If you ever have doubts about being a Humanist, go to Sri Lanka. You will see how religion is wrecking a beautiful country. The population of just over 20 million is divided on religious lines into approximately 70% Buddhists, 12% Hindus, 7% Muslims and 7% Christians.

The main conflict is between the majority religious group, the Singhalese Buddhists, and the largest minority religious group, the Tamil Hindus. The latter are themselves the dominant group in the north–east of the island, next to India. India is where the Tamils originated from, but that was nearly a thousand years ago. They want to establish their own (very small) independent state. The Singhalese also originated from India, from north India over a thousand years ago. The conflict flared up into a virtual civil war in the early 1980’s and seems to be returning to that now.

Both of the major religions have vicious military wings. The Hindus’ Tamil Tigers are notorious for their assassination of their enemies e.g. 2 Buddhist premiers of Sri Lanka. I had not realised until I visited that they also assassinate anyone on their own Hindu side whom they consider too moderate. The Buddhists too have their extremist JVP party.

At an everyday level religion seems to equate with superstition.

We hired a taxi to take us to see Galle, the city where thousands were killed by the tsunami. At the start our driver stopped at his Buddhist temple to make an offering. We later found out why. He drove like a lunatic, even by south Asian standards, weaving in and out of the traffic on both sides of the road and in all lanes! On the way back he was stopped by the police to be given a speeding fine and for his license to be taken away until he had paid it. Presumably he thought that his offering to Buddha was going to protect him (and us) from disaster!

Although the religious communities are in dispute with each other this does not stop them sharing the same holy days as holidays. I was in Sri Lanka for just a fortnight, but in that time we had 2 Hindu and 1 Buddhist holy days. The latter is particularly holy for Sri Lankan Buddhists: the anniversary of the day Lord Buddha arrived on Sri Lankan soil. This made 3 holidays out of 10 working days. This did not make much difference to me as a tourist, except that we were not allowed to drink alcohol in the bar or at the poolside on the Buddhist holiday. However there must be a much more serious effect on the economy of a third world country where so many millions of all 4 religions live in dire poverty.

I was in Sri Lanka in January. The England cricket team had been playing there in December. One of their male supporters (the so called Barmy Army) had done a streak (i.e. dashed naked across the ground) during one of the test matches. There were still repercussions from this in January in the form of a letter in one of the local papers from disgusted of Colombo stating that the man’s punishment of being sent back to England had been far too lenient. In Saudi Arabia the English supporter would have been executed for his crime. Maybe that would have been too severe, but he should have been at least given a stiff prison sentence in a Sri Lankan jail! There were several religiously inspired murders whilst I was there. The whole area around Colombo has roadblocks, guarded by soldiers armed with machine guns. This did not stop a Tamil woman carrying out a suicide bombing on a train at the main railway station in Colombo. The casualties were on a par with the 7th July 2006 suicide bombings in London.

The ceasefire had broken down. They desperately need new negotiations between the main factions. One of the problems is to find a neutral mediator, acceptable to all sides, to chair these. Maybe the international Humanist movement should volunteer?

Peter Sutherland