Forbes.com

Commentary

Behind The Sri Lankan Bloodbath

Brahma Chellaney, 10.09.09, 12:01 AM EDT

Colombo's victory over the Tamils shows India's power on the wane.

Thousands of noncombatants, according to the United Nations, were killed in the final phase of the Sri Lankan war this year as government forces overran the Tamil Tiger guerrillas. Nearly five months after Colombo's stunning military triumph, the peace dividend remains elusive, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa setting out--in the name of "eternal vigilance"--to expand by 50% an already-large military. Little effort has been made to reach out to the Tamil minority and begin a process of national reconciliation.

China, clearly, was the decisive factor in ending the war through its generous supply of offensive weapons and its munificent aid. It even got its ally Pakistan to actively assist Rajapaksa in his war strategy. Today, China is the key factor in providing Colombo the diplomatic cover against the institution of a U.N. investigation into possible war crimes, or the appointment of a U.N. special envoy on Sri Lanka. In return for such support, Beijing has been able to make strategic inroads into a critically located country in India's backyard.

Unlike China's assistance, India's role has received little international attention. But India, too, contributed to the Sri Lankan bloodbath through its military aid, except that it has ended up, strangely, with its leverage undermined.

For years, India had pursued a hands-off approach toward Sri Lanka in response to two developments--a disastrous 1987-1990 peacekeeping operation there; and the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a member of the Tamil Tigers. But having been outmaneuvered by China's success in extending strategic reach to Sri Lanka in recent years, New Delhi got sucked into providing major assistance to Colombo, lest it lose further ground in Sri Lanka.

From opening an unlimited line of military credit for Sri Lanka to extending critical naval and intelligence assistance, India provided sustained war support despite a deteriorating humanitarian situation there. A "major turning point" in the war, as Sri Lankan navy chief Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda acknowledged, came when the rebels' supply ships were eliminated, one by one, with input from Indian naval intelligence, cutting off all supplies to the rebel-held areas. That in turn allowed the Sri Lankan ground forces to make rapid advances and unravel the de facto state the Tigers had established in the island nation's north and east.

Sri Lanka, for its part, practiced adroit but duplicitous diplomacy: It assured India it would approach other arms suppliers only if New Delhi couldn't provide a particular weapon system it needed. Yet it quietly began buying arms from China and Pakistan without even letting India know. In doing so, Colombo mocked Indian appeals that it rely for its legitimate defense needs on India, the main regional power. It was only by turning to India's adversaries for weapons, training and other aid that Colombo pulled off a startling military triumph. In any event, Colombo was emboldened by the fact that the more it chipped away at India's traditional role, the more New Delhi seemed willing to pander to its needs.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/08/tamil-tigers-rajiv-gandhi-opinions-contributors-sri-lanka.html

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Friday, September 11, 2009 18:04 Mecca time, 15:04 GMT The Sri Lankan media war continues

Watch Part 2 In May the Sri Lankan Army defeated the seperatist Tamil Tigers in a military push that left 20,000 civilians in the last month of fighting alone. The Listening Post has previously reported on how the Sri Lankan government prevented most of the media from entering the the war zone. UN human rights groups and journalists are working to uncover the truth about the last bloody days of the battle. A disturbing video has surfaced that appears to show cold-blooded executions. The video has provoked an immediate response from the Sri Lankan government and a fight over the veracity of the footage is being waged all the way from the capital, Colombo, to London. To name or not to name Salah Khadr delves into the world of online anonymity and looks at particular cases that have raised the question of whether it is a good thing. A model in New York recently criticised someone, who responded by setting up an anonymous blog and maligned the model online. The model in turn then took Google to court in a successful effort to force the company into reveal the blogger’s identity. The blogger is now threatening to take Google back to court for revealing who she was. The argument itself was petty, but the ruling has implications that go far beyond the individual case and could affect the rights of all bloggers to anonymity. Painfully funny Finally, The American website The Onion deals in what it calls fake news. It started out spoofing newspapers and has since taken on TV news. The Onion’s satirical approach to serious news stories and the way they are handled in the media can be remarkably close to the mark. Now they are satirising the US torture debate in the news media. In order to point out how ridiculous they think some of the arguments are the Onion has simply replaced a military interrogator with a mythological 11 foot tall half-man, half-bovine beast. It will all make more sense by watching our web video of the week. http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/listeningpost/2009/09/2009911133626307252.html -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this evidence of Sri Lankan 'war crimes'?

Updated on 25 August 2009

By Jonathan Miller

Channel 4 News shows footage claimed to show Sri Lankan forces executing Tamils earlier this year. Jonathan Miller reports.

Just three months after the Sri Lankan government declared the country liberated from the Tamil Tigers, video footage has emerged apparently showing government troops summarily executing Tamils.

Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, which obtained the material, said it was filmed in January - when the international media were prevented by the Sri Lankan government from covering the conflict zone.

Tonight, the Sri Lankan High Commission denied the government had carried out atrocities against the Tamil community.

The Sri Lankan government launched a large scale military offensive in January capturing the Tamil Tiger held town of Kilinochchi. The army then steadily pushed the rebels into an small area of the north-east.

Be warned - there are extremely disturbing scenes in this report from our foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Miller.

Sri Lanka High Commission response

"The High Commission of Sri Lanka categorically deny that the Sri Lankan armed forces engaged in atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamil community. They were only engaged in a military offensive against the LTTE.

"The High Commission has noted that in many instances in the past, various media institutions used doctored videos, photographs and documents to defame the Sri Lankan government and armed forces. Therefore, we request you to verify the authenticity of the video footage before the telecast".

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/asia_pacific/is+this+evidence+of+sri+lankan+aposwar+crimesapos/3321087

Prachanda slams India, Lanka for fight against rebels

Yubaraj Ghimire
Posted: Monday , Aug 03, 2009 at 0303 hrs Kathmandu:

The Communist Party of Maoists-Nepal (CPN-M) on Sunday criticised the governments of India and Sri Lanka for their “oppressive” campaigns against rebels in the two countries. The CPN-M said its central committee opposed such “repressions” and felt such methods used by the state against armed groups will be counter productive.

CPN-M chief Prachanda said the party would maintain close contacts with COMPOSA (Coordination of Maoist Parties of South Asia), which has its underground headquarters in India, and RIM (Revolutionary International Movement), an umbrella body of ultra-left militants worldwide.

This is the first time that Prachanda has given a clear message that the CPN-M’s joining the peace process in Nepal three years ago does not mean giving up arms, and that it supports any armed movement outside the country. He also set a four-day deadline for the Nepal government to correct the “unconstitutional step” of reinstating army chief R Katawal. “If our demands are not met within the deadline set, we will start people’s revolt,” he said.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Prachanda-slams-India--Lanka-for-fight-against-rebels/497249
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Editorial
Tamil Camps
Published: July 15, 2009

More than two months after declaring victory over Tamil Tiger guerillas, Sri Lanka’s government is continuing to hold hundreds of thousands of displaced Tamil civilians in what it calls “welfare villages,” but what increasingly look like military internment camps.

The civilians, many of whom were held hostage by the guerrillas in the bloody last stage of the long war, are not being allowed out of the camps, and access by human-rights organizations or journalists is highly restricted.

The government claims it is looking for Tamil Tigers among the refugees and clearing Tamil villages of landmines before letting people return. It may well be that there are former guerrillas hiding among the civilians — the Tamil Tigers had no compunctions about using civilians as cannon fodder or forcibly conscripting men and children. But the screening process is dragging on far too long. And many refugees see it as another abuse of the country’s Tamil minority. As one prominent Tamil politician told The New York Times’s Lydia Polgreen, “This is simply asking for another conflict later on down the road.” If President Mahinda Rajapaksa means it when he says he seeks reconciliation with the Tamils, he should start by letting these people return to their homes.

The government’s strict control on visits to the camps has also raised suspicions that it may be trying to block any investigation into possible government abuses committed in the last months of the war. Soldiers corralled the Tigers, along with hundreds of thousands of civilians into a narrow stretch of beach and, according to human-rights organizations, shelled the area repeatedly. The United Nations says that thousands of civilians were killed, though how and by whom remains murky in the absence of independent investigations.

Donor countries — including the United States, the European Union and Japan — as well as international aid organizations are helping provide food, shelter and clothing to the camps. Most have kept quiet so far about the Tamils’ plight, evidently fearful that criticizing conditions in the camps could get them thrown out of the camps. The time for silence is over. The best way to help the Tamils is by demanding their freedom and an end to their long ordeal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/opinion/16iht-edtamil.html?_r=1
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Rajapaksa rules out separate ethnicity-based provinces

P K Balachandran

First Published : 15 Jul 2009 02:49:00 AM IST

Last Updated : 15 Jul 2009 08:21:34 AM IST

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said “no” to ethnicity-based separate provinces, in an interview to the latest edition of the American magazine Time.Asked if he believed in some kind of self-governance for the Tamils, Rajapaksa said: “Don’t say Tamils. In this country you can’t give separate areas on an ethnic basis, you can’t have this.” But provinces could certainly have powers, to enable them to handle local matters, he conceded.When asked if there was some kind of an effort to change the demography of the Tamil-majority areas, the President said: “No”. But he pointed out that demographic changes were happening in the Sinhalese-majority Colombo.“The Eastern Province Muslims have come here (Colombo district). The Tamils have come here. You ask them. Why are you coming here? Can I stop them? No. If anybody wants to come and live in any part of this island, it the right of a man,” he stated.Ruling out any special devolution for the wholly Tamil-speaking Northern Province, Rajapaksa said the North could not have a model of its own. “That I will not allow. The whole country must have a system.”He noted that there were differences among the Tamils as to what they should ask for, now that the LTTE has been defeated and its leader, Prabhakaran, is dead.“If you ask the IDPs (International Displaced Persons or the war refugees) they’ll say we want to go back to our villages. If you ask politicians, they’ll say, we want this and that. But yes, we need to give a political solution,” Rajapaksa explained.NO TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: Rejecting a suggestion that there should be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal the wounds of the past through an honest and public acceptance of past mistakes, the President said that he did not want to “dig into the past and reopen wounds.” When suggested that airing a wound would help it heal, he retorted: “This is where the West is different from the East.”WAR CRIMES: Asked about the move to punish Sri Lanka for alleged war crimes in the final stages of the battle against the LTTE in which 7,000 civilians were thought to have been killed, Rajapaksa said that it was wrong to punish a whole people through sanctions and embargoes, for the alleged wrongdoings of the leader or decision maker.“Are you going to punish (all the) citizens for that, or the man who is responsible? Take me. Say that I violated all these human rights, killed people, right? Do you punish me, Mahinda Rajapaksa, or the innocent people of this country by sanctions, embargoes, travel advisories? There are ways of punishing me if you want. There, by now saying that, I will get punished,” he said.However, he maintained that there were no human rights violations against the Tamil civilian population. “There was no violation of human rights. There were no civilian casualties. If I did that, it would’nt have taken two-and-a-half years to finish this. I would have done this in a few hours. These are all propaganda. In the Eastern Province (there were) zero casualties. I won’t say there were zero casualties in the North. The LTTE shot some of them (civilians) when they tried to escape,” Rajapaksa said.CHINA’S INTERESTS: The Sri Lankan President denied that China was gaining a strategic foothold in the island, by building a major port at Humbantota. “I asked for it. China didn’t propose it. It was not a Chinese proposal. The proposal was from us. They gave money. If India said, yes, we’ll give you a port, I will gladly accept. If America says, we’ll give a fully equipped airport – yes, why not? Unfortunately, they are not offering to us,” Rajapaksa said.BETWEEN CHINA AND INDIA: Asked if China was becoming a more important ally to Sri Lanka than India, the President said that he was not looking at China and India in that way. “India is our neighbour, our relation, our friend – we have special relationship. India is helping us (with money for development).”
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Rajapaksa+rules+out+separate+ethnicity-based+provinces&artid=K1ILrSdKsXE=&SectionID=oHSKVfNWYm0=&MainSectionID=oHSKVfNWYm0=&SEO=Sri+Lankan+President+Mahinda+Rajapaksa&SectionName=VfE7I/Vl8os=
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Hundreds dying' in Sri Lanka camp

The government declared victory over the LTTE in May after eliminating the top leadership [AFP] About 1,400 people are dying every week in a camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees from the country's civil war, a British newspaper reports. Quoting senior international aid sources, The Times reported on Friday that the death toll at the Menik Farm internment will add to concerns that the Sri Lankan government has failed to halt a humanitarian catastrophe. Most of the deaths are the result of water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea, the paper said, quoting a senior relief worker it said spoke on condition of anonymity. Women, children and the elderly were shoved aside in the scramble for supplies, it said. The Menik Farm camp, in the northern district of Vavuniya, was set up to house the largest number of the 300,000 mainly Tamil civilians forced to flee the northeast as the military mounted an offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). he government announced victory over the LTTE in May, ending a civil war that lasted decades. The Times said witness testimonies it obtained in May described long queues for food and inadequate water supplies inside the camp. Women, children and the elderly, it said, were shoved aside in the scramble for supplies. Aid agencies are being given only intermittent access to the camp. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was not being allowed in, The Times reported. Toll controversy The Times also said that its investigation had uncovered evidence that more than 20,000 civilians were killed, mostly by the army, in the final stages of the conflict. But Sri Lankan doctors said at a news conference on Wednesday that they had deliberately overestimated the civilian casualties. The Times said women and children are pushed aside in the scramble for food [AFP] As government officials looked on, they claimed that the Tigers had forced them to lie, The Times reported. It quoted Mangala Samaraweera, the former foreign minister and now an opposition MP, as saying: "There are allegations that the government is attempting to change the ethnic balance of the area. "Influential people close to the government have argued for such a solution." Mahinda Samarasinghe, the minister of disaster management and human rights, told the paper that "the challenges now are different". "Manning entry and exit points and handling dead bodies, transport of patients, in the post-conflict era are no longer needed," he said. Curbs on Red Cross The Times further reported, quoting the ICRC, that the agency was closing two offices in the country. One of these was in Trincomalee, which had helped to provide medical care to about 30,000 injured civilians evacuated by sea from the conflict zone in the northeast, the report said. The other was in Batticaloa, where the ICRC had been providing "protection services". The ICRC has revealed that it has been asked to scale down its operations by the Sri Lankan authorities, who insist that they have the situation under control. Source: Al Jazeera Friday, July 10, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/2009/07/200971035954492173.html -----------------------------------------------------