Church workers help families find relatives missing in Sri Lankan war

(May 7, 2009) Catholic workers are helping desperate Sri Lankans look for loved ones missing in the country's civil war. "One nun took me from camp to camp to find my father and my sweet younger brother," said Niroshini, 21, a university student who used only one name. She told the Asian church news agency UCA News that she already had lost her mother in the December 2004 tsunami and another brother in the war. When she finally found her brother and father in one of the camps, "I just hugged them," Niroshini told UCA News. But thousands of others have not been as fortunate, and church workers are facing unprecedented problems when trying to trace people in refugee camps spread out across thousands of acres. "We are working in little-known, remote areas with difficult transportation and communication problems with the Sinhalese soldiers," a Good Shepherd nun in Vavuniya told UCA News. The chaotic situation on the Jaffna peninsula, where government troops have cornered Tamil separatists, has forced approximately 200,000 people into refugee camps.