Neela Marikkar

Expert Spotlight

Empowering the Silent Majority

For 15 years, Neela Marikkar experienced war while living in Sri Lanka.  She says that sometimes she was afraid, but since she lived in the south, she “didn't live the war day in and day out as some did.”  She and her husband noticed the war when there was a suicide bombing outside his company's office building in 1991. 

“Of all of the events that brought the war into our lives, the one on July 24, 2001, was the turning point,” says Marikkar.  Sri Lanka's international airport was attacked early in the morning.  The national carrier lost half its fleet and the Air Force lost eight of their 11 aircraft as well. 

Marikkar learned about the attack at 4:00 that morning.  She was faced with enormous damage to one of her biggest clients—Sri Lankan Airlines—and that had a big impact on her.  It also focused her energy: “I recognized the huge economic effect the attack was going to have on the country.  We had become a high-risk nation.”

All over the world, there were warnings not to visit Sri Lanka because it was a dangerous place.  That meant that tourism, one of the country's key industries, crashed overnight.  It also meant that exports couldn't go out and they couldn't come in.

It was a dire situation.  According to Marikkar, “We'd had terrible media fallout internationally, so I volunteered to do damage control.  While I was working…I came to the realization that patchwork wasn't enough.  Going back to the root cause was the answer.  The only way to stop terrorism was to stop the war, and the only way to stop the war was to get back to the negotiating table.”

The more Marikkar thought about it, the more it was clear that she had to get a group together to start looking at the conflict in her country.  She started reaching out to other business leaders who were reeling from the impact of the bombing.  “We knew that one more attack would cause business in the country to collapse,” she says.  “People would have no jobs.  The repercussions were very serious.”

Marikkar and her fellow group members called themselves Sri Lanka First.  She says, “The idea was that we had to put the country first—not our businesses, not our party agendas.  Nothing.” 

The high point of the campaign was a peaceful demonstration.  They advertised widely, asking everyone to step outside at noon on September 19, 2001, and hold hands to let the government know they wanted peace.  It was an experiment.  They didn't know whether anyone would show.

Marikkar woke up that day thinking, “What if nobody comes out?”  That was a tremendous concern, especially because the 9/11 attacks in the US happened just a week before.  Her group came under severe criticism from the media “because the whole world was saying, ‘We've got to wipe out terrorism,' and here we were saying, ‘No, we want to talk.  Let's try to resolve this through negotiation.  Let's not continue this war.'”

Out of a population of almost 18 million, more than one million people went into the streets.  “It was an amazing sight,” says Marikkar.  The turnout proved to Sri Lanka's political leaders that people were committed to peace.  Not long after the demonstration, the government faced a no-confidence vote.  Since it seemed likely it would lose the vote, Parliament was dissolved, and there were new elections.  Sri Lanka First was active, urging people to vote for candidates who stood for a negotiated settlement. 

A new government won on the peace mandate; and a week after they took office, the LTTE declared a ceasefire.  The government reciprocated on December 24; since then, there has been a cessation of hostilities.  A final ceasefire agreement was signed in February 2002, and it is still holding.

“Now our job is to keep support for the peace process going,” says Marikkar.  Being an active member of Sri Lanka First has been an enormous personal challenge for Marikkar.  “My day job is running Sri Lanka's largest marketing communications company; my night job is working for peace and development.  As a wife and mother, making time for my family hasn't been easy.  But this experience has been extremely fulfilling.  My life is richer, and my heart is more forgiving.  I'm grateful for the chance to have contributed in some small way to a peaceful resolution of my country's devastating war.”

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