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Biography

Roma Tearne's parents, a journalist and a poet, emigrated from Sri Lanka with their daughter to south London in 1964. On leaving the local comprehensive, she attended a teacher training college before marrying Barrie Bullen, an English professor at Reading University. She later trained as a painter at Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy. In 2002, she became a Leverhulme resident artist at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, and is now a fellow at Oxford Brookes University. Her first novel, Mosquito, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Kiriyama Prize. Her second, Bone China, is published by HarperPress. A mother of three, she lives with her husband in Oxford.

ROMA TEARNE is donating a portion of her proceeds from Mosquito to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, a human rights organisation that exists to enable survivors of torture and organised violence to engage in a healing process to assert their own human dignity and worth.

The Medical Foundation′s concern for the health and wellbeing of torture survivors and their families is directed towards providing medical and social care, practical assistance, and psychological and physical therapy.

The organisation also raises public awareness about torture and its consequences.

For more information about the Medical Foundation, visit http://www.torturecare.org.uk/

Although Mosquito was written during a single summer, it took much longer to fully realise. Ghosts do not appear overnight. I had not been back to Sri Lanka for nearly forty years; all my past lies buried there yet I was unable to write the book straight away.

As an artist I am visually led, so I first painted the pictures that later were described in Mosquito. They were of people in an unknown city, painted in vibrant colours. After a while I began placing the figures in wintery landscapes, but they were always looking somewhere else. Then still later, I found myself painting empty rooms, some dark and shadowy, some letting in a piercing light. These were small intense images in oils and at an exhibition in London someone, a writer, said they spoke to him of loss. Suddenly the narrative I had denied for so long spilt out in words. -

ROMA TEARNE

Two articles by Roma Tearne

Between fact and fiction

Is it a true story, I am asked? Did it really happen? Time and time again this is the thing that interests people.

Once when I was the Artist in Residence at the Ashmolean Museum, in Oxford, I wrote a piece about the museum building and what had happened in it. It was just a story. I made it up. But for many of the people who read it and subsequently wrote to me, I sensed a desperate need to believe it was ‘true’.

On another occasion I found a child’s dress from the Coptic period displayed in a case, labelled with all the details of location, date, fabric and age. There was a dark brown stain across the exquisite hand-embroidery of the garment. This, the label told me, was blood.

Taken aback, I tried to imagine the grief the unknown mother of a thousand years ago would have felt. Yet, since grief is not a tangible fact it was omitted from the label. And so that distant emotion, carried across time, was lost forever.

How much do we lose because of our rigid adherence to the distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction?’ And why do we care so passionately about realism in fiction? How true does a story have to be before it can be absorbed and enjoyed? We know from recent events the lengths that people have gone to ban novels and hound authors, believing mistakenly that their characters are ‘real’ people. Such is the power of the imagination; such is its potential. But fiction harnesses that power and takes you into a dimension which will continue to live in your mind, long after the pages of the book are closed. It should be irrelevant how much of it is constructed upon fact.

My novel Mosquito grew out of a longing. A longing to return to my past which had been lost in the mists of time and the events of war. I wanted to walk again on that beach I had known as a child, so, I imagined the place as it once was, and made it exist in my mind. That is not to say that actual events did not trigger the book too. The poet and novelist John Burnside recently said that, “to go beyond mere facts, to record a true history that takes account of the unseen as well as the visible …the writer must create something that, on the face of it, is a fabrication. That is what art does; that is what any narrative must take into account if it is to succeed.”

Should we not be celebrating these sentiments rather than frantically searching for the absolute division between fact and fiction?

Roma Tearne

Mon, 20 Nov 2006, 3:48 PM

Broken China

Yesterday I lost the last of my mother’s legacy. Twenty-five pieces of china and glass; gone in an instant when the shelf on which they stood came crashing down. Shattered porcelain and shards of crystal filled the room. Blue and white and strangely beautiful in their broken form. Four generations of use no longer usable. An entire history vanished even as I stared. I had a train to catch and so, shutting the door to the kitchen, I left. Numb. Looking at the fields rushing past, seeing my own face reflected in the glass, an old forgotten love like music ran through my mind.

All these things happen in one second and last forever.

Perhaps it was when the crow knocked a plate off the table that I had first noticed the crack. Yes, that was it; in the year when I was three. In order to fix the date it is important to remember the images clearly. The line across the plate was so faint as to be hardly noticeable. Except we all saw it.

‘It will only get worse,’ the servant said, picking it up. ‘This plate has been weakened.’

That was what she said. Weakened. I ran my finger across the hairline. I remember the hand that rested on the painted butterflies on that plate; a hand smaller than the butterflies themselves. How old would I have been? Two? Three? There is no one to ask, not now.

‘Eat up the murunga,’ my mother told me, ladling the hot rice onto the pale green curry.

The crack was by now a fixture on the plate and in my mind. The light it seemed was ever green. Saturated with movement. Piercing, like gold. The weakened plate was packed along with all the others, lovingly, into a rosewood trunk. My father had been to the market to buy a bunch of Asian watercress which he then chopped up and mixed with a little coconut and chilli. It was his invention on an old theme. We ate off Wedgwood plates because my mother said we must have standards.

‘When all around you there is chaos, that’s the time to keep your standards.’

‘Your mother is a mad woman,’ my father said, but still, he too ate his last meal on one of these fragile plates.

I traced my finger across his face. My finger, I noticed, had become larger, his face slightly smaller. He was leaving the island in a few days time and seeing him sitting with his back to the light I registered how very handsome he was.

‘This meal is the best you’ve cooked,’ he told my mother. ‘Must be because of the plates we’re eating them on!’ he added, winking at me. ‘Better bring them with you, then!’

We were following him to England. I would not have borne it otherwise. My father was the centre of the universe. Dappled sunlight shone on china bowls, cups and saucers, blue and white and paper-thin. This was my world, along with the sea breeze and the sun-warmed veranda steps. The crow glinted evilly at us from the mango tree. He was watching the china. Waiting for his chance. When he opened his mouth to squawk, I saw all the way back into his beak. In the silence that followed, the servant threw away some empty coconut shells. They clattered hollowly, like skulls.

After my father left, when there was time on our hands for such things, we packed the china. It was a way of keeping busy and in any case no one wanted to buy it. So that it was just as easy to take it on this epic journey.

‘What do we want your china for, child?’ the neighbours asked. ‘Lanka House is making its own bone china.’

But my mother, I sensed, preferred the delicate blues and faded pinks of a bygone era. My mother was, even then, politically incorrect and what might be called, nationally lapsed. Beauty, she subsequently told me, when I hit adolescence, had no barriers.

So they were packed in soft straw that smelt of rulang. The crack in my favourite plate was still there but the plate itself appeared strong; my memories, not yet fixed as memories. And then, in a moment, unremarkable and languid, we left the tropics. Taking with us the sound of coconuts being scraped and voices rising and finally, somewhere along the shore, the sweet sad words of our National Anthem. That was that. And now those receptacles of memory are broken.

In London I had an appointment to meet my editor. It was an icy February day, flat and very grey, with nothing to recommend it. I sat waiting in the restaurant, my mind a dull, blank void. All around, through cracks in my consciousness I noticed a patchwork of starched white tablecloths moving in and out of focus. Old black-and-white photographs lined the walls. Above me were deep yellow stained-glass widows. Like crocuses. Winter struggled, as indeed I did. The air was filled with unfinished thoughts, insubstantial and obscure with no words to access them. And then, as I sat there, half in a dream, I caught a glimpse of my editor hurrying towards me through a reflection of glass and mirror and pale blue hyacinths. Bringing in a rush of outdoor air, smiling.

‘Here it is!’ she cried, handing me a copy of my finished book, Bone China. I had written in the dedication: In memory of my parents.

Forty years before, when we first arrived in England, we continued to eat off those china plates and drink out of delicate porcelain teacups. They reminded us of the people we had left behind. It made us closer to them; their lips were where ours were now, their hands merged into ours. But these were utensils from another world; a slower, languid life of bicycle bells and the sudden thud of a coconut in the grove outside. And then when the four o’clock flowers turned their magenta faces from the light, as the sun tilted in the sky, there was the sound of the sea. Endlessly turning; clearer always in the evening air.

‘Tea time,’ my mother would say.

‘Go and wash your hands.’ On the train coming in to London, an acquaintance, hearing how the china had broken, told me, ‘You must go and buy yourself some pretty old blue and white plates with the insurance money!’

I did not have the heart to tell her that bought china, however pretty, would not conjure up the bright magenta voice that called, ‘Tea time.’

I saw the way in which we must have travelled, hopefully, never knowing how things might turn out, or even that our past might be unrecoverable. We had crossed seven thousand miles, chased by monsoons, shedding the heat so carelessly, never understanding that these small tokens carried with us were insubstantial as air. For time itself had been the enemy, washing the years, bleaching our memories, fragmenting them until the china became simply a symbol of all we had lost. No more. The china, too, was no more.

We sat talking over lunch, my editor and I, about books. My book, the books we both loved, the writers we admired. The waiter poured water into huge goblets. Through the meniscus, I saw her soft wool coat. Light streamed in as in a Dutch painting. Water sparking in a clear glass on a winter’s day. It had taken a lifetime for my novel to surface. The connection between what lay broken in my kitchen and the book now in my hand was clear as the glass. The fugitive recesses of the everyday, hidden memories of a searing heat, a vanished life laid bare; through fiction. I had wanted to preserve the house in which I lived, the plates we had eaten off, the cups we once had drunk from, the touch of hands no longer alive. And I had failed. Memory could neither be contained nor made accessible by itself. The last cup of hill-country tea my mother poured out for my father, the blue-black glint of the crow’s eye, a ripe, plump mango as it fell with a green and fragrant thud, the mood of my polka-dot dress; all these things moved within me. China carried twice around the world, first with my great-grandfather on a sailing ship to Galle, and then with us back to England. The memories had collected like rainwater in a porcelain bowl, filling up the cracks, inaccessible and silent. We had not seen how mute they were. We had not noticed how much was held in these objects. We had seen them as heirlooms, beautiful things to be passed seamlessly down through the generations. Like exhibits in a museum, we had treasured them and then abandoned them to stand uselessly on a shelf.

‘Keep going,’ my editor said, as we stirred our coffee and the waiter, almost redundant now, poured out the last drops of water.

The scents of spring mixed with the coffee. Only in fiction was it possible to capture the fragmentary nature of memory.

‘It’s why I love it,’ she said, softly. ‘Good fiction mediates and shares, fixing what would otherwise be lost.’

Sitting in the restaurant, on an unremarkable February afternoon, watching the people come and go, I saw how it was that art could, by some strange, sweet, indefinable metamorphosis, quite literally preserve life.

Roma Tearne

Ethnic Groups

The people of Sri Lanka are divided into ethnic groups whose conflicts have dominated public life since the nineteenth century. The two main characteristics that mark a person's ethnic heritage are language and religion, which intersect to create four major ethnic groups--the Sinhalese, the Tamils, the Muslims, and the Burghers. Ethnic divisions are not based on race or physical appearance; some Sri Lankans claim to determine the ethnicity of a person by his facial characteristics or color, but in reality such premises are not provable. There is nothing in the languages or religious systems in Sri Lanka that officially promotes the social segregation of their adherents, but historical circumstances have favored one or more of the groups at different times, leading to hostility and competition for political and economic power.

Sinhalese

The Sinhalese are the largest ethnic group in the country, officially comprising 11 million people or 74 percent of the population in 1981. They are distinguished primarily by their language, Sinhala, which is a member of the Indo-European linguistic group that includes Hindi and other north Indian tongues as well as most of the languages of Europe. It is likely that groups from north India introduced an early form of Sinhala when they migrated to the island around 500 B.C., bringing with them the agricultural economy that has remained dominant to the twentieth century. From early times, however, Sinhala has included a large number of loan words and constructs from Tamil, and modern speech includes many expressions from European languages, especially English. The Sinhalese claim to be descendants of Prince Vijaya and his band of immigrants from northern India, but it is probable that the original group of Sinhalese immigrants intermarried with indigenous inhabitants. The Sinhalese gradually absorbed a wide variety of castes or tribal groups from the island and from southern India during the last 2,500 years.

The Buddhist religion reinforces the solidarity of the Sinhalese as an ethnic community. In 1988 approximately 93 percent of the Sinhala speakers were Buddhists, and 99.5 percent of the Buddhists in Sri Lanka spoke Sinhala. The most popular Sinhalese folklore, literature, and rituals teach children from an early age the uniqueness of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, the long relationship between Buddhism and the culture and politics of the island, and the importance of preserving this fragile cultural inheritance. Buddhist monks are accorded great respect and participate in services at the notable events in people's lives. To become a monk is a highly valued career goal for many young men. The neighboring Buddhist monastery or shrine is the center of cultural life for Sinhalese villagers.

Their shared language and religion unite all ethnic Sinhalese, but there is a clear difference between the "Kandyan" and the "low-country" Sinhalese. Because the Kingdom of Kandy in the highlands remained independent until 1818, conservative cultural and social forms remained in force there. English education was less respected, and traditional Buddhist education remained a vital force in the preservation of Sinhalese culture. The former Kandyan nobility retained their social prestige, and caste divisions linked to occupational roles changed slowly. The plains and the coast of Sri Lanka, on the other hand, experienced great change under 400 years of European rule. Substantial numbers of coastal people, especially among the Karava caste, converted to Christianity through determined missionary efforts of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British; 66 percent of the Roman Catholics and 43 percent of the Protestants in the early 1980s were Sinhalese. Social mobility based on economic opportunity or service to the colonial governments allowed entire caste or kin groups to move up in the social hierarchy. The old conceptions of noble or servile status declined, and a new elite developed on the basis of its members' knowledge of European languages and civil administration. The Dutch legal system changed traditional family law. A wider, more cosmopolitan outlook differentiated the low-country Sinhalese from the more "old fashioned" inhabitants of highlands.

Tamils

The people collectively known as the Tamils, comprising 2,700,000 persons or approximately 18 percent of the population in 1981, use the Tamil language as their native tongue. Tamil is one of the Dravidian languages found almost exclusively in peninsular India. It existed in South Asia before the arrival of people speaking Indo-European languages in about 1500 B.C. Tamil literature of a high quality has survived for at least 2,000 years in southern India, and although the Tamil language absorbed many words from northern Indian languages, in the late twentieth century it retained many forms of a purely Dravidian speech--a fact that is of considerable pride to its speakers. Tamil is spoken by at least 40 million people in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu (the "land of the Tamils"), and by millions more in neighboring states of southern India and among Tamil emigrants throughout the world.

There was a constant stream of migration from southern India to Sri Lanka from prehistoric times. Once the Sinhalese controlled Sri Lanka, however, they viewed their own language and culture as native to the island, and in their eyes Tamil-speaking immigrants constituted a foreign ethnic community. Some of these immigrants appear to have abandoned Tamil for Sinhala and become part of the Sinhalese caste system. Most however, continued to speak Tamil and looked toward southern India as their cultural homeland. Their connections with Tamil Nadu received periodic reinforcement during struggles between the kings of Sri Lanka and southern India that peaked in the wars with the Chola. It is probable that the ancestors of many Tamil speakers entered the country as a result of the Chola conquest, for some personal names and some constructions used in Sri Lankan Tamil are reminiscent of the Chola period.

The Tamil speakers in Sri Lanka are divided into two groups that have quite different origins and relationships to the country. The Sri Lankan Tamils trace their immigration to the distant past and are effectively a native minority. In 1981 they numbered 1,886,872, or 12.7 percent of the population. The Indian Tamils are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants who came under British sponsorship to Sri Lanka to work on plantations in the central highlands. In 1981 they numbered 818,656, or 5.5 percent of the population. Because they lived on plantation settlements, separate from other groups, including the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Indian Tamils have not become an integral part of society and indeed have been viewed by the Sinhalese as foreigners. The population of Indian Tamils has been shrinking through programs repatriating them to Tamil Nadu.

Ethnic Tamils are united to each other by their common religions beliefs, and the Tamil language and culture. Some 80 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 90 percent of the Indian Tamils are Hindus. They have little contact with Buddhism, and they worship the Hindu pantheon of gods. Their religious myths, stories of saints, literature, and rituals are distinct from the cultural sources of the Sinhalese. The caste groups of the Tamils are also different from those of the Sinhalese, and they have their rationale in religious ideologies that the Sinhalese do not share. Religion and caste do, however, create divisions within the Tamil community. Most of the Indian Tamils are members of low Indian castes that are not respected by the upper- and middle-level castes of the Sri Lankan Tamils. Furthermore, a minority of the Tamils--4.3 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 7.6 percent of the Indian Tamils--are converts to Christianity, with their own places of worship and separate cultural lives. In this way, the large Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is effectively separated from the mainstream Sinhalese culture and is fragmented into two major groups with their own Christian minorities.

 Muslims

Muslims, who make up approximately 7 percent of the population, comprise a group of minorities practicing the religion of Islam. As in the case of the other ethnic groups, the Muslims have their own separate sites of worship, religious and cultural heroes, social circles, and even languages. The Muslim community is divided into three main sections--the Sri Lankan Moors, the Indian Moors, and the Malays, each with its own history and traditions.

The Sri Lankan Moors make up 93 percent of the Muslim population and 7 percent of the total population of the country (1,046,926 people in 1981). They trace their ancestry to Arab traders who moved to southern India and Sri Lanka some time between the eighth and fifteenth centuries, adopted the Tamil language that was the common language of Indian Ocean trade, and settled permanently in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Moors lived primarily in coastal trading and agricultural communities, preserving their Islamic cultural heritage while adopting many southern Asian customs. During the period of Portuguese colonization, the Moors suffered from persecution, and many moved to the Central Highlands, where their descendants remain. The language of the Sri Lankan Moors is Tamil, or a type of "Arabic Tamil" that contains a large number of Arabic words. On the east coast, their family lines are traced through women, as in kinship systems of the southwest Indian state of Kerala, but they govern themselves through Islamic law.

The Indian Moors are Muslims who trace their origins to immigrants searching for business opportunities during the colonial period. Some of these people came to the country as far back as Portuguese times; others arrived during the British period from various parts of India. The Memon, originally from Sind (in modern Pakistan), first arrived in 1870; in the 1980s they numbered only about 3,000. The Bohra and the Khoja came from northwestern India (Gujarat State) after 1880; in the 1980s they collectively numbered fewer than 2,000. These groups tended to retain their own places of worship and the languages of their ancestral homelands.

The Malays originated in Southeast Asia. Their ancestors came to the country when both Sri Lanka and Indonesia were colonies of the Dutch. Most of the early Malay immigrants were soldiers, posted by the Dutch colonial administration to Sri Lanka, who decided to settle on the island. Other immigrants were convicts or members of noble houses from Indonesia who were exiled to Sri Lanka and who never left. The main source of a continuing Malay identity is their common Malay language (bahasa melayu), which includes numerous words absorbed from Sinhalese and Tamil, and is spoken at home. In the 1980s, the Malays comprised about 5 percent of the Muslim population in Sri Lanka.

Burghers

The term Burgher was applied during the period of Dutch rule to European nationals living in Sri Lanka. By extension it came to signify any permanent resident of the country who could trace ancestry back to Europe. Eventually it included both Dutch Burghers and Portuguese Burghers. Always proud of their racial origins, the Burghers further distanced themselves from the mass of Sri Lankan citizens by immersing themselves in European culture, speaking the language of the current European colonial government, and dominating the best colonial educational and administrative positions. They have generally remained Christians and live in urban locations. Since independence, however, the Burgher community has lost influence and in turn has been shrinking in size because of emigration. In 1981 the Burghers made up .3 percent (39,374 people) of the population.

Veddah

The Veddah are the last descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Sri Lanka, predating the arrival of the Sinhalese. They have long been viewed in the popular imagination as a link to the original hunting-and-gathering societies that gradually disappeared as the Sinhalese spread over the island. In the 1980s, Veddah lived in the eastern highlands, where some had been relocated as a result of the Mahaweli Garga Program. They have not preserved their own language, and they resemble their poorer Sinhalese neighbors, living in small rural settlements. The Veddah have become more of a caste than a separate ethnic group, and they are generally accepted as equal in rank to the dominant Goyigama caste of the Sinhalese.

http://countrystudies.us/sri-lanka/38.htm

• The Sri Lankan Conflict by Jayshree Bajoria, Staff Writer

• The conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has lasted nearly three decades and is one of the longest-running civil wars in Asia. More commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE wants an independent state for the island's Tamil minority. Following a fierce, year-long military offensive, the Sri Lankan government claimed in May 2009 that it had defeated the separatist group (NYT) and killed its leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran. But the group may continue to launch guerilla-type attacks on the country. For a lasting peace, experts say the government will need to find a political solution to the ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils that has plagued the country since its independence.  The European Union and Canada have joined the United States, India, and Australia in labeling the LTTE a terrorist organization, which has made it more difficult for the group to get financing from abroad. The civil war has killed nearly seventy thousand, and watchdog groups have accused both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military of human rights violations, including abduction, extortion, and the use of child soldiers.

• Historical Context

  Sri Lanka has been mired in ethnic conflict since the country, formerly known as Ceylon, became independent from British rule in 1948. A 2001 government census (PDF) says Sri Lanka's main ethnic populations are the Sinhalese (82 percent), Tamil (9.4 percent), and Sri Lanka Moor (7.9 percent). In the years following independence, the Sinhalese, who resented British favoritism toward Tamils during the colonial period, disenfranchised Tamil migrant plantation workers from India and made Sinhala the official language. In 1972, the Sinhalese changed the country's name from Ceylon and made Buddhism the nation's primary religion. As ethnic tension grew, in 1976, the LTTE was formed under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran, and it began to campaign for a Tamil homeland in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, where most of the island's Tamils reside. In 1983, the LTTE ambushed an army convoy, killing thirteen soldiers and triggering riots in which 2,500 Tamils died.

  India, which has its own Tamil population in the south, deployed a peacekeeping force in 1987 that left three years later amidst escalating violence. During the ensuing conflict, the LTTE emerged as a fearsome terrorist organization, famed for suicide bombings, recruitment of child soldiers, and the ability to challenge Sri Lankan forces from the Jaffna Peninsula in the north down through the eastern side of the island. The U.S. State Department placed the LTTE on its terror list in 1997. In 2002, Norway brokered a cease-fire agreement between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. Peace talks broke down the following year, but experts posit the fragile truce held in large part because of devastation related to the 2004 tsunami, which caused thirty thousand deaths on the island.

  In August 2005, the assassination of Sri Lanka's foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, reignited the conflict. For the next two years, both the government and rebels repeatedly violated the cease-fire agreement. In January 2008, a cabinet spokesman said it was "useless talking to them [the LTTE] now" (AP), and the Sri Lankan government formally withdrew from the truce, prompting Nordic monitors to pull out of the country. Since the end of the cease-fire, the Sri Lankan military has been trying to root out the LTTE, and in May 2009, the government claimed that it had defeated the rebels and liberated the country.....

  In 2006, the government launched a military campaign to root out the LTTE, and by July 2007, it had seized control of the country's east. .......

  Humanitarian Concerns

  Watchdog groups have accused both the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE of engaging in widespread human rights abuses, including abduction, conscription, and the use of child soldiers. In August 2007, Human Rights Watch released a report that catalogues alleged abuses on both sides of the conflict. Amnesty International made similar accusations in its 2008 report on the state of the world's human rights.

  Increased fighting in the country's north in early 2009 left more than 250,000 displaced; both the LTTE and the government were accused of placing civilians at risk. The last few months of fighting between the government and the militants resulted in huge civilian casualties and censure from the international community. European Union foreign ministers called for an independent inquiry into alleged war crimes (BBC) by both Tamil Tiger rebels and Sri Lanka's government. Watchdog groups also accused both sides of violating international laws of war. In April 2009, Human Rights Watch reported while rebels were preventing civilians from leaving the last tiny strip of land where they were fighting the government forces, the government forces repeatedly and indiscriminately shelled the area. UN satellite images suggested the government shelled "no-fire zone" (Guardian) where more than 50,000 people were trapped.

  http://www.cfr.org/publication/11407/sri_lankan_conflict.html

  Carin Zissis and Preeti Bhattacharji contributed to this Backgrounder.

More about Mosquito coming soon