Sri Lanka made the papers everyday.
Before continuing, readers, please read:
Sri Lanka: Case Study in MSM Propaganda
Sri Lanka: The Slaughter the World Watched
Read It To Believe It: Israel's Ties in Sri Lanka
Thank you.
"Thousands flee Sri Lanka war zone" by Reuters | May 15, 2009
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Thousands of civilians under rebel fire waded across a lagoon yesterday to escape Sri Lanka's war zone, where government forces have surrounded Tamil Tiger separatists for possibly the final battle of a 25-year conflict, the military and a United Nations official said.
The military said aerial surveillance footage confirmed an exodus of about 5,000 people from a tiny, sandy coastal strip, where the United States and others say the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are holding thousands by force. Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers brushed off demands from the US Security Council and President Obama to take steps to protect the civilians, who are stuck between two foes who are determined to fight to the end of a war that began in 1983.
Piling on more pressure, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to dissuade the International Monetary Fund from considering a $1.9 billion loan for Sri Lanka. "We think it is not an appropriate time to consider that until there is a resolution of this conflict, and that is what we are focused on," Clinton told reporters in Washington.
Coming soon -- if you don't mind people being wiped out and placed into concentration, 'er, welfare camps.
But the increased pressure from the United Nations and Washington appeared to have come too late to stop an exodus that the military has been counting on to clear the way for an onslaught of overwhelming force against the much smaller rebel group.
"Already, 2,000 civilians have crossed the lagoon," military spokesman Brigadier General Udaya Nanayakkara said. "There is a large number of people crossing, and the rebels fired at them. Four people were killed, and 14 were wounded."
By evening there were 2,700 people checked and cleared and at least another 1,000 waiting, although darkness had made it difficult to tell, Nanayakkara said. Earlier the United Nations' acting representative for Sri Lanka, Amin Awad, told Reuters that local sources in the combat zone said up to 6,000 had escaped or were attempting to do so.
--more--"
"Sri Lanka military says rebels nearly cornered; 50,000 civilians still trapped in combat zone" by Sharon Otterman and Mark McDonald, New York Times | May 16, 2009
Internally displaced ethnic Tamil civilians crossed a lagoon this week to reach government controlled areas in Vellamullivaikal, Sri Lanka. A senior UN envoy arrived in the country yesterday to try to persuade the government to agree to a cease-fire. (Sri Lanka'S Defense Ministry via Associated Press)
Ignoring calls to relent in the face of what the International Committee of the Red Cross called "an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe," the Sri Lankan military said yesterday that its forces have squeezed Tamil rebels onto about a mile-long strip of land in heavy fighting.
Unimaginable, yet happening before our very eyes.
And that strip gets smaller and smaller every article.
Flanked by the sea and a briny lagoon, and with the army advancing from north and south, the rebels appeared to be nearly cornered. President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a speech on Thursday that government forces could seize the rebels' last remaining refuge within 48 hours, the Defense Ministry reported.
Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told the Associated Press in Jordan that Sri Lankan soldiers were probably fighting their final battle against the remaining rebel fighters. He said reports have indicated that relatives of top rebel leaders are starting to flee the war zone.
Also, a senior UN envoy arrived in Sri Lanka yesterday to try to persuade the government to agree to a cease-fire. As Sri Lankan soldiers closed in on the few hundred rebels who remained on the boggy beachfront, concerns mounted over what the United Nations said were at least 50,000 civilians still trapped in the combat zone.
The director of operations for the Red Cross, Pierre Krahenbuhl, said that relief workers were blocked for a fourth day from helping civilians escape and from delivering emergency food aid. A website used by the rebels, who are formally called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, said that an estimated 1,700 civilians had been killed since Tuesday, although it was impossible to verify the rebels' claim.
But you must accept the 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust without verification.
More than 5,000 managed to leave the area in the past few days, said a military spokesman, Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, according to the AP. Those who escaped now add to some 200,000 civilians who have been displaced by the fighting in recent months and are being housed in government camps.
With nice barbed-wire fencing!
Some human rights groups say that the rebels are using civilians in the conflict zone as human shields, and that heavy artillery shelling from government forces is being conducted without sufficient regard for civilian safety.
Now maybe they are using their people (I doubt it, but....); however, this narrative is so familiar on so many levels that I no longer believe the agenda-puhing paper when they print something like this.
The government has denied using mortars, artillery, and heavy weapons, but satellite images taken on May 10 and analyzed independently have shown what appeared to be new heavy-impact craters in the combat zone.
What, a government lied about mass-murder? I'm astonished.
Some 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 were wounded from Jan. 20 until May 7, the AP reported, citing a UN document provided by a senior diplomat, whom it did not name. Since then, some 1,000 more civilians were killed in a week of heavy shelling, the AP said, citing reports from doctors in the combat zone.
Also in Sri Lanka, the UN envoy, Vijay Nambiar, who is chief of staff to Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, was scheduled to meet with senior officials in Colombo, the capital. The government has consistently rejected calls for a cease-fire in the past, despite appeals from the UN, human rights groups, the United States, and other Western nations.
So Israel-like (sans the criticism in the jews case)!
In what appeared to be an effort to increase the pressure on the government, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that it was "not an appropriate time" for the International Monetary Fund to consider a $1.9 billion loan request by Sri Lanka. She suggested the United States would effectively block the loan "until there is a resolution of the conflict."
Haven't they learned that money doesn't matter to killer governments?
--more--"
"Sri Lanka declares victory in 25-year war with rebels; Insurgents cling to small patch of land" by Ravi Nessman and Krishan Francis, Associated Press | May 17, 2009
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared victory yesterday in Sri Lanka's quarter-century civil war with the Tamil Tigers rebels. But the group's top leaders remained at large as troops and the cornered insurgents fought fierce battles across the war zone.
A triumph on the battlefield appeared inevitable after government forces captured the last bit of coastline under rebel control early yesterday, surrounding the remaining fighters in a 1.2-square mile patch of land.
Thousands of civilians who had been trapped by the fighting poured across the front lines, the military said. "My government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily," Rajapaksa said, referring to the rebels by their formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Oh, that kind of talk really makes on sick.
"I will be going back to a country that has been totally freed from the barbaric acts of the LTTE," he said in a speech in Jordan that was distributed to the media in Sri Lanka.
He wasn't even in country?
The rebels, who once controlled a de facto state across much of the north, have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for minority Tamils after decades of marginalization by the Sinhalese majority.
Responsible for hundreds of suicide attacks - including the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, India's former prime minister - the Tamil Tigers have been branded terrorists by the United States, European Union, and India and shunned internationally.
I'm not sure what to believe anymore. Whatever happened, I'm not believing this incomplete and synthetic paragraph proffered by a cover-up media. That anotherv peaceful Gandhi that needed to be assassinated, and if so, CUI BONO?
The rebels also controlled a conventional army, with artillery units, a significant navy, and even a tiny air force.
With weapons from you-know-who!
After repeated stalemates on the battlefield, the military broke through the rebel lines last year and forced the insurgents into a broad retreat, capturing their administrative capital at Kilinochchi in January and vowing to retake control over the rest of the country.
The rebels have insisted that if they are defeated in conventional battle, they will return to their guerrilla roots. Yesterday morning, government troops sweeping in from the north and south seized control of the island's entire coastline for the first time in decades, sealing the rebels in a tiny pocket of territory and cutting off the possibility of a sea escape by the rebels' top leaders, the military said.
Government forces have been hunting for the reclusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his top deputies for months, but it was unclear if they remained in rebel territory or had already fled overseas. Two senior fighters, known by their nicknames Sornam and Sasi Master, were killed in yesterday's fighting, Nanayakkara said.
These like the "Al-CIA-Duh" cut-outs we are killing or capturing all the time?
On Friday, the navy intercepted a boat off the northeastern coast and arrested the fleeing wife, son, and daughter of the rebels' naval leader, known as Soosai, Nanayakkara said.
Even as Rajapaksa declared victory, the military reported that fighting continued to rage in the northeast war zone. Huge explosions could be heard across the battlefield as rebels detonated their ammunition stocks and artillery dumps, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. 
That doesn't sound like fighting, and why would they do that?
Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred most journalists and aid workers from the conflict zone.
So Israel-like!
Some 11,800 civilians escaped the war zone yesterday, joining more than 200,000 others who fled in recent months and are being held in displacement camps, Nanayakkara said. Rights groups say the rebels were holding the civilians as human shields to blunt the government offensive. The rebels denied the accusation.
UN spokesman Gordon Weiss said an estimated 20,000 people had emerged from the combat zone in the past few days and were being processed by the government. "We have no access to that process. We hold grave fears for the safety of the estimated 30,000 to 80,000 people who are still inside the combat zone," he said.
Weiss expressed concern for the fate of the top government health officials working in the war zone - Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah and Dr. Thangamuttu Sathyamurthi - "who courageously kept the medical services going throughout the months of the siege of the combat zone."
The pair ran a badly understaffed makeshift hospital in the war zone that was repeatedly shelled and overwhelmed with hundreds of casualties from the fighting nearly every day. The United Nations says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded from Jan. 20 through May 7. Since then, health officials say more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces.
The government denied firing heavy weapons and brushed off calls for a humanitarian truce.That's so Israel-like!
--more--"
"Sri Lanka rebels concede, ending long civil war; Army says 4 top militants killed in action" by Bharatha Mallwarachi, Associated Press | May 18, 2009
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Four top Tamil Tiger officials including the supreme leader's eldest son were killed in Sri Lanka's northern war zone, the military announced today, after the insurgents said their quarter-century fight had reached its "bitter end."
With top rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran still at large, the threat of renewed guerrilla warfare remained, but Sri Lankans already had begun to celebrate the stunning collapse of one of the world's most sophisticated insurgencies.
They got a lot of help.
See India Defeated In Sri Lanka for another perspective
Thousands gathered in the streets of the capital, Colombo, to dance, sing and let off fireworks after a Tiger official Selvarasa Pathmanathan released a statement yesterday admitting the group's defeat.
"This battle has reached its bitter end," Pathmanathan said in an e-mailed statement. "It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness, and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. We remain with one last choice - to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns."
Somehow the celebrating seems out of place to me.
The government forces in recent months ousted the rebels from all their northern strongholds and by yesterday the insurgents were cornered into a stretch of 0.4-square-mile. The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority after years of marginalization at the hands of the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.
Yeah, MOSTLY TAMILS!!!!
Rights groups have accused the rebels of holding civilians as human shields, and blamed the government for shelling the densely populated area where they sought refuge. Both sides denied the accusations. With most journalists and aid workers barred from the war zone, it was not possible to verify the accounts of either side.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that after defeating the rebels, his government will begin talks toward power sharing and political reconciliation between the two communities. But many Tamils are skeptical that the victorious government will be willing to make real concessions.
So am I. Otherwise, they would have done that instead of this!
At their height, the rebels controlled 5,400 square miles, nearly one-fifth of this Indian Ocean island nation. They had a conventional army complete with artillery batteries, a large navy, and even a nascent air force, funded by an estimated $200 million to $300 million a year they made from smuggling, fraud, and appeals to Tamil expatriates.
Ummm: Boston Harbors Tamil Terrorists
They also carried out hundreds of suicide attacks - including the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, a former prime minister of India.
Yeah, MOSSAD showed 'em how to do it!
A 2002 cease-fire briefly halted the fighting, but it broke down more than three years ago, and Rajapaksa vowed to destroy the rebels. With victory all but assured, Rajapaksa raced home from a trip abroad and was blessed at the airport yesterday by Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, and Muslim clerics....
Ah, heck. If everyone hated them, maybe it's best they are gone. Right, Jews?
Of course, that's why Sri Lanka something makes the paper everyday: it's a safe genocide for the Zionist War Daily.
What do you expect them to cover, Gaza?
"Tamil Tigers rebel leader killed; Elusive guerrilla led movement for 26 years" by Emily Wax, Washington Post | May 19, 2009
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - The ruthless and elusive leader of the Tamil Tigers rebel movement was killed yesterday by Sri Lankan forces in what might have been the final showdown in one of Asia's longest-running conflicts, officials said.
Velupillai Prabhakaran was South Asia's most feared rebel commander. Under his direction, the Tigers became one of the world's deadliest guerrilla armies, labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and other countries for hundreds of suicide attacks on soldiers, civilians, and government officials.
Prabhakaran consolidated his power by killing off all potential rivals and many Tamil intellectuals, and leaving no apparent successor. Rarely seen in public, except for propaganda videos showing him firing an automatic weapon in the dense jungle, he led the 26-year-old Tamil separatist movement in a war that has killed at least 70,000 people and divided this once-prosperous island off the coast of India.
Gee, CUI BONO?
Tamil rebels invented the suicide belt, pioneered the use of suicide bombing and at the height of their power operated a shadow state in Sri Lanka complete with a law school, a tax system and even traffic police. Even as they recruited child soldiers, the Tigers - formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - operated their own navy and air force, once bombing Colombo's international airport.
If the stuff wasn't so interchangeable I might believe it, but considering its coming from an agenda-pushing war daily.
Officials said Prabhakaran was shot along with two of his top commanders, known as Soosai and Pottu Amman, as they tried to flee the war zone in an armored van accompanied by a bus filled with rebels. On Sunday, the Tigers had vowed to lay down their arms after government forces cornered them in an area of jungle about the size of a football field.
They couldn't just capture them all? That's its own prison fer cripes sake!
Prabhakaran's group was approaching Sri Lankan forces when a gun battle erupted, officials said. The military then launched a rocket at the van. Troops pulled Prabhakaran's body from the wreckage, the officials said.
Why am I thinking checkpoint killing?
Officials said DNA tests would be conducted to verify the death, which was announced publicly via cellphone text message and state television broadcasts. Television images showed gruesome footage of bloodied bodies laid out side-by-side - one of them allegedly Prabhakaran's, his face disfigured by a bullet or shrapnel. Journalists have been barred from the war zone.
In this capital city, thousands of cheering residents took to the streets in Sinhalese areas, beating drums and passing out sweets. But Tamil neighborhoods were more sober, recalling a history of ethnic riots. To some Tamils, who have long felt persecuted and underrepresented in government jobs, Prabhakaran was a strongman hero.
First we are told they are the most abominable terrorists, now he's a hero and freedom fighter to some! Sigh!
"Now the country must work on healing those long-standing feelings," said Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka. "Otherwise there could be a second Prabhakaran."
United Nations spokesman Gordon Weiss said Prabhakaran's death means "the last of the civilians will be able to come out and get medicinal care, water and food. Right now we only have the information supplied by the army. We have to wait to see what is going on after the fog of war clears."
So Israel-like!
Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was praying for peace and reconciliation and asked humanitarian groups to do everything possible to care for terrified civilians.
Some don't like him, but I think he's a good man. Anyone who is pisses off Israel can't be bad.
In Washington, Sri Lankan Ambassador Jaliya Wickramasuriya credited President Obama with helping to end the crisis, saying via e-mail that the Tigers "effectively folded shortly after President Obama told the world that the terrorists were holding innocent Tamil civilians as hostages. He was one of the few world leaders to note that fact so forcefully."
Yeah, Obama gets credit for standing around and doing nothing while genocide was committed. Gaza, Sri Lanka, no difference to that guy!
Officials said the Tigers' entire leadership structure had been wiped out in the recent fighting, including Prabhakaran's son Charles Anthony, who some had considered a potential heir apparent.
We killed Saddam's sons, so why not?
M.R. Narayan Swamy, author of an unofficial biography of the rebel leader, said the Tigers are "finished . . . shattered beyond recognition."
Just like all the people in the government concentration camps.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has scheduled a news conference for this morning. On Sunday, Sri Lanka's military vowed to recapture "every inch of land" and refused to relent in its assault on the rebels even after the Tigers said they would stop fighting.
Yeah, that's GENOCIDE!
Some civilians were reportedly huddled in trenches with little water or food, although the military said Sunday that all those who had been trapped in the country's northern war zone - an estimated 63,000 - had escaped.
--more--"
Turns out, the whole exercise was a bloody waste of time! They could have negotiated all these things without resorting to this public slaughter.
"Sri Lanka, after the war
ONE OF THE WORLD'S bloodiest conflicts has come to a violent conclusion in the island nation of Sri Lanka. Nearly all the leaders of the secessionist Tamil Tigers, including their notorious commander Velupillai Prabhakaran, have been killed or captured. The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been claiming a glorious total victory - and denying allegations from doctors on the scene that tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been the victims of indiscriminate artillery fire and scorched-earth tactics.
Rajapaksa must give aid organizations access to hundreds of thousands of uprooted Tamils in the island's northeast. Overwhelmed doctors in overcrowded camps are amputating limbs without sufficient drugs and medical supplies. The people in those camps desperately need medical care, food, and water. And they should be allowed to return to their homes as soon as possible.
What, after the Sri Lankans spent so much time and firepower driving them out?
Once the humanitarian crisis is addressed, the European Union must follow up on its call for an investigation of war crimes against civilians. The Rajapaksa government has tried to draw a screen around its actions, banning independent journalists and international aid groups from the war zone.
So Israel-like!
But the United Nations adopted a resolution in 2005 on the "responsibility to protect" populations that are not protected by their own governments. The massive killing and wounding of civilians on Sri Lanka represents exactly the sort of case that resolution was meant to address.
Ultimately, the only way for Sri Lanka to avoid another Tamil rebellion is to grant the Tamils some form of local autonomy in their region.They could have done that without all the bloodshed!
Now that the Tigers have been crushed, the Sinhalese majority of Sri Lanka has no excuse for not addressing the legitimate grievances of the Tamil minority.
Excuse me? Terrorists with LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES?
--more--"
"Elusive Sri Lanka victory a family triumph; Three brothers forged military, political success" by Somini Sengupta, New York Times | May 20, 2009
Oh, isn't that special? A FAMILY that MASS-MURDERS TOGETHER!!!!
NEW DELHI - The Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, yesterday savored a victory that had eluded every Sri Lankan head of state before him: He declared on television that after more than 25 years, his troops had defeated one of the world's most enduring guerrilla armies on the battlefield.
You see, it's possible, 'murka! So we better stick in Iraq, Afghanistan, and God knows where else for however long it takes.
Behind that victory speech was a historic and bloody family triumph, guided by two of the president's brothers: Gotabaya, the influential secretary of defense, and Basil, a so-called special adviser who devised the political strategy around the war effort.
Together, the brothers Rajapaksa defied international pressure to stanch civilian casualties, squelched dissent, blocked independent reporting of the war, and achieved what many had thought all but impossible: They vanquished the Tamil Tigers, who had waged a pitiless war of terror and once ruled swaths of Sri Lankan territory as a de facto state.
But this genocide was full of pity?
With Gotabaya Rajapaska in charge of the defense portfolio, the government sharply increased defense spending; bought new weapons, primarily from China and Pakistan; and nearly doubled the size of the armed forces, to roughly 160,000 today.
I love how they left the West and Israel out of the arms supplying!
Does the censorship ever end?
President Rajapaksa's political cunning was put to use. He made sure to ask India for weapons first. Only when it refused because of domestic sympathy for the Tamil cause did he turn to India's rivals.
So Ahmed Quraishi was on to something, wasn't he?!
The military strategy paid off, too. Starting in the summer of 2006, the government forces staged intense air, sea, and ground assaults against rebels in the east and the north, sustaining the attacks even though the two sides were still officially engaged in cease-fire negotiations.
Oh, SO ISRAELI-LIKE!
The government also adopted some guerrilla tactics from the Tamil Tigers.
In other words, the GOVERNMENT CARRIED OUT TERRORIST ATTACKS and then BLAMED THEM on TAMILS!! It's called a FALSE FLAG OPERATION!!!!
The brothers, who come from upper-caste landed gentry, are not part of the capital's English-educated elite. It did not hurt them to snub pressure from the West....
So Israel-like!
The victory, like Russia's smothering of Chechnya's separatist rebellion, comes at a high cost. The United Nations says 7,000 civilians have been killed since January alone, and more than 265,000 ethnic Tamils who fled the war zone are now interned in overcrowded camps.
You know what those are, readers, if you have gotten this far.
Some of Sri Lanka's erstwhile allies are now calling for an international commission of inquiry into possible war crimes. Sri Lanka desperately needs foreign aid for postwar reconstruction....
--more--"
Of course, some will always applaud slaughter and death:
"Healing the wounds in Sri Lanka" by Kenneth J. Cooper | May 21, 2009
SRI LANKA'S government was right to finish off the Tamil rebels, despite the risk to and ultimate loss of civilian life. Decisively ending the civil war, which lasted 26 years and killed more than 70,000, will save more lives than were lost in the final assault.
That kind of logic.... sigh. And he gets a space on the ops page!
United Nations officials, Western leaders, and human rights groups had called on Sri Lanka to agree to a cease-fire to allow civilians to flee the shrinking enclave where government forces had finally hemmed in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Complying with the request would have been a major strategic mistake.
Those international voices ignored - or maybe didn't know - the pattern to pauses in the civil war: The Tamil Tigers used every cease-fire to rest, recruit, and rearm. Then they took the offensive. That's how they broke a 2002 cease-fire. Another ended in 1995 when the rebels, dramatically, sunk government navy ships.
Gee, they sound like HAMAS, right?
Beginning this January, Sri Lanka faced the risk that rebel commanders would slip out alongside innocent civilians and live to keep fighting. It had happened before. In 1987, 70,000 troops from neighboring India flushed the Tigers from their northern stronghold in Jaffna. Most of the rebels escaped to reconstitute an insurgent force that would fight for two more decades.
With help from....
Americans and citizens of other countries that have suffered terrorist attacks should be glad to see the Tamil Tigers and their maniacal leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, done for good. They bequeathed the world the suicide bomber. What other deadly innovations would they have produced had the fighting force survived?
Not only am I sick of the 'terrorism" propaganda and lies, I'm appallled at the rationalization of murder.
As a foreign correspondent covering the region, I saw enough of the Tamil Tigers' terrorism in the late-1990s to know the world is a safer place after their defeat. There was the suicide truck bombing of the country's central bank that killed more than 80 and devastated downtown Colombo, the capital. It was my first trip to the country, and I had rolled past the bank building in a taxi about 15 minutes before the blast.
I also covered the aftermath of the bombing inside a commuter train headed out of Colombo. Peering into one of the train's damaged cars, I unconsciously clutched my forehead as I surveyed the floor and spotted a shoe, scattered groceries, strands of hair and streaks of blood. I was imagining what it must have been like to be idly riding home after a day's work, perhaps bringing home food for that night's dinner, when the bomb exploded in the crowded, enclosed car.
Not only majority Sinhalese were inside that commuter train and downtown near the central bank. Did the Tamil Tigers care about killing other Tamils? No. The Tigers actually targeted Tamil individuals who did not go along with their bloody program.
After I left the region, assassins bombed Harvard-trained lawyer Neelan Tiruchelvam and shot Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, both Tamils. I knew them to be decent men who did not deserve that fate. For the 12 percent of Sri Lankans who are Tamils, for whom the Tigers claimed to fight, the shame is that indefensible methods tarnished a just cause.
So Israel-like!
Sinhalese discrimination against Tamils, sometimes with violent expression, sparked the rebellion. Sri Lanka has paid a heavy price, in life and treasure, for attempting to subordinate Tamils, who were favored during British rule and still dominate the intellectual elite.
Aaaah, it's the Brits fault!
Here's hoping the Sinhalese have learned a costly, painful lesson and, in victory, are big enough to negotiate a new dispensation for the Tamils. I think they may be. Back after the central bank bombing, I heard a hotel manager confess to disrespecting Tamils as a young man and acknowledge, with apparent regret, such acts provoked the violence.
At this point, it would be reasonable for the government to grant a measure of autonomy to Tamil-majority areas of the north and east - short of creating a separate state, which never made much sense on a relatively small island.
I can see how Tamils can be equated with Gazans.
If it can heal its ethnic wounds, Sri Lanka has a bright future. With the climate of the Caribbean, a relatively literate population, a savvy business class, and three deepwater ports, the South Asian country could become as prosperous as Singapore, if peace reigns.
First of all, one wonders how terrorists could establish such a foothold amongst so cultured a class, and secondly, was all the death worth it for the s***-shoveling prop?
I'm even more offended when I receive this as my Slow Saturday report:
"After circling over the combat zone in the country's northeast section, Ban's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, yesterday described the area as "ravaged," with many burned-out vehicles and clusters of battered tents. "What was truly striking was the almost total absence of human habitation," he said at a news conference here. "It was almost eerie." "
"Sri Lanka ignores calls for refugee access; Relief groups fear 280,000 at risk" by New York Times | May 23, 2009
A Tamil mother cradled her child at a refugee camp on the outskirts of the town of Vavuniya in Sri Lanka yesterday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is slated to visit the country. (Reuters)
Oh, my aching heart! Such a beautiful baby!
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka's government ignored mounting calls yesterday by international relief organizations for greater access to the country's swelling refugee camps, as the military continued to weed out suspected former Tamil Tiger rebels hiding among civilians.
So Israel-like! You guys said you killed 'em all!
Even as the end of the war has brought a new flood of refugees in the north in recent days, the United Nations, the International Red Cross, and other groups have said that the military's new restrictions have curtailed their activities and are endangering the lives of a refugee population now estimated at 280,000.
In a joint statement yesterday, 14 international relief organizations operating in the camps said that the government had restricted the movement of their vehicles in and out of the camps, making it impossible to provide adequate services.
So Isra... oh, you get the point.
"The government is afraid that with such a large number of vehicles going in and out of the camps, some LTTE members may escape," said David White, the head in Sri Lanka of Oxfam, one of the 14 organizations, referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers. "Also, the large number of international vehicles in the camps makes it seem as if it's an international relief effort whereas the government is very keen on portraying this as a national effort."
While the government has said it is screening out suspected Tamil Tigers in the camps, aid officials said the authorities appeared worried that some former rebels had escaped or bribed their way out. The government, which Western governments and human rights organizations have accused of indiscriminately shelling rebel-held areas containing civilians, also seemed intent on controlling access to witnesses, aid officials and diplomats here said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The government rejected criticism of its handling of the refugees, describing its efforts as satisfactory. "Those who are ignorant of such efforts should at least try to see what is happening at ground level before making irresponsible statements to criticize the good work done by the government under difficult conditions," the health minister, Athula Kahandaliyanage, said in a statement. "If such statements are irresponsibly stated, it may be with ulterior motives in order to bring disrepute and to discredit the government."
Well, if you let them in.... sigh!!!
The government, which barred journalists from the combat zones and rejected international calls for a cease-fire, stuck to its hard-line stance yesterday, hours before the arrival of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for a 24-hour visit.
Now imagine if it was Burma that did this. The U.N. would be screaming about it!!!!
The UN leader appealed to a triumphant Sri Lanka to seize its moment of victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels to resolve longstanding grievances of the Tamil minority. The world body head also said he would seek permission for more international aid to enter camps where about 280,000 desperate war refugees are sheltered.
Ban planned to fly by helicopter over the devastated war zone in the north, where the Sri Lankan military has crushed a separatist insurgency that had led to a quarter-century of warfare and suicide attacks. Ban was to meet with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and visit a refugee camp called Manik Farm in the northern district of Vavuniya, where 250,000 out of the total 280,000 refugees are being sheltered.
After circling over the combat zone in the country's northeast section, Ban's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, yesterday described the area as "ravaged," with many burned-out vehicles and clusters of battered tents. "What was truly striking was the almost total absence of human habitation," he said at a news conference here. "It was almost eerie."
Asked about an investigation into possible war crimes committed by the Tamil Tigers and the government, Nambiar said the issue probably would be raised at a session of the UN Human Rights Council next week.
Where it will go nowhere!
--more--"
And about those government camps:
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Every 15 minutes, Sri Lankan state television halts its normal programming to broadcast patriotic images of women in lush tea fields at sunrise, workers building power lines, and troops standing guard, all accompanied by a soaring anthem in which a young beauty calls for the country's president to be crowned king.
That sounds more like North Korea!
On the streets of the capital, billboards proclaim, "King Mahinda Rajapaksa: He saved us" beneath a photograph of the president hugging his brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's defense minister, and apparently glorying in the military victory that last week ended a quarter-century of war with the Tamil Tiger separatists.
"Everyone's heartbeat is just like my song and the billboards," said Saheli Rochana Gamage, 21, whose rendition of the anthem has made her a celebrity in this small Indian Ocean island nation. "He should be our president forever. We are happy with a king who can protect our country. Elections don't matter."
At a time when insurgencies elsewhere seem to be expanding, notably in Afghanistan, the Rajapaksa brothers were able to do what five Sri Lankan presidents, eight governments, and more than 10 cease-fires could not: win a war against a movement that the FBI has called "the most ruthless and efficient terror organization in the world."
Not "Al-CIA-Duh?"
Despite the elation, the human cost of their accomplishment is also becoming clear: Power has been consolidated around a ruling family, a humanitarian crisis looms, and civil rights and media freedoms have been rolled back.
Perhaps the most pressing problem is the situation of more than 280,000 people, mostly Tamils, who have been driven from their homes in recent months, many of them traumatized women and children who were used as human shields or forced to huddle in trenches or the jungle during fighting. They are now living in overcrowded, highly controlled government-run camps, fenced in by barbed wire. Sri Lanka stands at a crossroads, many here say.
That explains the look on the mother's face.
"Sri Lanka has won the war. But now they have to win the peace, which is a very difficult challenge," said Erik Solheim, Norway's minister for international development, who worked for 10 years with the warring parties and brokered a failed cease-fire in 2002. The government must make all communities feel they are Sri Lankans, he said.
"They also have to share local power in the north where many of the Tamils live," Solheim added. "The president will have to rise to the occasion."
Yesterday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon toured Sri Lanka's biggest refugee camp and said the country did not have the resources to deal with the tens of thousands who fled fighting with Tamil Tiger rebels. Ban's trip was the highest-level international visit to Sri Lanka since the government declared victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels. He flew over the final battleground and met President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Any condemnation for the bombing of hospitals and such, Ban?
Ban told Rajapaksa the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies needed immediate and unimpeded access to camps that are housing 290,000 people who escaped rebel-held areas as a military onslaught bore down on the separatists.
Human rights groups are concerned about a number of children allegedly abducted from the camps by progovernment Tamil paramilitary groups and questioned about links to the Tamil Tiger rebels, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. The fate of many young Tamil Tiger fighters who surrendered is also unknown. The camps are closed to journalists and Tamil political leaders.
So USraeli-like!
Lakshman Hulugalle, director general of the Defense Ministry's media center, declined to comment on the treatment of those accused of "terrorism" and defended sealing the camps. "It's a private matter for Sri Lanka," Hulugalle said. "The problem here is terrorists fight like civilians. They dress like civilians. Just because they drop the gun doesn't mean they aren't terrorists."
Yup, NEVER AGAIN means MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!
After a spike in suicide bombings following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Tigers reportedly carried out two-thirds of all such attacks in the world. India on Thursday marked the anniversary of the 1991 killing of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a suspected Tiger female suicide bomber, apparently in revenge for his sending a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka.
Well, you know.... CUI BONO?
Solheim said closing the camps to aid workers and journalists "for any reason is completely unacceptable and dangerous for those inside. "The international community must, and I mean must, get into these camps," he said. "They have to say to Sri Lanka: 'It takes two to tango. If you want reconstruction and aid money, you will open the camps.' "
Somehow, I don't think $$$ is going to do it.
The United States and Britain, two key members of the International Monetary Fund, have said they will link the release of a $1.9 billion bailout loan to improvements in Sri Lanka's treatment of war-displaced civilians.
Big whoop.
Also see: No Place is Safe in Sri Lanka
And just so you know what we are talking about:
"defined the crime of genocide: (i) the perpetrator killed one or more persons; (ii) such person or persons belonged to a particular national, racial, or religious group; (iii) the perpetrator intended to destroy in whole or in part that group, as such; and, (iv) the conduct took place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against the group."
Yeah, it definitelty applies here -- as well as a whole hell of a lot of other places!
