Britain finally says sorry for Bloody Sunday killings.

But Sri Lanka is still to acknowledge its civilian killings.

by P Arasakularatnam

(June 21, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Thirteen marchers were shot dead on 30 January 1972 in Londonderry when British paratroopers opened fire on crowds at a civil rights demonstration (BBC). The Bloody Sunday killings were unjustified and unjustifiable, the Prime Minster has said. (BBC). Bloody Sunday massacre never died down and the inquiry by Lord Savills went on for over a decade. Outcome of Lord Savills inquiry has lead to further debates and campaigns to seek justice for the victims and punishment for the perpetrators.

British Prime Minister would have just come out of the nappies when the Londonderry massacre took place but showed that he understood the issues involved and the sentiments he was so magnanimous to make the very touching public apology following the release of Lord Savills report. It is not only the Irish feel justice is coming through, it the whole of Britain and the whole world is felt it was fulfilling to respond in that way.

Will this ever happen in Sri Lanka? Over thirty years of violence in Sri Lanka has caused ravages to the all the communities in the country. The government forces, the LTTE and the paramilitary forces have carried out untold misery for the people in Sri Lanka. What caused such violence and the violence perpetrated by these elements has never been investigated. Any such investigations will only expose the successive governments in Sri Lanka for their failures as they seeded the causes by being violent towards the Tamil people.

Londonderry massacre is similar to the first known massacre of Tamil civilians by the police in the Jaffna when the Tamils in thousands were attending a public rally at the end of the fourth conference of the International Association of Tamil Research in Jaffna, leading to nine deaths in 1974. To this date there have been no inquiries and government forces were given the green light to enjoy the state impunity and many worse massacres have taken since then.

The present Sri Lanka will take cover under its home grown methods to extend the impunity for the forces and by procrastinating and systematically reducing the scale of inquiries it will prove the real justice never will be achieved for the victims.

If the government did not follow its suppressive policies towards the Tamils in the early years and prevented violence against the democratic agitations of the Tamils, the situation of unimaginable violence between the communities would not have happened. What happened on the Bloody Sunday in Ireland is just a miniscule of what was experienced by the people of Sri Lanka. Britain spent millions for Londonderry justice but Sri Lanka spent billions to extent its rough justice.

The government will go to town with the LTTE massacres but make every effort to bury the misdeeds of its own forces with its dualities and deceptive stand.

In 1983, the LTTE was a small body of violent men and if the government had given a measured response to their violence, it would not have grown to the scale that led to the unbelievable violence in the country. The underlying causes for the LTTE’s emergence were never dealt seriously by the government even after the defeat of the LTTE.

State sponsored pogroms and random massacres of Tamils by the security forces paved the way for the LTTE to earn the support in the Tamil community. The LTTE was considered a much wanted evil to confront the evils of the security forces.

If the non-violent democratic agitations of the Tamils were not brutally suppressed at the outset, we would not have seen the violent mindset of the Tamil militants. Tamils started to trickle out of the country following the state sponsored violence in Sri Lanka in July 1977 which escalated the brutality of the violence. The violence of 1977 did not attract international attention and the situation deteriorated further with the state sponsored pogrom of July 1983 and gruesome massacres.

The government failed to set an example by being accountable to the violent behaviour of its forces. It is historical fact that the state always ensured to cover up or downplay the massacres of its own forces. If the government had acted responsibly, Tamil violence would not have grown into a disproportionate scale.

Even the offensive of the government to eliminate the LTTE was of disproportionate scale. Two armies fighting each other is one thing but the scale of the death and destruction brought by both the parties on the civilian population is unjustifiable. Here too the government must take larger portion of the blame for the indiscriminate violence against the civilian population that it is denying and heavily covering up.

The violence of the government in the final war against the LTTE was so disproportionate that it used the lethal weaponery so indiscriminately on frontlines where civilians were heavily concentrated. The ruthlessness of the forces with the modern armaments was a step further than the suppression of two uprisings of the JVP which were full scale gruesome point blank range killings of JVP combatants.

One has to read the stories of victims of the final war against LTTE in the Tamil websites that does not reach the mainstream media due to the stories being published in Tamil. Putting together these tricking facts from the victims will present a strong case against the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE on the conduct of the war. The government has suppressed the avenues for justice for the surviving victims of the war and it expects prolonging the suppression of the voices of the suffering victims will stalemate the issues and the demand for an international War Crimes Inquiry will eventually die down.

The present government has adopted circumventing approaches to carryout independent inquiries over many of its misdeeds including its final war against the LTTE. Before the elimination of the LTTE military machinery, the President appointed inquiries to investigate the human rights violations by the security forces. None of these were ever undertaken and results published or action taken against the perpetrators.

When the UN Human Rights Commission wanted a resolution over the human rights violation on the conduct of the war, the GoSL torpedoed it with the help of friendly countries. It is now trying very hard to torpedo the UN Secretary General’s effort to appoint a committee to advice him on Sri Lanka.

As a state body Sri Lanka has so much resource at its disposal. With the backing of states that has questionable conduct and vested interest in Sri Lanka; it will not be surprising if Sri Lanka will win in the international arena and the Tamils being stampeded in the country further.