Sri Lanka: Ten Questions

By Satya Sagar

30 May, 2009
Countercurrents.org

As the gory details of what the Tamil population of northern Sri Lanka have been subjected in recent weeks emerge – bit by bloody bit – there is need for a full accounting of every act of barbarity committed against them by the Sri Lankan government.

For, behind Colombo’s public parade of bodies of dead rebels and tasteless celebrations of ‘victory’ over the Tamil Tigers there hides today a horror list of unspeakable crimes carried out by the Mahinda Rajapakse regime.

Make no mistake about it- for all the Sri Lankan spin about what really happened in the final weeks of assault on the LTTE- the simple fact remains that this was a war conducted with no respect for either global opinion or any human norm, international convention or law.

And the governments of the world, blinded as they are by the perverse notion that every evil is acceptable in the global ‘War on Terror’, seem to have completely lost their moral compass in the case of Sri Lanka. Or are they keeping quiet because those who died in this grossly one-sided war were dark-skinned, poor and the term ‘genocide’ cannot be applied to them no matter how many of them are murdered in cold blood?

For the people of the world, the perpetual and historical victims of state terror, there remains no option but to fight back and demand justice. To begin with here are ten questions that need to be answered immediately:

1) How many civilians died in the final weeks of assault on the LTTE inside the ‘no fire’ zone and what has happened to their corpses?

2) Why were hospitals treating the injured and the sick inside the ‘no fire’ zone repeatedly shelled by the Sri Lankan army and what is the fate of the Tamil doctors who reported this to the global media?

3) What kind of banned weapons did the Sri Lankan forces use in their operations against the LTTE and which governments around the world supplied these to them?

4) Despite repeated official assertions that the ‘war is over’ why is the Sri Lankan government afraid of allowing independent media, humanitarian workers and human rights groups access to war affected areas?

5) Why are the thousands upon thousands of Tamil refugees – Sri Lankan citizens all of them- still being kept behind barbed wires like cattle corralled off before slaughter and why are Tamil youth being abducted from within these camps ?

6) Why are the repeated reports of Tamil women being raped by Sri Lankan army personnel not being investigated?

7) Why are Sri Lankan journalists questioning the conduct of the war being killed, tortured or forced into exile if the government has nothing to hide?

How can a chauvinist regime responsible for the worst kind of prejudice and atrocities against its minority population be entrusted with either their immediate rehabilitation or long-term solutions to the island’s ethnic question?

9) How long will it be before Mahinda Rajapakse and all high officials under his command are brought before an International Tribunal to account for their war crimes and crimes against humanity?

10) Now that the Tamil Tigers are defeated is it not time for the world to tame the rampaging Sinhala Lion too?

Satya Sagar is a journalist, writer and video-maker based in New Delhi. He can be contacted at sagarnama@gmail.com

India accused of complicity in deaths of Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers

From The Times

June 1, 2009

Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent

India was accused yesterday of complicity in the killing of an estimated 20,000 civilians in the last stages of Sri Lanka’s 26-year war against the Tamil Tigers.

Major-General Ashok Mehta, a former commander of Indian peacekeeping forces in Sri Lanka, said that India’s role was “distressing and disturbing”. Two international human rights groups said that India had failed to do enough to protect civilian lives.

“We were complicit in this last phase of the offensive when a great number of civilians were killed,” General Mehta, who is now retired, told The Times. “Having taken a decision to go along with the campaign, we went along with it all the way and ignored what was happening on the ground.”

Despite being home to 60 million Tamils, India has provided Sri Lanka with military equipment, training and intelligence over the past three years, diplomatic sources told The Times. More controversially, it provided unwavering diplomatic support and failed to use its influence to negotiate a ceasefire for civilians to escape the front line, they said.

India joined a bloc led by China and Russia at a special session of the UN Human Rights Council last week to thwart a proposal for a war crimes inquiry, and instead supported a resolution praising Sri Lanka. In January India voted in favour of a war crimes inquiry into Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip, which killed an estimated 926 civilians.

General Mehta said that the Indian Government, led by the Congress Party, wanted to counterbalance China and Pakistan, its main regional rivals, which had each increased arms sales to Sri Lanka in the past few years. It also wanted to avenge the Tigers’ assassination in 1991 of Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister and late husband of Sonia Gandhi, the current Congress leader, he said.

Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said that neither reason justified failing to act when the Red Cross warned of an “unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe”. India “could have saved many lives if it had taken a proactive position — and it would not have affected the outcome of the war,” he said.

Sam Zarifi, Asia Pacific director of Amnesty International, said: “India . . . simply chose to support the [Sri Lankan] Government’s notion that it could kill as many civilians as it would take to defeat the Tigers.”

India says that it provided Sri Lanka with non-lethal military equipment and sent officials repeatedly to persuade the Government to protect civilians. “We’ve consistently taken the line that the Sri Lankan Government should prevent civilian casualties,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

However, President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka told NDTV: “I don’t think I got any pressure from them. They knew that I’m fighting their war.”

Mr Rajapaksa told The Week magazine that he planned to visit Delhi next month to thank Indian leaders. “India’s moral support during the war was most important,” he said.

Diplomats, human rights activists and analysts say that Delhi either did not use its full diplomatic force or, more likely, gave Colombo carte blanche to finish the war. India’s only real concerns, they said, were that the conflict should not create a flood of refugees to India. Some raised questions about Vijay Nambiar, a former Indian diplomat, who is chief of staff to Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General. The Times revealed last week that Mr Nambiar knew about but chose not to make public the UN’s estimate that 20,000 civilians had been killed, mostly by army shelling.