COLOMBO, 10 January 2005 — More than half the people who died from tsunami waves in Sri Lanka were Muslims.
According to the latest figures released by the government, 30,860 people have been killed, some 4,000 missing and one million more made homeless. Fifty-five percent of the dead were Muslims living in the tsunami hit-areas.
The worst affected was the eastern part of the island, which includes Muslim areas such as Sainthamaruthu, Maruthamunai, Kalmunai, Nintavur, Pottuvil, Central Camp, Addalachenai, Muttur and Kattankudy.
Muslims have lost one percent of its population, while Tamils and Sinhalese have lost 0.15 percent and 0.08 percent from their respective communities.
In the western part of the island, a substantial number from the Muslim community in areas such as Hambantota, Matara, Galle and Beruwela have also lost their properties.
More than 40 Islamic organizations have come under an umbrella to serve the survivors of the monstrous waves. The Saudi Embassy in Colombo has streamlined its activities through the International Committee of the Red Cross and teams of visiting Saudi officials.
The Director General For Human Resources of the Makkah-based Iqra Foundation, Dr. Zaki Rashmi who was on the island at the time of the tidal attack, supplied relief materials worth SR 5 million to the Muslim victims. Rashmi arrived in Colombo on the fateful day to attend an evening function at the Jamiah Naleemiah ( Arabic College) located on the coastal belt of Beruwela. “
Beruwela is the town where Arabs first landed on the island and built the first mosque in Sri Lanka. The Dec. 26 waves killed several people on the beach including a couple who had gone to buy fish to feed their five unmarried girls at home. When the local mosque authorities took up the case of these five spinsters, five Muslim bachelors appeared as good Samaritans to marry them. “Tsunami has done some good in this case, it helped them enter wedlock,” a villager said.
In another development, a man was found alive 13 days after the tsunami struck Galle , 50 km from Beruwela. “It was a miraculous escape since rescue workers had given up hope of finding anymore survivors with cranes or sniffer dogs trying to recover dead bodies ,” said a person at the scene. The trapped man was in a semi-conscious state. Dehydrated and wearing a 13-day-old beard, he was found under the rubble of a showroom at Pettigalawatte in Galle town.
In a BBC interview, President Chandrika Kumaratunga said Sri Lanka would need more food in “a few weeks”, but nobody would starve on the island because of the tragedy. “The situation is under control in the whole country”, she told BBC television. “We have sufficient food for a few weeks, but we reckon we have to feed the people who have been displaced, who have lost their houses. About 90,000 houses have been destroyed. In a few weeks we will need more food,” she said.
