While some students enjoy a Bear’s Den half-and-half every day, Sadena Thevarajah will not.

Thevarajah has not been eating at all since Monday, and may continue her fast for up to one year.

The second-year Washington University law student is abstaining from eating for something she feels is more important than food—she’s part of “Starving for Peace,” an initiative meant to bring attention to Sri Lankan refugees.

Sri Lanka—a country torn apart by decades of brutal civil war—is the site of a slow and methodical genocide of the Tamil people, a mostly Hindu ethnic group from southern India. The Tamils are being targeted and destroyed by the Sri Lankan military, which has been shelling 300,000 refugees in a supposed safe zone since it initiated an intensive military offensive this past September.

On Wednesday, the last hospital in the region was abandoned, leaving no medical care for the thousands of refugees.

“Genocide is most effective when it happens with a complicit silence and when it happens with a whimper and not a bang. This is exactly what has happened in Sri Lanka,” Thevarajah said.

Thevarajah, along with eight other young Americans across the country, has vowed to  fast continuously for a total of 10,000 meals. Each meal will represent 30 refugees. Supporters can pledge to fast for meals in order to lighten the load of the eight full fasters online at the organization’s Web site, pearlaction.org.

PEARL, or People for Equality and Relief in Sri Lanka, is an advocacy group composed of more than 1,800 Americans devoted to promoting perspectives about the decades-long conflict in Sri Lanka. The group was founded in 2005 after volunteers there witnessed numerous human right violations and the devastation caused by years of civil war between the two factions.

Thevarajah met her fellow fasters and other PEARL members through the close-knit community of Sri Lankan immigrants in the United States.

“The first time I met each of them, it felt like an immediate family,” she described. “I guess once I knew how deeply each of us was committed to helping Tamils, it became a shared story even though we had different upbringings.”

The PEARL members came up with the idea of fasting for the refugees together.

“When we thought of it we were so excited because we needed something exactly like this to express our anger at the situation,” Thevarajah said.  “We can talk about it everyday. It’s something that’s always on our minds.”

“The day I packed up all of my food and gave it to my upstairs neighbors, I thought, ‘This is going to be really hard,’” she said. “It was really scary.”

Although starting the fast was daunting, for now Thevarajah remains unfazed and determined.

“I don’t feel that bad. Times like this, when I get excited, my heart races. Other than that, I just need to nap and stay hydrated.”

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Tags: fast, hunger, peace, Sadena Thevarajah, Sri Lanka

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