WORLD WATCHES HELPLESSLY GENOCIDE OF EELAM TAMILS IN VANNI BY SINHALESE
Dr C P Thiagarajah
TamilCanadian.com
http://www.tamilcan adian.com/page.php?cat=145&id=5729
April 15 2009
Having cornered about 200000 homeless, half starved IDP (civilians) by
herding them with the help of rocket launching gunships and multibarrel
guns into a narrow stretch of land in the East near Puthumathalan
called the safety zone, Sri Lanka Army (SLA) had now embarked upon
intense attack on the ‘safety zone’. It all started in the early hours
of 12 April Sunday, targeting a place called Pachchaip-pulmoaddai,
aiming for bifurcating and capturing the northern part of the
‘safety zone’ ignoring the international calls for a ceasefire to
avoid genocide of the Tamils, a distinctive ethnic minority.
The Tamil community had been facing the brunt of all Sinhala government
anti-Tamil discrimination, Human rights violations and genocide since
independence in 1948. All the Sinhala Sri-lanka Government’s (GSL)
violence against the Tamils had been well documented. Please refer
, Asian Human Rights Watch website and US-based
Human Rights Watch (HRW) website. The million dollar question is
how come all successive Sri-Lankan government commit this crime on
its minorities under the watchful eyes of the democratic world that
created the UN to protect against such atrocities.
The core aim of The United Nations (UN) an international
organization made up of countries of the world was to maintain
international peace and security and international economic and social
cooperation. Incidentally it was founded on October 24, 1945 in San
Francisco, California and only 192 States are members of the United
Nations. Can the situation in Sri-lanka be attributed to UN failure
to implement or help to implement the various instruments drafted
under its charter?
The UN established many treaties to implement its main
duties. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide was adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the U.N. General
Assembly on 9 December 1948. It came into force on 12 January 1951. The
word ‘genocide’ was coined in 1944 to name a particularly shocking and
horrific crime of violence. Genocide is the deliberate extermination
of a racial, religious or ethnic group. Genocide, whether committed
in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international
law. Many countries signed the Convention, some of whom have since
been party to genocide. Only a few people have been charged with
genocide or complicity in it.
In a more detailed sense, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethical, racial or religious group as such: killing members of the
group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing
measures intended to prevent births within the group, forcible
transferring children of the group to another group etc.
Genocide is mass murder deliberately planned and carried out by
individuals, all of whom are responsible whether they made the plan,
gave the order or carried out the killings, whatever its scale. In
Sri-lanka there are mainly three who are immediately responsible for
genocide both in words and deeds at the moment. They are President
Mahinda Rajapakse who is always seen in native dress (probably
borrowed from Tamils because it is the cultural dress of the Tamils)
and a shawl, his brother Gothabaya Rajapakse and the odd one out with
a Portuguese name military head Fonseka.
It was believed at that time when the Genocide Act was passed that
genocide could never happen again. Contrarily, that it had been put
into practice so many times in one century was even more shocking.
The following were some of the worst genocide of the last century.
1904 NAMIBIA, 1915 ARMENIA, 1932 UKRAINE 1941-45 the HOLOCAUST,
1975 CAMBODIA, 1982 GUATEMALA, 1994 RWANDA, 1995 BOSNIA
In 2009 at the beginning of the early new century and millennium
Sri-Lanka is committing unimaginable genocide of Tamils in front of
the whole world.
The worst deceit of GSL is to use weapons of mass destructions (WMD)
in contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) adopted by
the General Assembly at its forty-seventh session, on 30 November
1992, and signed and ratified by Sri-Lanka in 1993/94. It had used
cluster bombs boldly in the presence of diplomats of all countries in
Colombo a distance of 80 miles from the war zone. US diplomat Mr Rob
Blake who always defended the Sinhalese government against all odds
should have known of this horror and still remained silent without
informing the new President Barack Obama.
The NGO, War Without Witnesses criticised Sri-Lanka for the clandestine
use of chemical weapons in this war against LTTE with photographic
proof. Concerned South Asian Citizens, a forum formed to support
ethnic Lankan Tamils stated "it was feared that the Sinhalese Army
was continuously using thermobaric bomb, which uses a fuel-air
explosive capable of creating pressure equal to that an atom bomb,
for mass killings".
In addition, there are concerns over the use of cluster munitions
by the Sri-Lankan air force in this war because its remnants kill
or maim civilians, including women and children, obstruct economic
and social development, including through the loss of livelihood,
impede post-conflict rehabilitation and reconstruction, delay or
prevent the return of refugees and internally displaced persons, can
negatively impact on national and international peace-building and
humanitarian assistance efforts, and have other severe consequences
that can persist for many years after use,
Because of the serious drawback and grave consequences of the use
of cluster bombs the UN stressed the duties of a state thus "with
respect to cluster munition victims in areas under its jurisdiction
or control shall, in accordance with applicable international
humanitarian and human rights law, adequately provide age- and
gender-sensitive assistance, including medical care, rehabilitation
and psychological support, as well as provide for their social and
economic inclusion. Each State Party shall make every effort to
collect reliable relevant data with respect to cluster munitions
victims". Sri-Lanka cared the least to provide any relief or medical
aid to the victims as complained by NGOs and the state government
medical services. Instead the GSL had imposed a press censorship and
media blackout to hide this macabre scene for the world. Intelligently
Tamils are exposing these atrocities in ‘YouTube’ videos.
Arrogantly, GSL is violating all six human rights treaties based on
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Sri-Lanka signed on
11/09/80. They are:- International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (ICESCR) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Convention against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT),
Barbarity is the fore runner of genocide. The brute force directed
towards the civilians revealed this. Impunity to the perpetrators was
another hallmark of genocide. The annihilation of the Armenians began
on the orders Ottoman Turkish leader Taloat Pasha who gave impunity
in his orders "Kill every Armenian, woman, child and man without
concern for anything". The Tamil Centre for Human Rights based in Paris
estimated that 83982 civilians including women, children and elderly
were killed in the current conflict which the government says were
cross fire casualties. Ethnic cleansing is the main modus operandi of
every Sinhalese head of state from 1948 to establish Sinhala domination
all over Sri-Lanka including the TH. They matched their words that
they spelt out to foreign journalist and diplomats with action.
On 11th July 1983during the 1983 pogrom J.R.Jayawardene, Sinhala
Buddhist President of Sri Lanka then told a Daily Telegraph journalist,
"I am not worried about the opinion of the Tamil people… now we
cannot think of them, not about their lives or their opinion… the
more you put pressure in the north (TH of Tamils), the happier
the Sinhala people will be here… Really if I starve the Tamils
out, the Sinhala people will be happy." In fact he did more than
that. He committed genocide of the Tamils culturally, economically
and racially. Sinhala leaders had continuously denied that the Tamil
People were original to sri-lanka and have used that as a reason
for denying them equal rights. Ex president Chandrika Kumaratunge
told Sunday Times (South African newspaper) on October 1998 "only
a minority group (referring to Tamils) is fighting for a separate
homeland, who are not even originals to this country", Therefore they
racially discriminated the Tamils contrary to UN principles. This is
the bone of contention for the Tamils.
State induced pogroms and riots saw many Tamils displaced one or more
times since 1983. The number of Tamils displaced one or more times
reached 100%. One third of the population had fled overseas. Many
villages had been completely erased to the ground and High security
zones were established. The citizens of these areas were sent into
IDP camps. The world watched this silently without raising any
protest. Only Miss Karen Parker HR worker and some NGOs raised their
voices with no good result.
The Sri-Lankan government like Joseph Stalin who caused the Ukraine
holocaust of famine, colonized the rice bowl of the East with Sinhalese
after killing and driving out Tamils residents. They emulated Stalin
and conducted stage managed tour of journalist to show that nothing
undemocratic took place in the East homeland of the Tamils.
The Soviets bolstered their famine denial by duping members of the
foreign press and international celebrities through carefully staged
photo opportunities in the Soviet Union and the Ukraine. The writer
George Bernard Shaw, along with a group of British socialites, visited
the Soviet Union and came away with a favorable impression which he
disseminated to the world. Former French Premier Edouard Herriot was
given a five-day stage-managed tour of the Ukraine, viewing spruced-up
streets in Kiev and inspecting a ‘model’ collective farm. He also
came away with a favorable impression and even declared there was
indeed no famine. Even intelligent world leaders could not identify
the real situation when well stage managed by unscrupulous dictators.
In Sri-Lanka the technique of genocide represented a concentrated and
co-coordinated attack upon all the elements of Tamil nationhood. Not
only physical genocide but also acts aimed at destroying the group’s
culture and livelihood. The Sinhalese had blocked the main A9 highway
with embargo on some vital items needed for development such as
cement and building materials, to starve and inconvenience the
Tamil race in the North and the citizen there are in virtual open
prisons. Over 2000 Hindu temples and 300 churches were destroyed by
aerial bombing or tank fire. Children education had been affected for
the last two decades. One third of the children are drop outs. There
is malnutrition and the infant mortality rate had quadrupled since
before the war. &0% of the people in the TH are below poverty line
as their regular employment and occupation had been curtailed by army
curfew, fights and other hazards.
The Tamil race had come to their low ebb of their endurance. The TH is
scorched earth now. Unless this genocide is stopped immediately under
power vested under UN charter 39-42 military measures the genocide
will be another blot on the current century. Historians will blame
those in power now. Discretion is the better part of Valour.