As you may know, Sri Lanka was our target of the Peace Intention Experiment last September.  When we ran the experiment, a 25-year civil war had raged – one of the longest and bloodiest of the world, with more suicide bombings than anywhere on earth.  At the time of our experiment, the well-armed and trained forces of the Tamil Tigers had control of the North and East of the country and still had a firm upper hand.

For eight days beginning September 14, The Intention Experiment carried out its first Peace Intention Experiment, with thousands of participants from more than 65 countries and every continent but Antarctica.

Noted peace advocate Dr. Kumar Rupesinghe and his colleagues from the Foundation for Co-existence in Columbo, Sri Lanka, supplied us weekly violence data from the past two years for both the North and Eastern sections, and continued to monitor both areas for daily rates of killings and violence for some months after our intention week.

From these statistics, Dr. Jessica Utts, professor of Statistics at University of California at Irvine, created a statistical time-analysis model, which seems to demonstrate that the very week of Peace Intention Experiment week could have been pivotal in helping to hasten the end of the war.  These effects appeared corroborated by the work of Dr. Roger Nelson of the Global Coherence Project.  The full report is available on our website.

That very week initiated a turn-around in the war, which culminated with the end of the war this week.  Now, we don’t know if this is an amazing coincidence, or a genuine effect, and we won’t know until we repeat the experiment.

Nevertheless, peace in Sri Lanka has extracted a terrible price. Thousands of civilians have been killed or severely wounded in the crossfire or used as human shields. The UN and the EU are now investigating allegations of war crimes and violations of human rights by both sides – the rebels and the government.  The government refused the humanitarian aid of the west. 

As the Economist wrote, ‘The Tigers may be dead, but the bitter ethnic divisions that fuelled the 26-year war live on. . . . The territorial conflict may be over but a humanitarian disaster is still unfolding.’

The war is over – that much is good.  However, the government needs to unite all minorities in peace and to recognize the civil rights of all its people. Let’s send a special intention to heal these deep wounds:

To participate, come onto our website a few minutes before 5 pm GMT (other time zones on our site), click on the Intention of the Week and send an intention for 10 minutes.

10 am PDST
11 am MDST
12 noon CDST
1 pm EDST
6 pm British Summer Time
7 pm rest of Europe

At that time, please come together on the site and send a 10-minute intention:

 “My intention is for the all ethnic groups in Sri Lanka to unite together in love, peace, mutual respect and civil rights for all.”

Please also include your comments to Sri Lanka, below: