Sri Lanka is uncovering mass graves but not the grisly truth of its civil war

AS DARK CLOUDS of economic crisis, political chaos and mass protest loomed over Sri Lanka a year ago, optimists saw one silver lining. So incompetent and corrupt was the soon-to-collapse government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, it had united the country in anger, crossing the ethnic divide that had blighted its post-independence history. But hopes that this might lead to a lasting rapprochement between the island’s Tamil, and largely Hindu, minority and its Sinhalese Buddhist majority have proved to be short-lived.