Saving private Prabha

By Nalin Swaris

(May 05, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It was a little over three years ago that Velupillai Prabhakaran, Sungod, President and Prime Minister of Eelam, thumped his chest and said in his 2005 Heroes Day speech: "Our administrative structure is formidable, consisting of our controlled territories with huge civilian populations, protected by a powerful military force". Today whatever is left of his military force is protected by an ever dwindling civilian population of about 15,000 persons. Prabha knows his time is running out and that he must buy time till some sympathetic outside powers come to his rescue, using whatever ruse they could think of.

Last week the media reported that the European Co-Chairs were in hectic tele conferencing about the ‘humanitarian’ crisis in Sri Lanka. On the 25th of April, US State Department Oracle, Robert Wood made an extraordinary statement: "We urge the Tamil Tigers to lay down arms to a neutral third party… We further urge the Government of Sri Lanka to offer amnesty to most Tamil Tigers and to devise a clear resettlement plan and to open the way for a political dialogue." This was a blatant interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign State on behalf of perhaps the most ruthless terrorist group in the world. The day after Robert Wood’s statement, as if on cue, the LTTE declared a unilateral ceasefire. No talk of laying down arms. That would have to wait for the arrival of US State Department’s "neutral third party".

So how must one understand this strange proposal? In situations like this one must carefully watch the balloons floated by the peacenik community. Before the Geneva talks, Kumar Rupasinghe was proposing that Karuna and his cadres be disarmed, if necessary by force, under the terms of the Ceasefire Agreement. Lo and behold that was exactly what the LTTE and Erik Solheim demanded at the talks. This time it is Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council. He has not been able to contain his enthusiasm for the Woods proposal, expressed in his weekly column in an English daily (29 April 2009) under the title ‘Advantages of US Proposal to end War’. This recruit from his Harvard Law School days, while showering praise on the US, elaborated a convoluted brief for the LTTE. The gist of it is that the US proposal is well worth the GOSL’s consideration. Here comes the real McCoy, "The Sri Lankan government needs to consider requesting the United States to spell out the modalities of its proposal, which could include safe passage abroad for the LTTE leadership …". Give safe passage abroad to the mass murderers Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman and Soosai! This is a proposal for peace without justice and one wonders whether this Council should continue carrying the name ‘peace’ while it extends its advocacy to plead that these notorious criminals be allowed to go laughing all the way (to Oslo?). There is not even an iota of fellow feeing for the relatives of those who have been ruthlessly massacred by LTTE killer squads on the orders of their leadership. Justice will provide a form of closure to these aggrieved people. But the NPC denies them that.

Have the Co-chairs a ‘Saving Private Ryan’ type of operation in mind and are we to await a celluloid celebration of this saga by Steven Spielberg? And this because the delicate sensibilities of Co-Chairs are tormented by the plight of Tamil civilians? Of course they keep asking the LTTE to release the people in the No Fire Zone knowing bloody well the LTTE won’t. So what else to do but give, as Jehan Perera suggests, "a respite to the LTTE as well, which is fighting a rearguard action to delay its inevitable defeat on the military battlefield".

David Milliband was here armed with "facts" to brow beat the GOSL into submission. This son of migrants seems to have imbibed the arrogance of the classic British colonialist. But the Lankan Defence Secretary showed him his place. But how delicate are these Co-Chair sensibilities when they call for a ceasefire to save civilians ?

Lebanon 2006.

In the summer of 2006 Israeli the Israeli army invaded Lebanon and the Israel Air force began round the clock bombardment of civilian areas. The aim was to rescue two Israel soldiers captured by Hezbollah. The official Israeli and mainstream western media version (FOX, CNN, BBC), was that the invasion was precipitated by a Hezbollah attack on a Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The alternate version, carried by several new outlets was that Israel sent a commando force into southern Lebanon and was subsequently attacked by Hezbollah near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon’s southern territory. It was at this point that an Israel tank was struck by Hezbollah fighters, which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the death of six. MSNBC carried the latter version in its first report, but quickly changed it to fall in line with the ‘official’ version. Israel launched a heavy air and artillery bombardment of south Lebanon. Israeli warplanes destroyed communication masts north of Beirut and attacked three trucks carrying medical and food supplies to the east. Other Israeli aircraft blasted targets in and around several villages and towns in the mainly Shiite Muslim south reducing them to rubble. A Wikipedia report of the destruction unleashed on Lebanon states : Strikes on Lebanon’s civilian population and infrastructure include Rafik Hariri International Airport, sea ports, a lighthouse, grain silos bridges, roads, factories, ambulances and relief trucks, mobile telephone and television stations, fuel containers and service stations, and the country’s largest dairy farm Liban Lait. An "initial assessment" Amnesty International report, concluded that the destruction of public works "was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than "collateral damage", that is to say, incidental damage to civilians or civilian property resulting from targeting military objectives." UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland declared that the "horrific" leveling of "block after block" of buildings in Beirut "makes it a violation of humanitarian law." Mr Egeland added that one third of the Lebanese dead were children. Around 900,000 Lebanese were displaced during the fighting.

As the horror of the collective punishment meted out on the Lebanese people was witnessed on television screens across the world, there were demands worldwide for Israel to stop its destruction and carnage. Among these voices were Kofi Annan , the UN Secretary General and Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief. But George Bush and his poodle Tony Blair remained adamant, Israel had to continue till it accomplished its aim – force the release of its two soldiers. Hilary Clinton’s predecessor Condoleezza Rice, dug in and refused to budge. No immediate ceasefire she said, "It’s not going to happen… When will we learn? The fields of the Middle East are littered with broken cease-fires." (What about the LTTE’s record, Co-Chairs?)

The lack of action prompted Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon to lash out with a cry of despair. "Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere?" he asked, "Are we children of a lesser god? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?"

Iraq War II

The former boss of the self righteous Milliband’s party was Tony Blair. His current boss George Brown was Blair’s Nr.2. when the UK launched its criminal was against Iraq. Blair lied through his teeth to the British parliament when he said he had incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. George Bush lied like a Trojan when he told the same to US congress. How scrupulous were the Bush and Blair administrations about sparing civilian lives and infrastructure? The cost of this war to Iraqi civilians (excluding the deaths from internecine post invasion killings) is staggering. 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. 4.5 million displaced, about 1 million dead - in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis. The number of people made refugees: 4,500,000 (of whom two million are internally displaced people). The number of people reduced to abject poverty, 12,000,000. Only 35% of the entire population have access to clean water. There is no uninterrupted supply of electricity in Baghdad. The situation in other major towns is worse. 75% of all homes lack infrastructure facilities. The number of undernourished people: 6,200,000. The number of people needing urgent aid, 8,000,000 (John Tirman, The Nation. February 2, 2009).

David Milliband, think of your own government’s record with regard to respect for civilian life and assets before you preach to others. And your British clemency towards terrorists?

7 July 2005

Four terror attacks on London’s transport network left 37 innocent commuters dead and 700 injured. The response of Tony Blair’s was swift and tough. A "shoot-to-kill" policy for terrorist suspects was drawn up in secret with no reference to Parliament. Only Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary Charles Clarke were privy to the show no mercy policy. The immediate victim of this new policy was Jean Charles de Menezes, a young Brazilian who was suspected because he looked an "Asiatic type". De Menezes was gunned down – repeatedly shot in the head - while he was seated in a London Underground train on July 22, despite having no connection with terrorism and presenting no threat to the police. Neither Prime Minister Tony Blair nor Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair had any second thoughts about the ‘shoot to kill’ any suspect policy. Ian Blair explicitly rejected any suggestion that the police should be accountable for their actions. He insisted that chief constables had to be allowed to take decisions" aimed at best protecting the public from terrorists. Clearly, there are double standards: one for suspect terrorists in the UK and another for proven terrorists in Sri Lanka. David Milliband would hardly call for a truce or dialogue with terrorists in the UK – Just Shoot, Shoot to Kill.

Rwanda 1994

After his mission to Sri Lanka failed, Bernard Kouchner was a very distressed man. He could not persuade the President to declare a ceasefire. Wringing his hands with anguish, he said. "We tried very hard, we insisted and we insisted, but it is up to our friends to allow it or not."

Consider the most shocking genocide of our times: the mass killing of Tutsis by rampaging Hutu militia and mobs. In a matter of about hundred days, over one-tenth of the population, an estimated 800,000 to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been massacred. This is a classic instance of a conflict of geopolitical interest between France backing the Francophone Hutus on the one hand and the USA and UK supporting the Anglophilic Tutsis on the other. The genocide was halted in July 1994 when the invading army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) defeated the genocidal Hutu regime. It was a humiliating defeat for French interests in the region, as the US-backed RPF came to power. The post genocide Rwanda government appointed an independent commission to investigate those responsible for the mass killings. It unearthed enough evidence to prove the role played by France during the conflict. It charged French soldiers stationed in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994 of "widespread rape". The commission in its final report provided further evidence that French soldiers trained the extremist Hutu militia responsible for most of the killing, and even provided them with weapons. The report named 33 senior French military and political figures that it said should be prosecuted. Among those named in the report were the late former President, Francois Mitterrand, and the then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. France had previously denied any such responsibility. But in early 2008, our man in town, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner while denying French responsibility in connection with the genocide, admitted that ‘political errors’ had been made (Refs: Steve Bloomfield, 31 08/2007: www.independent.co.uk/.../french-troops-raped-girls-during-rwanda-genocide ; Linda Melvern: 8 Aug 2008, www.timesonline.co.uk; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7542418.stm -5/08/2008)

When the Clintons, the Blakes, Kouchners, and the Milliband’s come preaching humanity to the Lankan government they should be told, "Look to yourselves. Your hands are stained with the blood of too many non white people, for your concern for Lankan Tamils to be genuine. Your humanitarian concerns are very much depended on your national interests and in our case, colluding Euro-American interests."

-Sri Lanka Guardian