Pangs of Eelam War 4

By Editor of Eelam Nation

(February 12, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) No nation that call themselves civilized have ever bombed the life out of the people whom they call their own. Bombing hospitals out of existence is even more barbaric and this can happen only in Sri Lanka and yet the Head of this failed state Mahinda Rajapakse in the National day address says: “Our troops were able to carry forward the battle against terror with great care so as not to cause harassment to the innocent Tamil people”. Nothing can be further from the truth.

The hospital attacks epitomize the acute Tamil suffering in the Vanni in the north east of Sri Lanka and are symbolic of the attack on the Tamils as proxies of the LTTE. The fact that the hospital in the midst of the 300, 000 displaced Tamil people in Sri Lanka being repeatedly shelled now forced to close down and patients including infants and little children killed is an act of out right genocide violating all tenets of humanitarian law. India has donated medicines to be used on the very patients who are part of those whom they are surreptitiously helping to be killed. Actually the medicines are sugar coated palliatives, pain killers meant to be tranquilizers to some leaders of Tamil Nadu. The Tamil people must be partially insane if they are to believe that the Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee made a flying visit to Sri Lanka in the interests of humanitarianism and not to promote their covert programme of genocide of the Tamil people.

Even with the shelling of the paediatric ward injuring several children running for cover, some dead including a month old baby, Ms Radhika Coomaraswamy the Special representative for Children and Armed conflict in the UN with her obligations to the genocidal state, usually quick to point out the issues of child soldiers with the LTTE, has continued to maintain a weird silence while the UN spokesperson Gordon Weiss has lashed out against the Sri Lankan attacks on children and other civilians calling it a travesty of humanitarian law.

With increasing frustration at not being able to fight the rebels, the military is turning to the civilians and the helpless hospital inmates. With all the undertakings at international forums that civilians were not being targeted but discreetly avoided, the terrorist state does not only target individuals but also hospitals which stand out so glaringly as easy targets, not once, but many times over. A nurse was killed in a recent attack. Admitting culpability, when cornered, the Sri Lankan Defence Secretary and President Rajapakse’s brother Gothabaya eminently qualified to be a war criminal who can do and say things with impunity says: “No hospital should operate outside the Safety Zone...everything beyond the safety is a legitimate target,"( Skynews).

Rajapakse government, recently gave a warning to the displaced Tamils that all those civilians in their homeland in the Vanni, now made refugees, would stay on at their own peril, and should leave if they are to stay alive. This was an ominously veiled warning to justify the forthcoming massacre of more civilians in their increasing acts of genocide to say at the end: “Look, we told them”. They are being asked to leave their homes, the injured and the near relatives. If the civilians leave at this juncture to move towards military controlled areas they will only be walking into the jaws of death, rape and torture.

The story concocted and parroted also by some half baked analysts is that the rebels were preventing the civilians from moving because they want to use them as human shields. In fact the rebels could find the civilians a liability and an added responsibility, and further the rebels who have been fighting for the cause of the Tamil people cannot be seen as throwing them into such jeopardy at this juncture. Even to the most naïve it makes no sense.

In a warning to the foreign media, international humanitarian agencies and to the Swiss and German diplomats to put up, shut up or pack up, Rajapakse further said: “It was irresponsible [of the foreign media] not to talk about civilians held in the war zone by the LTTE while making comments that only helped the Tigers”. In other words they should only make statements salutary to the acts of the genocidal state notwithstanding their veracity. It is a folly and strain for western democracies to view Sri Lanka in the perspective of their own democracies if they are to understand its autocratic, theocratic and prejudicial ethos and approach obtaining in its establishment. They will do well to treat it on par with the “democracy”, equality, pluralism and freedom in China, Pakistan, Iran and Zimbabwe, to understand it better.

We unreservedly endorse the recent message of the Commission for Justice and Peace of Catholic Diocese (CJPCD): “Mere expression of concern by the countries of the world is not enough; immediate intervention to urge Sri Lanka government to stop its killing and maiming of the innocent Tamils in Vanni is the need of the hour.”

Robert Evans, UK Labour Party member of the European Parliament said: “The troops of the Sri Lankan government, a government indirectly supported by the West, stand accused of war crimes and atrocities”. Simon Hughes, another British Parliamentarian has stated that the American administration, the Commonwealth and the European Union should jointly look at the seriousness of this problem to resolve it without further losses. We also thank the US Senator John Kerry for his concern expressed in the Senate.

We welcome the stand jointly taken by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and British Foreign Secretary Miliband, calling on both the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE to agree to a temporary no-fire period with both sides needing to allow civilians and wounded to leave the conflict area and to grant access for humanitarian agencies. However, in the light of past experiences of this nature, we recommend the strong presence of a strictly independent international peace keeping or monitoring mission, if this is to be effectively executed.

We appreciate the kind gesture of the Canadian federal government offering up to $3 million for emergency aid relief to help Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka displaced by the conflict as announced by the Hon. Bev Oda, the minister of international cooperation: “These are people who have been destabilized. The last hospital operating has been bombed and we have people trying to provide them with medical care, food, clean water and shelter,” she said. We are happy that Canada will work with only non-government agencies such as the Red Cross, World Vision and Care that are able to get supplies into the affected areas, with no cash to be administered by the Sri Lankan government, for we can assure you that if that is done, nothing will reach the suffering people as in the case of the Tsunami 2004.

-The Writer, Editor of the Eelam Nation
-Sri Lanka Guardian