It’s a strange experience to sit in a sun-filled room on a pleasant street in Bethesda and discuss genocide. But Yamuna Maynard and Rajeev Sreetharan feel compelled to press the subject.
They are Tamils, part of an ethnic and religious minority from the island nation of Sri Lanka, off the southern coast of India. In their view, Tamils have been persecuted by the Sinhalese majority since that country’s independence in 1948, and as Yamuna puts it: “You’re always scared as a Tamil.” But since there are only about 3 million Sri Lankan Tamils, and more than a million have fled their homeland, it’s hard to get the world’s attention. Their plight is an “untold story,” says Rajeev, so the Tamils living here feel a deep obligation to raise their voices.
“Who else will do that?” he asks. “We’re the only people who can do it.”
An organization called Tamils Against Genocide has posted videos on YouTube that show attacks by Sri Lankan soldiers against defenseless civilians. It has mounted public demonstrations—more than 10,000 showed up in Toronto, one of the largest Tamil communities outside of Sri Lanka. And it has petitioned the U.S. Justice Department to bring charges of genocide against two top Sri Lankan military figures, one an American citizen, the other a green card holder. A deliberate campaign of murder and rape, the organization alleges, has “brought the Sri Lankan Tamil community close to complete destruction.”
Yamuna and Rajeev are distantly related through Yamuna’s husband, and both contribute to the cause on a personal level. Rajeev did much of the research for the genocide petition and has written about the subject for Sri Lankan newspapers. Yamuna marched in a protest demonstration on Sri Lankan independence day in February and is urging friends to contact Congressional staffers, human rights activists, journalists—anyone who might publicize the “destruction” taking place back home.
Though Tamils and Sinhalese generally look alike (“no one can tell the difference,” says Yamuna), the Sinhalese are mainly Buddhists, while the Tamils are predominantly Hindu. They speak different languages and live in different regions, and the Sinhalese have used their majority status to declare Sri Lanka a Buddhist country, exclude Tamils from the army, and deprive them of equal rights.
In the mid-1980s, a rebel group called the Tamil Tigers (or simply “The Boys”) mounted a guerilla campaign and demanded a separate Tamil state. Because of their brutal tactics, including suicide bombings, the Tigers have been labeled a terrorist group by the United States. In January, the Sri Lankan government launched an all-out effort to destroy the rebels, and thousands of Tamil civilians have been caught in the crossfire. “The Tamil people in Sri Lanka have been abandoned by everybody,” Rajeev asserts.
But the Tamil people outside of Sri Lanka have thrived. Many are highly educated professionals, and Yamuna, now 47, is typical: Her father was the CFO of a chemical company in Sri Lanka before moving the family to Africa when she was 10. Two years later, he got a job with The World Bank in Washington, D.C., and relocated to Bethesda. She attended Holton-Arms School, then got an undergraduate degree in India before earning a master’s in accounting from George Washington University.
The pull of tradition was powerful, however, and despite her Western lifestyle and education Yamuna agreed to an arranged marriage. “I was brought up very conservatively; it would have been very hard to go against my parents. But I did want to marry a Tamil; I felt that’s where my comfort level was. If I married somebody else, I would feel that something was missing. I’ve seen a lot of my cousins marry outside, and as much as their spouses are very nice people, when we’re around together we have to think about what we say, we can’t be the same.” Her husband, Darren, a business consultant, was raised in England, and after she met him through her aunt, Yamuna set only one condition: She wanted to settle in America.
