‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’
[IPS]
The eight rows of pews at St. Fatima’s church in Colombo were mostly empty despite the festive look from Christmas decorations. Beside the altar a young man with a receding hairline was setting up a slideshow on the plight of the tens of thousands displaced in war-torn northern Sri Lanka, run to the accompaniment of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s 1984 number, ‘Do they Know It’s Christmas?’. This was a special, pre-Christmas prayer service for civilians trapped in the Vanni or areas still under the control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).