Some may never speak. I have often thought that for victims of violence, the pain is so deep and the anger so fierce that words fail them. Das and Daniel claim that it is even more than that. Being human inevitably entails communication and relationships, and therefore, the refusal to communicate, or the inability to communicate, is a refusal or an inability to be human. The silence is then a withdrawal from participating in humanity.
Silence is before thought, before imagination.
It is the void. It is terror. If peace talks are to begin, the victims of this war, both Sinhala and Tamil have to move beyond the terror of silence. Negotiators must be forced to remember that there is more to this conflict than the political resolution of constitutional boundaries. Annan is expected to conduct talks concerning the reduction of nuclear competition between India and Pakistan, as well as reiterating his concern for the Taleban's plan to destroy non-Islamic cultural treasures in Afghanistan.