Main content

Sri Lanka and Atlanta, USA

Charles Haviland hears Sinhalese and ethnic Tamils' views of Sri Lanka's human rights record, and Andrew Whitehead is almost converted at a Baptist service in Atlanta, Georgia.

Now that the meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Sri Lanka is over, Charles Haviland reports on how both the Sinhalese majority and the ethnic Tamil minority see the one topic that foreign reporters at the summit were most interested in: the human rights record of government forces at the end of the long civil war. Should the alleged murders, torture and disappearances be subject to an independent investigation, or was whatever happened a price worth paying for peace?

Andrew Whitehead takes the travel advice of a friend, and visits a Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia. As a professed atheist, he only went to experience an important part of the culture and faith of a large part of the local African-American community, whose best-known son was Baptist preacher Martin Luther King Jr. But the service is having a bigger effect on Andrew than he had bargained for.

(Picture: Tamil woman holds up a picture of her son. Credit: Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)

Available now

11 minutes

Last on

Wed 20 Nov 2013 02:50GMT

Broadcast

  • Wed 20 Nov 2013 02:50GMT