RIYADH, 25 December 2005 — Sri Lankan missions in the Kingdom will commemorate the first anniversary of the tsunami in Riyadh and Jeddah on Monday. Sri Lankan Hajis in Makkah and Madinah will conduct special prayers in memory of the dead and for the welfare of the survivors.
“This is an occasion to remember the victims in our special prayers, “ Sri Lankan Ambassador A.M.J. Sadiq, who will preside over Monday’s meeting, told Arab News yesterday.
In Sri Lanka, all vehicles will stop and bells will be rung at all religious places for two minutes, starting at 8.50 a.m. when the first of the giant waves struck the island a year ago. All public and private organizations are asked to stop their work for two minutes to pay homage to those who were killed on that fateful day.
President Mahinda Rajapakse will lead the island’s commemorations from Galle, where a passenger train traveling on the southern coast was overturned by the tsunami, drowning about 800 people. About two-thirds of Sri Lanka’s coastline was battered by the waves that killed 35,322 people and left 516,150 homeless. Sri Lanka will also issue an anniversary stamp to mark the occasion.
In Riyadh, the embassy, in association with the Sri Lankan Expatriates Society (SLES), have invited the members of the community to a memorial function at 8 p.m. at the mission’s premises. In Jeddah, a similar meeting will be held at 7:45 a.m. at the Sri Lankan Consulate.
“The consulate has made arrangements with 3,500 Sri Lankan Hajis who are now in Makkah and Madinah to offer special prayers for all those who died in the disaster and for the progress and prosperity of others who survived it,” Inamullah told Arab News.
Fawzan Fareed, the SriLankan airlines sales manager in Riyadh, said last week that his airline has laid the foundation stone for a 45-million-rupee (about $441,587) project to reconstruct a tsunami-devastated school in the town of Kalmunai in the eastern Batticaloa district by the middle of 2006.
The school, Al-Bahariya Maha Vidyalaya, had 1,700 students with 53 teachers and 44 classrooms before the tsunami razed most of the complex. The airline also donated tens of thousands of books to students in dozens of schools across the island.
