20,000 Civilian deaths? please!

By Kalana Senaratne

(June 09, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) If things proceed at this pace, tomorrow I might read that the entirety of the North had been blown to pieces, smithereens. The report would state the alleged shelling on the no-fire zone was so devastating that very little was left of the province; an annihilation beyond comprehension. The report would state this is based on ‘credible’ sources, emerging pictures, etc. Nothing will be explained beyond that point, however.

Reports which are coming out today on civilian deaths do a lot of damage to the country. Yet, how could one reasonably expect anything sober and balanced from a few jaundiced and jaded journalists, who need to sell their stories, at whatever cost. At a most rudimentary level, there is something deeply distressing about these accusations, coming in from certain sources ranging from those relating to the UN to something like TimesOnline or even BBC; the difficulty of figuring out who is the credible, reasonable and balanced ‘international’ voice on matters concerning issues such as civilian deaths concerning the armed conflict which ended recently in Sri Lanka. All are confused, even the Tamilnet.

Consider, for instance, the latest accusation; ‘over 20,000 civilian deaths’, caused mainly by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, during the ‘latter stages of the war against the Tamil Tigers’, as stated by the TimesOnline (‘Slaughter in Sri Lanka’, 29 May); a news story, neatly picked up by the BBC, the Tamilnet, and the rest; good material, for those accusing Sri Lanka and her Armed Forces, of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity; good material for those angered and hurt by the defeat of the LTTE, for the pro-LTTE diaspora groups, for various others.

Firstly, there is something troubling which strikes the reader gleaning these news reports on alleged civilian deaths. These accusations, we are often told, are from credible and verifiable sources, sources on the ground. But this very claim contradicts another accusation leveled at Sri Lanka – i.e. that there is simply no possibility of collating verifiable and credible reports and information about the conflict since no ‘independent’ reporting is allowed in the conflict areas, since no access is allowed. How then, one seriously wonders, could the allegation of 20,000 deaths be corroborated by credible evidence?

There is therefore a contradiction of the most horrendous kind here, which leaves all of us bemused, bewildered. What the Western media sources need to do, first and foremost, is to drop any one of these accusations; i.e. a) you either admit that a certain level of reporting is in fact allowed, or that there is the possibility of collating information due to certain sources, dubious or otherwise, which are operating from those areas, or else, b) you accept the fact that all these reports of civilian casualties are mere estimates, conjecture, unverified, unverifiable. Such inflated and unverified reports thereby draw in criticism of the most serious kind, an outright rejection, doing no good to anyone, especially the government and any other individual and group sincerely worried about civilian deaths. The debate on figures should stop here, for there cannot be progress beyond this point.

Only if a) or b) above is admitted could we proceed to deal with the second problem; i.e. what is the credible figure, and who is to be considered reasonably accurate, if anyone wants to believe their version of the story? Is it 20,000 civilian deaths? Something less? Something drastically less? Something even more? Or should you revert to the version put out by the government?

Various figures are bandied about by various organizations. TimesOnline states that it is close to 20,000 civilian deaths ‘in the latter stages of the war…’ UN sources, or supposedly leaked estimates of the UN, claimed that the figure was around 7,700 civilian deaths, until mid-May (in a report titled ‘UN Concealed carnage to keep Sri Lanka Goodwill-Le Monde’, Tamilnet). Le Monde, the French daily, accused the UN of deliberately withholding the numbers, claiming that the UN estimates were misleading. In a BBC report, it was stated that the UN claimed over 6000 have been killed since January (in ‘Sri Lanka Rebels ‘Call Ceasefire’, BBC, 17 May), repeated by Al-Jazeera in a report titled ‘LTTE head killed fleeing War Zone’ (of 18 May). Sir John Holmes is bamboozled, it is reported.

The problem seems to be this; on the one hand, you get a government which has its version of the story, concerning civilian deaths etc., and on the other hand, you get a bunch of organizations, spitting out innumerable contradictory and confusing reports quoting which seem to be very clearly unverified estimates, accusing each other in the process of either withholding information or deflating the numbers. Consider for a moment the amount of confusion this creates in the minds of the people who are unaware of the ground situation, the innocent and gullible readers in some far away land. The poor folks handling the Tamilnet, in the meanwhile, keep carrying news items which report the highest number of alleged casualty figures. What else, by the way, can they do. These figures, in turn, are thereafter picked up and thrown at us as if they were the official figures, by responsible personnel belonging to responsible organizations around the world, including most seriously by those representing the UN. What a lot of damage this causes, to a country, which has just finished a bloody armed conflict, having comprehensively defeated an internationally recognized terrorist group?

What is also unfortunate in all this is that the current trend portends only a worsening of the situation concerning media reporting, thereby further hardening the stance of the government, and creating a further polarization between the government and certain international media institutions; a stance, an attitude, which will be welcomed by some, justified by others in Sri Lanka; a situation that the relevant media institutions would do well to avoid, for they themselves remain to be blamed; a situation which, all things considered, is unfortunate.

There is a further issue that these media institutions need to take into account. No amount of exaggerated reporting will push the government into accepting some war crimes investigation which these media organizations are trying hard to initiate. There are a few reasons; firstly, war crimes investigations would not work because Sri Lanka, amidst all the accusations, had carried out a massive hostage rescue operation and other humanitarian operations which give further credence to the argument that its Armed Forces had not intentionally committed atrocities of a grave nature; secondly, there is no precedent of the victor setting up a tribunal to investigate its own alleged war crimes especially when the defeated was a terror organization; thirdly, because there is no reason to heed to any request for countries such as the US or the UK, as they have no moral authority to request so; fourthly, because it’s not coming through in the form of the International Criminal Court (ICC); and finally, because there is very little support for the idea of a war crimes investigation even domestically, when considering the statements just emanating from the Opposition party, the UNP, which has wholeheartedly welcomed the military victories of the SL Armed Forces and demanded that no international force should be allowed to persecute the military leaders (as most prominently stated by Member of Parliament, Mr. Sajith Premadasa). These are some of the realities that the international media institutions should wake up to.

What is clear concerning the military operations which just ended in Sri Lanka is that these operations were not those resulting in ‘zero casualties’. Accepted; for there can never be a military operation spanning over three years where innocent civilians would remain unharmed when the operations are directed at a terrorist organization that keeps thousands of people as a human shield, or one that carries out terrorism hiding behind innocent civilians, unfortunately. But what is also clear is that what just ended in Sri Lanka is certainly not a war comparable in terms of atrocities to those being committed by the US and the UK and the NATO troops in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no doubt, no second guess, about that.

There is, however, an ulterior motive in this attempt by some to sensationalize such irresponsible reports carrying exaggerated and inflated figures of alleged civilian casualties. This deserves special consideration; perhaps some other time, some other day.

-Sri Lanka Guardian