becomes terribly vulnerable

to all other types of abuse

because they have no source of income.

They have no one to protect them,

no one to look after them.

So this organization has grown

to be a safe haven.

Now, you provide food, shelter, job training,

some road to financial independence?

When they come here, they are given a place to stay.

There also is a group of them who come here for daily work.

And there are different projects

that are skills training projects for the women.

Within this space, they're given the strength, the skills,

and the opportunities to change their lives.

So, why stay? I mean, it's an obvious question.

So many have left.

Why stay here?

Where you come from is very important.

So I think in this culture

it is about where your roots are,

where your family history is.

What about these kids?

When they're 16, 17, 18.

They are going to finish their education,

and then they're going to be looking for jobs.

And those jobs are not materializing in these areas.

So, in the past a number of young people

would find ways and means,

often very risky ways and means,

to leave Sri Lanka and go abroad.

So, unless there is some really serious efforts

to revive economic activities and investment,

life is going to be very tough for these kids.

Ask anyone in Sri Lanka where to find the best food,

and they'll say "Nobody cooks as well as Auntie."

And it's true... trust me.

Often possessing the strength of ten men,

Sri Lankan aunties are a force to be reckoned with.

Jaffna crab curry

might be, for me anyway,

the holy grail of Sri Lankan cuisine.

Spicy and fiery,

in a cuisine known for being spicy and fiery already.

During the war years,

it was hard to get crabs like this and still is today,

the majority being exported

to other parts of the country and abroad.

But, in this time capsule of a home,

it might as well still be 1953.

I've been invited here by Dr. Ravi,

his sister, Giva, and their beloved auntie,

best cook in the family.

So there we have it.

Welcome to Jaffna. Welcome to paradise.

Thank you. Thank you.

These are delicious, by the way.

- They're great, aren't they? - Wow. Are they toasted?

They're dipped in yogurt, dried, sun-dried.

Wow. This is a beautiful home.

Thank you very much.

Built in the '30s?

In the '30s or late British period.

How is it that this remained in the family

that you were able to hang on

and you're still here?

During the war, the Tigers lived here,

and then the Sri Lankan Army lived here for a little while.

My father kept coming back here

making sure he made his presence known.

I think the thing is that it was...

It has a lot of, you know, family stories.

So, even a lot of my cousins

have a great attachment to this house.

Can I get you some more crab curry?

Please, thank you.

Thank you, so beautiful. Thank you.

So delicious.

I've been to a lot of places

just after really awful, awful conflicts.

Some nations, there's a simmering and boiling sense

of injustice, rage, humiliation,

particularly when you have large groups of young people

unemployed, wandering around.

Do you think there's any possibility

that if everybody doesn't get the recipe right

that we could see another generation

of adversaries?

Generally speaking, people want to get along

because my generation,

they certainly don't want to go back to...

- To that. - To that.

♪

I think the generation that might

are the five, six year olds at school now

who have forgotten the horrors.

You go back to AK-47, my six months in the sun.

I think I am optimistic,

but I think that one of the first things

that we need to build on now

is to build a trust amongst the people.

There are lots of IDPs still still in camps,

and they could be given back their lands

that might be useful to also jump start the economy.

It should be a paradise, yes.

I mean, look out the window.

- Yeah. - The potential is incredible.

♪

So, 20 years from now,

are you optimistic or pessimistic?

What do you think?

You have to be optimistic.

You have to be.

Empathy is everything.

It's part of what makes us human.

That's what... there's where we have to connect

and understand each other.

It's all very idealistic, I know that.

For some people, the hurts are too deep.

For some people, it's too late for forgiveness

or trust.

You know, you have, for example,

communities that have been displaced

13 times over the past 25 years.

That's what you call a breeding ground for...

- Trouble, yeah. - For trouble.

Sri Lanka has been through and endured a lot,

far more than most.

It's a lot to ask of any place

to put aside such things as hate, fear,

a desire for revenge.

It might still be too much,

but there is indeed, it appears, reason to hope.

- Hi, Tony. - How you doing, man?

- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

This looks like grouper? Yeah.

You put it on banana leaf, is it?

Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Any fishermen here?

Yeah, they're all fishermen.

Okay, so what happened during the war? Could you fish?

- Yes. - Straight through?

They only have to get the permission.

Then they're limited for one kilometer.

Did people feel safe anywhere to do what they did?

Anytime nobody feels.

Curfew was installed here.

Four o'clock, and you can be shot.

These people have to make a living.

They have to catch fish to feed their home,

feed their families.

So they have to go.

- Oh. - All right, what's up, bro?

What's up, young man?

Most of the world

when you've been through a struggle like this,

so painful and so vicious,

usually at the end of the day

people cannot say, "Look, I'm exhausted."

Nobody wins here.

We all want to live in a world

where we can take care of our children.

Are we at that point in Sri Lanka?

Just now, people never beg, but they will fight.

Please look at the future.

Don't let the young people go take up arms.

Invest, develop,

give them some guidance,

these people that ran a war.

These guys have torpedoes, submarines.

Ingenuity.

They were all so keen about destroying the world,

terrorism, destroying terrorism.

They never value the strength of the people.

- Really? - Yeah.

Is that how this ends?

- That's the story. - It's a little depressing, no?

- How about a message of hope. - Yes, yes, yes.

Come on, let's talk about it.

Okay, all right, and then one day

the civil war of lies came to an abrupt end.

Yay!

Harsh question:

Why should Americans watching this,

why should we give a shit?

Why should people care about Sri Lanka?

I guess...

I don't know why Americans should care.

I just want Sri Lankans to care.

This story has to go on,

and for it to go on

we have to have some hope.

Citizens were asked for what they most desired.

And that is how peace came

to the island of short memory.

The warring parties fast realized

that it didn't matter who won or who lost

because in the end

they were all on the same side.

So it's been eight or nine years

since I've been to this beautiful country

filled with lovely people, incredible food.

Sri Lanka.

♪

Last time I was here... Let's put it this way,

we couldn't see too much of the place.

We were here in the middle of one of most vicious,

unrestrained conflicts you could imagine.

Well, the war is over.

What is Sri Lanka like now?

♪

Ladies and gentlemen, appearing now

and before it is too late,

the traveling circus of refugees.

My name is Tracy Holsinger.

I'm a theatre director.

I started a theatre company in 1999

called Mind Adventures.

When I was 16 years old,

my first theatre teacher

was abducted and murdered.

His abduction wasn't the first,

but it inspired young people like me

to think, well, how can we do something,

how can we make a change?

Suddenly, they heard a noise that filled them with dread.

Ah! Ah!

The main focus of the play, "The Traveling Circus,"

is the internally displaced people.

You know, at any given time in Sri Lanka since the 1980s,

we've had a population upward of 200,000 displaced,

people who have lost their homes,

their families, their lands.

Hurry up! Don't waste my time.

What's in the bag? It's just some-

- Can't take anything inside the camp.

Search this. Hurry up, next!

This play is in part acknowledging what happened.

It is a record that these terrible things

happened to the people of our country.

But it is also trying to offer some hope,

and I think that's something

that our company in general and the play especially

is trying to say.

Never again.

What are we eating today, by the way? What's good here?

So all these kitchens are run by Muslims.

So there's no pork dishes here.

A lot of seafood.

Look out the window.

Two of my restaurants work on no freezers.

We can have access to great seafood any time.

That's a big cuttlefish. Put him on the table.

Crabs.

I will definitely take one of those, thank you.

It's delicious. That is insanely good.

This is, what, a rice and curry restaurant?

It's a typical Sri Lankan meal.

Big heavy earthenware vessels filled with delicious things.

Yes.

You have the vegetables, spicy,

the chicken curry, the fish curry.

I have three dogs, and they don't eat dog food.

- No. - They only eat curry.

- Really? - Yeah, all of them eat curry.

Local special for you.

I'll take a shot of that. Cheers.

Ah.

That will do it.