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Silent Genocide in Sri Lanka

As you will know, in the recent conflict in Sri Lanka, there are
allegations of atrocities having being carried out on both sides - the Sri
Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers, with widespread reports the Sri-Lankan army
used chemical weapons, though witnesses are hard to find as the SL government
excluded the international media from the conflict and now many of the ‘Internal
Displaced People’ (IDP) camps where over 280,000 civilians are being held.
Alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan Army remain unrecognised by the
international community.

Over 280,000 civilians have been displaced by the military offensive
against the Tamil Tigers and they are now being held by the government in de
facto internment camps where they live in dire conditions with poor sanitation,
without adequate security, food, water and medical care. Sri Lankan President
Mahinda Rajapaksa’s proclamation in a speech in Colombo on May 7th that the
Government of Sri Lanka is “fully engaged in delivering all the basic needs to
the people in the welfare centres” and that “the media has also been given
unhindered access” is clearly at variance with evidence that has managed to leak
out of Sri Lanka which tells of people being crammed together in filthy
conditions with woeful and inadequate sanitation, food shortages, families split
up & children being disappeared, and disease spreading, amidst a shortage of
medical treatment. Amnesty International has received consistent reports of
widespread and serious human rights violations, including enforced
disappearance, extra-judicial executions, torture and other ill-treatment,
forced recruitment by paramilitary groups, and sexual violence. Humanitarian
organizations, UN monitors and the international media still do not have access
to all of the camps. According to reports of the UN's Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in the week ending 7th June, “over 13,000
internally displaced people disappeared from Sri Lanka’s internment camps for
Tamil civilians”, Inner City Press reports.

Human Rights Watch labelled the Sri Lankan government as one of the
“world’s worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances”. Source: S Lanka rapped
over 'disappeared' , BBC News, Thursday, 6 March 2008. Ref:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7280050.stm

There are allegations of atrocities having being carried out by members of the
Sri Lankan army and paramilitary forces in and around the camps. On 5th May,
Channel 4 News reported from a camp in the northern Sri Lankan city of Vavuniya
where Tamil refugees have been taken, revealing shocking claims of shortages of
food and water, dead bodies left where they have fallen, women separated from
their families, and even sexual abuse.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/grim+scene\
s+at+sri+lankan+camps+/3126257

Even Sri Lanka’s Sri Lankan Chief Justice - Sarath N. Silva – has broken ranks
to criticise the IDP camps. He said, “"Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in
Vanni sheltered in transit centres in Cheddiku'lam cannot expect justice under
the Sri Lanka's law. Law of the country does not show any interest on these
IDPs. I openly say this. The authorities can penalize me for telling this”.
Christian Aid (one of the UK's leading humanitarian and development charities)
predicted the imminent outbreak of disease in the Sri Lankan camps for Tamil
civilian, although there have already been reports of the outbreak of some
disease in densely populated, squalid conditions.

In the recent conflict which resumed in January 2009, Sri Lanka’s military has
been accused by human rights organizations of using massive firepower against
the guerrillas which caused large-scale civilian casualties. Although they
initially claimed that the objective of the war was to defeat the LTTE, they
have in fact killed and wounded tens of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians
with heavy weapons. The Sri Lankan government swept across over large swathes of
Tamil Tiger (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - LTTE) territory across the north
of the country through the use of aerial bombardment, forcing civilians to flee.
Most at issue in terms of real and substantive allegations of war crimes have
been widespread reports that the Sri Lankan military used chemical weapons and
cluster bombs in targetting civilian areas, though the Sri Lankan government
continue to deny the usage of such weapons. The Sri Lankan Army is estimated to
have killed tens of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians this year.

This is the most extreme violence that has occurred during the entire 3
decade-long conflict. According to “War Without Witness”, on Monday 20th April,
the Sri Lankan Army attacked civilian areas using cluster bombs, gas bombs and
heavy weapons, with more than 1500 feared dead and 3500 or more injured,
including hundreds of children. Initial results of Independent investigations
conducted by “War Without Witness” confirms that the Sri Lankan Government used
Chemical Weapons in Vanni (Northern Part of Sri Lanka) both on civilians and its
enemy combatants on 5th April. Two victims were examined by a qualified
independent doctor in Vanni ‘Safe Zone’ on 5th April and the initial results
were peer-reviewed by an experienced doctor in United Kingdom.

Extracts of Medical/Chemical Report
Chemical Substances found on the wounds are:
1) Triethanolamine (C6H15NO3)
2) Phosgene (CCl2O)
Ref:
http://www.warwithoutwitness.com/images/stories/PDF/WWWReport_SriLankaUseChemica\
lBombs_08thApril2009.pdf

The Sri Lankan Government had declared an end to the use of heavy weapons on
April 27. And yet, the medical relief group, Medecins Sans Frontiers reported
that the civilians pouring out of the conflict zone included large numbers of
people with blast, mine and gunshot wounds. It has been revealed that up to
30,000 Tamil civilians have been left severely disabled by Sri Lankan army
shelling in the so-called 'no-fire zone' (Dean Nelson, The Telegraph, 24 May).
International aid agencies say that SL authorities prevented access during the
conflict and hampered the entry of life-saving medical supplies and evacuations
of wounded people.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch
conservatively estimated that since the beginning of 2009, over 2800 Tamil
civilians have been killed and 7000 injured due to bombing and shelling by the
Sri Lanka Armed Forces (observers estimate the actual figure of human loss is
much higher – as many as 50,000 - as civilian numbers who have fled the ‘no-fire
zone’ have not been independently verified). A humanitarian worker who’dd been
serving in Sri Lanka's Vanni district for more than a decade until he fled in
mid-May at the height of the Sri Lankan military assault against the last
Tamil-held areas in northeastern Sri Lanka estimated that Sri Lankan government
forces killed or injured 25,000-30,000 civilians in the span of just a few days
during its final offensive against Tamil militants. He told Catholic News
Service in Rome, May 21, that the high number of casualties was caused by "a
generous use" of weapons, such as cluster and chemical bombs, which are banned
by international treaties and, therefore, their use represents a crime against
humanity. Government forces launched a ground offensive in Vanni, bombarding
areas with cluster bombs, cannons, multibarrel rocket launchers, and chemical
and incendiary bombs such as Napalm and white phosphorous, the aid worker said.
[Taken from: “Banned arms' use caused high casualties in Sri Lanka, says aid
worker”, by Carol Glatz - Catholic News Service. Ref:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0902368.htm].

Tamil civilians fleeing the aeriel bombardment across the north of the
country were told to move into so-called 'no-fire zones' to escape the
conflict. Many ended up being corralled into a narrow strip of northern
coastline in measuring 7.7 sq km in the north-east of the island - LTTE’s last
remaining enclave in Mullaithivu. [Source: The Independent on Sunday, 19th
April 2009]. However, satellite images obtained by the UN indicated widespread
aerial bombardment of these so-called 'no-fire zones' by the SLA [published by
The Times, 'Slaughter in Sri Lanka' - May 29 2009,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6382706.ece]

The campaign ‘Act-Now’ learned of witness reports that SLA troops had been
digging large holes with mechanical diggers, as claims of numbers who have fled
the ‘no-fire zone’ enclave in Mullaithivu remain unverified. On Sunday 17th May,
between 25,000 to 50,000 civilians were still stranded on the 7.7 sq km narrow
strip of northern coastline where 150,000 civilians had been confined alongside
Tamil Tigers fighters in the recent conflict. Due to exclusion of UN monitors,
relief agencies and international media, it was not possible to verify the
whereabouts of this number of people – whilst total numbers being detained in
the ‘Internal displaced Person (IDP) camps have similarly been unable to be
verified.

The three doctors who were working inside the rebel-held war zone were
picked up by the Sri Lankan Army’s notoriously brutal Terrorist
Investigation Division after the conflict ended and were held on suspicion of
collaborating with Tamil rebels. With journalists banned from the conflict zone,
they became an important source of news about the fighting during the final
bloody months of war. Their work was praised by the US and UN, since they were
detained. The doctors could be in detention for a year or more before being
tried.

“War Without Witness” have complied a report which documents the
identities/cases of more than 20,000 Tamil civilians ( Full Name, Age, Sex,
Hospital admitted at ) who have been killed or injured by Sri Lankan Armed
Forces in 2009; more than 95% of this 20,000, were killed or injured by Sri
Lanka Armed Forces in first three month from January to March 2009 and doesn’t
include the final stages of the battle described by UN as ‘bloodbath on beaches’
in April and May 2009. The report also goes on to quote how, by end of April and
up to 20th May, the death toll estimated by various Human Rights Organisations (
Including UN Local staff ) was around 1000 a day.
Ref:
http://www.warwithoutwitness.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23\
2

The people of Northern Sri Lanka have experienced intense trauma in the last few
years, and especially over the last few months. The International Committee of
the Red Cross, which rarely makes public comment, called this conflict between
the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil rebels, 'nothing short of catastrophic'.

Foreign ministers from the 27-nation EU have already said allegations that
international humanitarian and human rights laws were violated and had to be
investigated. On Wednesday 13th May, US President Obama denounced the
"indiscriminate shelling of civilians trapped with the remnants of the country's
Tamil Tiger rebels" in a speech he made about Sri Lanka.

Background:
The historic root to the ethnic conflict stems from a legacy of British
colonialism which forcefully amalgamated two separate kingdoms of two nations of
people and bestowed upon the higher-caste Tamil population a disproportionate
share in the state administration under a notorious strategy of divide and rule,
with the high caste Tamil population adopted the English educational system,
festering a lifetime of resentment amongst the Sinhalese population that later
sparked the fires of Sinhala chauvinism and propelled the emergence of Sinhala
nationalism.

Sri Lanka achieved independence in 1948. The Tamils, an ethnic minority making
up 24% of the island’s population, were mainly concentrated in the north and
east of the island. Independence from British rule resulted in the transfer of
political power to the Sinhalese majority. From the start, the Tamil people
found themselves increasingly excluded from both the governance of the country
as well as victims of a wider discrimination. The Sinhalese government
introduced discriminatory policies including: anti-Tamil employment rules;
unfair education laws; stripping Tamil plantation workers of their citizenship
(1 million Tamils had been brought into the country by the British many years
before); and making Sinhala, the language of the Sinhalese majority, the
island’s official language. Sinhalese national chauvinism reigned supreme and
fuelled a vicious and violent form of state oppression against the Tamil people.
Over the years, there have been various riots and attacks on the Tamil
population and their interests by Sinhalese mobs, which have consistently been
tolerated with impunity, with a history of rape against Tamil women having
particularly been used as a weapon. State oppression has a continuous history of
more than half a century since independence and has been practiced by successive
Sri Lanka governments, which is what led to the military independence struggle
of the LTTE. A wave of extra-judicial killings including several Tamil MPs
elected in 2004, and the discovery of mass graves in Jaffna between 1999 & 2004
indicated the escalation of state repression by the SL government.

It was this series of events plus a consistent incidence of violence
against the Tamil population which gave birth to the Tamil Tiger guerrilla
movement in 1976 and the growth of the armed resistance campaign of the Tamils.
In the words of journalist John Pilger: "The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) have spilt their share of blood and perpetrated their own atrocities. But
they are the product, not the cause, of an injustice and a war that long
predates them. [And] neither is Sri Lanka’s civil strife as unfathomable as it
is often presented: an ancient religious-ethnic rivalry between the Hindu Tamils
and the Buddhist Sinhalese government." Tamil civilians have borne the brunt of
Sri Lanka's civil war violence.

Prior to the latest episode in what has been an ongoing civil war, in
2000, major military gains by the Tigers and the dire state of the Sri
Lankan economy as a result of the war were the key factors that forced the Sri
Lankan government to respond positively to unilateral LTTE ceasefires declared
in 2000 and 2001. The February 2002 Norwegian-mediated ceasefire agreement has
been the longest-lasting attempt to bring peace.

In negotiations the LTTE sought the establishment of an interim
self-governing authority in the north-east to facilitate human rights
protection as well as “resettlement, rehabilitation, reconstruction, and
development in the north-east, while the process of reaching a final settlement
remains ongoing”. But far from offering the Tamil people anything in
negotiations that could lead to a lasting peace, the United National Party (UNP)
Government failed even to implement the provisions of the ceasefire agreement.
It failed to allow Tamils to return to their homes in the “high security zones”
occupied by the SLA, or have the SLA vacate public buildings in Tamil towns. It
also failed to disarm the pro-Government paramilitary death squads.

As a result, the LTTE suspended its participation in negotiations in 2003. The
UNP was replaced in 2004 elections, which were boycotted almost totally by the
Tamil population, by the even more chauvinist Government of President Mahinda
Rajapaksa. Several Tamil MPs elected in the last parliamentary elections in the
country in 2004 have been murdered, including Mr Maheswaran and Nadarajah
Raviraj. Veteran Eastern Province Parliamentarian Joseph Pararajasingham was
shot dead last year at the St. Mary's Cathedral in Batticaloa during midnight
mass at Christmas, 2004.

The latest escalation in the conflict recommenced when the Sri Lankan
government launched major offensive operations in April 2006, displacing over
40,000 Tamil civilians in 3 days. Their offensive stepped up a notch in mid-2007
when it ordered international NGOs out of Vanni. Five thousand Tamils in
‘controlled zones’ disappeared. All this happened despite the fact that the LTTE
called for a ceasefire and peace talks in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Sri Lankan Air Force bombers destroyed the Ponnampalam Memorial Hospital in the
town of Puthukkudiyiruppu in northern Sri Lanka on February 6. According to
Tamilnet.com, 61 patients were killed in the attack.

By February 2009, there were approximately 495,000 conflict-displaced
persons in Sri Lanka. Of this number, 281,698 were displaced after April 2006
and approximately 214,000 from the period before. The biggest number of
Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in 2008 were in the Vanni where, due to
access restrictions, getting accurate figures was impossible. The UN was
estimating around 230,000 IDPs in the Vanni area as of November 2008; the
Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies estimated around 300,000 IDPs; the
government in some cases was suggesting a figure as low as 100,000. By April
2009, the majority of IDPs in Sri Lanka were in the government-controlled areas
where they had fled from Vanni.

The present constitution of Sri Lanka states that ALL citizens irrespective of
their ethnic group, religion, caste, social group etc. are EQUAL. This
constitution was enacted in 1978. Despite this, the ordinary people of Sri Lanka
live in dire poverty and the country has been torn apart by civil war since
1977. Throughout this time, successive Sinhalese-dominated governments in Sri
Lanka has been consistently able over the years to deflect criticism and further
investigation into allegations of brutal subjugation because the tendency has
been to not hesitate to conflate Tamil civilians with the LTTE, s well as
cynically presenting any independent agent - including NGOs, aid agencies or
even UN negotiators in international mediation efforts - as tantamount to
support for the Tigers. This conflation has conveniently averted attention from
the excesses of discrimination which Sri Lankan governing administrations have
exacted on those who the government sought to subjugate (the Tamil
minority).

There is a moral obligation to pursue any allegations of war crimes in
accordance with the Geneva Convention and the Declaration of Human Rights.
Britain as former colonial power, who sold the nation short, have a moral
obligation to ensure the Tamil population is protected in a country where, when
they originally conquered it, the Tamil kingdom existed in it's own right until
Britain amalgamated the 3 kingdoms into one for administrative purposes in 1833
after having first occupied the island in 1796.

However, the government of Sri Lanka has been consistently able over the years
to deflect criticism and further investigation into allegations of brutal
subjugation because it does not hesitate to conflate Tamil civilians with the
LTTE, and has cynically presented any independent agent - including NGOs, aid
agencies or even UN negotiators in international mediation efforts - as
tantamount to support for the Tigers. In a report published by Amnesty
International entitled, ‘Twenty Years of Make-Believe: Sri Lanka’s Commissions
of Inquiry’, Amnesty International accuse the Sri Lankan government of “failure
in delivering justice for serious human rights violations over the past twenty
years”, which they describe as having “trapped the country in a vicious cycle
of abuse and impunity.”

Despite massive international pressure, on Wed 27th May, the United
Nations Human Rights Council refused calls to investigate allegations of war
crimes by both sides. Instead it supported Sri Lanka in handling the
humanitarian crisis under it's own initiative. The session had been called
because of alarm over the high number of civilian casualties as well as the
island's treatment of displaced Tamil civilians. The call by UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay for aid agencies to be given free
access to the camps so they can provide the Tamils with critical relief was not
agreed.



More Info:
http://www.act-now.info
http://www.srilankacrisiscamps.org/
http://www.warwithoutwitness.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23\
2
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions_details.asp?ActionID=608
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2009-05-20.html
http://www.tamilnet.com
http://www.srilanka-genocide.org
http://www.unspeakabletruth.info
http://www.tamilsagainstgenocide.org
http://www.tamilsforum.com




Media:

Vanni IDPs live under appalling condition: Sri Lankan Chief Justice
[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 June 2009]
Ref: http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=29520

Camp disappearances reach alarming levels - Rights advocate
[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 June 2009]
Ref: http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=29593

Sri Lanka accused of 'ethnic cleansing' of Tamil areas,
by Dean Nelson, The Daily Telegraph
Published: 26 May 2009
Ref:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/srilanka/5382676/Sri-Lanka-accuse\
d-of-ethnic-cleansing-of-Tamil-areas.html
'Slaughter in Sri Lanka', The Times - May 29, 2009,
Ref:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6382706.ece

S Lanka rapped over 'disappeared' , BBC News, Thursday, 6 March 2008.
Ref: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7280050.stm

[end]