JOLIE CALLS FOR
AID FOR SRI LANKA
Copyright 2003 www.tombraiderchronicles.com
[ April 16th 2003 ]
Hollywood
star Angelina Jolie said on Wednesday she was
moved by stories of lives shattered by two decades
of war in Sri Lanka and called on the international
community to back the island's peace process.
Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the U.N.'s refugee
body, said she was saddened after listening to
a group of 500 war-traumatized orphan girls say
they did not want to be mothers when they grew
up.
"They
wanted to be doctors or teachers...but not one
of them wanted to be a mother, that is strange,"
Jolie told reporters after spending several days
touring areas of northern Sri Lanka. Jolie, who
won an Academy Award for the 1999 drama "Girl,
Interrupted" and had huge box-office success as
Lara Croft in "Tomb Raider," also said she would
make a donation of at least $10,000 to help rebuild
the pediatric ward in a Jaffna hospital. Jaffna
peninsula was the central battleground between
government troops and the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), fighting for a separate state
for minority Tamils.
The two
sides signed a cease-fire in February 2002 and
a series of peace talks since last September have
given the island its best chance yet to end the
war that has killed 64,000 people, displaced a
million more and devastated Sri Lanka's economy.
The peace encouraged more than 270,000 displaced
people to return to their villages last year,
often to homes that had been destroyed. "They
really have come back to absolutely nothing, but
they seem grateful just to be coming back," said
Jolie, who has been a goodwill ambassador for
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
for more than two years.
The 27-year-old
actress has visited war-hit countries in Africa,
Latin American and in other parts of Asia, including
Cambodia. She fell in love with Cambodia while
making "Tomb Raider" and has adopted a Cambodian-born
baby boy.
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