Sri Lanka's Killing Fields Tourism

Posted: 27/12/2012 00:00

The Sri Lankan military is advertising a newly constructed hotel in the heart of the killing fields in the north of the island, where tens of thousands of minority Tamils were killed in 2009. The holiday resort, called Lagoon's Edge, caters for Sinhala war tourists who want to see the last bastion of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels.

Billed as a once in a lifetime experience, one Sinhala language newspaper, Mawbima, boasted to readers that Lagoon's Edge is constructed entirely of teak, has a dance floor for parties and is situated in a "place were thousands of war heroes, terrorists and others died". The paper touted this as an opportunity to spend the night beside the lagoon where the Tamil Tiger rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran died, all for a price equivalent to $100.

Right in the heart of what was rebel territory, the hotel overlooks the stretch of water that became the frontline during the final bloody months of the conflict, in which it's now estimated by the United Nations 40,000 or possibly 70,000 civilians died in a few months. Tamil survivors describe wading through the neck-high water, passing floating corpses and dodging bullets. Several children and injured or elderly people drowned in the water in the struggle to escape. On the far side of the lagoon from the hotel built by the army, lies the sandy spit of land, which is considered Sri Lanka's killing fields.

This is fourteen square kilometres of territory into which hundreds of thousands of people were crammed in haphazard makeshift encampments and then pounded by heavy artillery and bombed by supersonic jets belonging to the same military now offering sightseeing trips.

Opened by the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his brother the defence secretary, the tourist hotel is part of a triumphalist approach to what's viewed as purely a terrorist problem. The victors deny the Sri Lankan military committed war crimes and crimes against humanity as alleged by a UN report. And nearly four years on they have shown no desire to address the root causes of decades of ethnic violence and discrimination.

As if to underline this, photographs of the hotel's opening ceremony show traditional Kandyan drummers performing - part of Sinhala culture - but totally alien to this exclusively Tamil part of the island.

And this luxury teak hotel for tourists from the south of the island to view the spoils of victory must be little comfort to local people who shelter in flimsy tents. According to an article in TimeMagazine in May 2012 the UN estimated 100,000 houses were destroyed in the final phase of the war but only 16,000 had been rebuilt.

An International Crisis Group report this year said most Tamils returning home after the war live "in makeshift and inadequate shelters and many struggle to afford food, with few jobs or economic opportunities and little or no savings. Few schools and medical centres have been rebuilt'.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/frances-harrison/sri-lankas-killing-fields-tourism_b_2356247.html

The final atrocity: Uncovering Sri Lanka’s ‘white flag incident’

In May 2009, as the civil war was drawing to a close, the Sri Lankan army executed influential Tamil leaders even though they had already surrendered. Frances Harrison spoke to two Tamil fighters who witnessed the incident and revealed the atrocity to the world

The stocky Tamil man twisted himself nervously inside his thin black anorak, ill suited to one of the iciest days of winter, as he explained how he turned informer, betraying the very man he was supposed to protect, in order to save his own life. We endured the bone-chilling cold sitting outdoors on a deserted verandah sipping coffee in a café in Victoria Station, interrupted occasionally by the peremptory platform announcements. Indoors it was warm but there were too many people who might be listening; after all, we were talking about summary execution.

Kumaran, who doesn’t want to give his real name out of fear, had once been a Tamil Tiger rebel fighting for a separate homeland in north-eastern Sri Lanka. Now a refugee in a land where he doesn’t speak the language, he still exudes the confidence that might come from having once carried a gun. This was a man trusted enough to be the bodyguard of the political leaders of the Tamil Tigers.

In the chaos of the last weeks of the civil war in 2009, Kumaran was badly injured when a cluster bomb landed close to him. Medicine and even bandages were running out and the handful of doctors left were amputating limbs with butcher’s knives and no anesthetic. Without medical treatment Kumaran had no chance of recovery. He decided to make a run for it across the frontline – first throwing away the cyanide capsule that’s standard issue for Tamil Tigers rebels to swallow in case of capture.

Surrender

Telling the story of his escape, Kumaran is tellingly short on details.  Tamil Tiger rebels were supposed to fight to the death – surrender was considered a cowardly act of self-preservation.

As soon as he crossed the frontline, two former rebels turned traitor immediately spotted Kumaran and pointed him out to the army.

“They had no choice if they wanted to live,” Kumaran said with sympathy. “They only informed on people who were very obviously fighters and would be noticed anyway,” he said, explaining why he too turned informer once in the hands of the enemy. The screams of his comrades being tortured in the detention centre were enough to turn him.

I was sitting in a deserted portion of Victoria Station across a table from Kumaran and a second Tamil man who used to teach maths in another life. They are the first eyewitnesses to come forward to speak about what’s known as “the white flag incident”. This euphemistically refers to the murder of a group of Tamil Tiger political wing leaders after they had negotiated a surrender on the last day of the war.

Frantic

Even the Sri Lankan President knew that the group planned to surrender  – they’d sent frantic messages through everyone they could think of – the UN, the Red Cross, Norwegian diplomats, Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin, intermediaries in Europe and a Tamil member of parliament. All the indications from top officials in the Sri Lankan government were reassuring – that the surrender would indeed be accepted in accordance with the Geneva Convention.

One of those surrendering was Pulidevan, whom I’d known more than a decade ago when he was a peace negotiator for the Tamil Tigers and I was the BBC correspondent based in Sri Lanka. Puli – as his friends called him – loped about in that slightly ungainly apologetic way tall men sometimes do in places where being short is the norm. He loved nothing more than to sit down on his office sofa and chew over the current political situation at rapid speed like a man starved of discussion. When I left Sri Lanka for another posting he resolutely stayed in touch.

Pulidevan was ready for the Tamil surrender.

By the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009 Puli started coming online almost daily to chat. It was a desperate cry for help. Sometimes we discussed politics, battlefield strategy and the uncertain future, but mostly he wanted to escape the daily reality of severed body parts and screaming mothers. It’s a strange thing but if you talk to someone continuously through months of war you start rooting for their survival even though rationally the chances are slim. We even discussed the fact that if he was caught trying to escape or surrender he’d likely be killed.

For the last four years I’ve been trying to piece together what really happened to Puli and the others. This meeting in Victoria Station was a huge breakthrough. It was surreal to be discussing layer upon layer of treachery on the battlefields of northern Sri Lanka amid the mundane hustle and bustle of commuters in the middle of London.

Soon we’re drawing an untidy map on my notebook to mark the frontline and the bridge across the lagoon over which tens of thousands of emaciated civilians escaped at the end  - leaving behind them billowing black smoke and pounding shells. Kumaran shows me where he was positioned by the Sri Lankan military – behind an earthen embankment near a tree. The army wanted him to confirm the identity of the Tiger political leaders crossing over. Who better than their former bodyguard? It never crossed Kumaran’s mind that he was endangering them because this was clearly a well-planned and organised surrender. Senior Sri Lankan military officials were everywhere with bodyguards and walkie-talkies.

White flag

The first batch to cross the frontline carrying a white flag included the wife of the Tiger political leader. She was not a Tamil but Sinhalese – the same ethnic group as the soldiers. As they approached she was urgently screaming something in their language that Kumaran couldn’t understand – probably urging the soldiers to hold their fire. He watched the Tiger leaders cross over. They were received by the soldiers who escorted them across the bridge, moving towards a cluster of vehicles in the distance. More groups of Tigers walked past him at intervals and surrendered.

Once it was over Kumaran waited around for an hour or so before being driven away by the military. After a while Kumaran, sitting in the back of a pick-up truck, noticed a crowd of soldiers gathered alongside some open ground next to the road. They were taking pictures on their mobile phones of corpses laid out there. As they drove past Kumaran was horrified to see Puli and his boss, Nadesan, the political leader, lying there dead, their shirts stripped off their torsos.

Kumaran quickly understood that as a witness to this crime he was even more in danger than before. “I thought if they can do this to them, what can they do to me,” he recalled, his eyes filling with tears, “one of the hardest things in the hours and days ahead was to keep this knowledge inside me and not speak of it to anyone”.

The last known photo of Puli before his death.

Kumaran had no idea that there were other Tamil witnesses to the surrender who might also make it abroad one day. Sitting next to him is Sharmilan, who once taught maths to rows of neatly dressed school children in blue and white uniforms in the area of northern Sri Lanka under the control of the Tigers. He won’t tell me his real name or which school he worked in lest it identify him and endanger his relatives in Sri Lanka.

Sipping coffees to keep warm and keeping a careful eye on who was coming and going in the cafe, the two men are cordial but not especially chummy with each other. There’s awkward laughter all round when I ask Sharmilan if he was forcibly recruited by the Tigers. He cited the rule that every family had to give one fighter to the rebels – and goes on to explain how after only a month’s training he was press ganged into digging bunkers and disposing of dead bodies in the last year of the war.

The night before the top political leaders of the Tamil Tiger surrendered, Sharmilan had decided to make a run for it with a large group of civilians. It was still dark so the army held them in a destroyed building on the frontline waiting for dawn.

Escort

Sharmilan was surprised when he looked through the window and saw the Tiger political leaders walk by with white flags; he knew surrender was a taboo for an organization that glorified martyrdom. Sharmilan observed the soldiers receive the first group of about 15 people and frisk them for weapons before escorting them over a bridge until they disappeared from sight. In the distance he spotted not just military vehicles but also big white jeeps of the kind used by international aid organisations. Sharmilan estimates there were about five hundred soldiers in the area. He’s adamant all the Tiger political leaders surrendered successfully.

This is of course not what the Sri Lankan military says. It claimed that the Tigers were shot in the back by their own people. If this were the case it’s surprising the military never produced the bodies as evidence of the rebels’ perfidy. Instead they quickly disposed of all the evidence.

After a while a photograph appeared on the Internet – probably shot by one of the soldiers Kumaran saw. It showed the half naked corpses of  Puli and his boss, Nadesan, with burn marks and lacerations on the front belly. Puli’s chest had what appeared to be a bullet entry wound while Nadesan looked as if it had been shot in the side of the face.

The bodies of Puli, left, and Tamil political leader Nadesan. Pic: www.ilamayil.com.

It appears the Sri Lankan government did not want to take senior leaders of the Tamil Tigers prisoner, especially those who were well connected and spoke English.  Their detention and any legal proceedings would be subject to international scrutiny for a long time to come. This was a risk as they were witness to multiple war crimes – the deliberate bombing of hospitals, food queues and civilian safe zones by government forces. And there was the chance that alive these men could lead Sri Lankan Tamils in another chapter of their struggle. The victors wanted a definitive end to the conflict. But in their haste they violated one of the most basic norms of war. Without respect for the white flag there’s no way to protect civilians and those who decide to stop fighting.

Even with a group as disciplined and inured to casualties as the Tamil Tigers there came a point when many of its members could see no use in fighting on. The two men shivering opposite me in Victoria Station ignored the organisation’s mantra of martyrdom and chose instead to save themselves. Now by coming forward to tell their stories they’ve put themselves at risk once again.

__________________

Frances Harrison is a former BBC foreign correspondent based in Sri Lanka. Her book of accounts of survivors from Sri Lanka’s civil war “Still Counting the Dead” is available in good bookshops and online in ebook form by Portobello Books . 

http://asiancorrespondent.com/100094/sri-lanka-white-flag-incident-pulidevan/

Indo-Lanka Relationships - My Memories

by R. Cholan

Current Indian analysts mesmerized by the famed Sinhala hospitality may not fully comprehend all of this. The new chumminess is interpreted as Sri Lanka’s final acceptance of India’s regional super-power status. Given past history, and the subliminal Indophobia that still exists, this is an obviously flawed assumption.... President Jayewardene once said at a news conference in Hong Kong, “the Sri Lankan government will accept help from the devil himself” to fight the Tamils. Currently, the Sinhala leaders are consorting with the Indian 'devil' for this help.

One of my earliest memories of the Colombo harbor was of a large graffiti on a wall (facing the sea and the ships), which read: “INDIA GO HOME”.
I grew up in Colombo in the forties and fifties, witnessing the many manifestations of Indophobia in Sri Lanka. It was called Ceylon then. The Indophobia of that era was not limited to graffities – it was everywhere. The Sinhala disdain for anything Indian was open and omnipresent. All Indians were called Kalla-Thonis, a derogatory term coined originally to describe smugglers and illegal immigrants. Even in the educated middle-class households this term was freely used to describe Indians.
Indian traders, who were in the country in significant numbers at that time and patronized regularly by the Ceylon Tamils, were shunned by the Sinhalese. Indian grocery-stores had hardly any Sinhala customers. Indian textile merchants sold their saris only to Ceylon Tamil customers and the Sinhalese bought theirs from Sinhala owned shops. Indian restaurants were frequented mostly by Tamils, except for a few Sinhalese who bought ‘one’ Dosa (for 10-cents) in the sixties, for the ‘unlimited’ sambar and sambal that came free with it! At the Sinhala owned Restaurants, a bread-meal (1/4 lb of bread for 25-cents) got them only two small dishes of parippu and sambol – No seconds!
Analysts who today sing the praises of a healthy Indo-Lanka trade relationship probably have no idea of what I am talking about. They were not there then to know. Perhaps a simple chat with a Tamil clerk, who lived in the Sinhala towns at that time, would be illuminative to these pundits. Any Indian who cares about the future Indo-Lanka relationship must research the events of that era.
Quite apart from the ordinary Sinhala citizen’s scorn towards the Indian traders, there also existed a state level Indophobia. From the fifties on, a series of measures were taken by successive Sri Lanka governments to make life harder for the traders from the south Indian states of Madras and Kerala. The end result – by the mid-sixties these Indian traders had completely disappeared from Sri Lanka.
The first of these administrative acts was the requirement that all non-Ceylonese businessmen register themselves, for a fee of Rs. 400.00, a huge burden to these small time traders from India at that time. Indian grocers, who eked out meager profits by selling Indian eggs for 18-cents, as opposed to the local price of 21-cents, couldn’t afford this fee. Most chose to leave the country.
Imports of groceries and magazines from India were then banned – not just deterred with increased tariffs, but a complete ban. Readers of Indian magazines, like Femina (English) and Kalki (Tamil), couldn’t get them anymore. What the hell, these readers were only a miniscule minority and besides most were Tamils. Those who could afford it got them in the black-market anyway, and the rest of the readers didn’t matter.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Ironically, Tamil farmers in the north Sri Lanka welcomed the ban on Indian onions, as the price of Jaffna onions skyrocketed (as did their profits), little realizing what the Sinhala government was doing. When the Sinhala farmers started growing onions, the transport of onions from Jaffna was bottlenecked at the Elephant Pass army checkpoint, with a ‘permit’ requirement. Those in Jaffna (me included) ate onions for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Indian onions were nowhere to be seen.
The Indophobia of that era also resulted in the Sinhala government going after the so called Tamils of ‘recent’ Indian origin. These immigrant plantation workers imported by the British more than a hundred years earlier had already been stripped of their Ceylon citizenship by a prior legislation – the first Legislative Act of the newly independent Ceylon in 1948. Since then, these Tamils had been living in Ceylon as ‘stateless’ persons.
India came under increasing pressure from the Sinhala leadership to accept a forced repatriation of these stateless Tamils. The first Indian PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had resisted the pressure effectively, died in 1964. A weak leadership that followed, and the fact that India was distracted at that time by a war with China, gave the Sinhala leadership the best opportunity to ratchet-up the pressure. The new Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri caved-in, agreeing to accept more than 50% of the stateless Tamils (Sirimavo-Shastri Pact; October 1964). Over 500,000 Tamil plantation workers were forcibly deported.

Lal Bahadur Shastri

Intoxicated with this success, Sri Lanka was relentless against its large neighbor, and succeeded on many fronts. The island of Kachchativu, a piece of Indian Territory, was wrenched from India in 1974 with similar pressure tactics. It must be remembered that the wrangle for this piece of Indian land occurred less than three years after the first JVP insurrection (1970), when India was the first to come to the rescue of the Colombo government. That’s Gratitude.
The next major issue with India was when India came to help in the ethnic conflict in 1987, and ended up eating humble pie. Lured by one president to help fight the Tamil rebels, India was booted out by the next, who mockingly joined hands with the same rebels to kick India out. It was a classic example of Sinhala leaders’ penchant to renege on solemnly signed agreements.
If India's meek and complete acquiescence to its little neighbor is to keep out its northern detractors from the island, it is obviously a failed strategy. India never enjoyed a reciprocal loyalty from the Sri Lankans. Contrarily, the Chinese and the Pakistani presence and influence in Sri Lanka have been significant and at present growing alarmingly.
It is hoped, at the highest echelons in India, that helping Sri Lanka fight the Tamils will somehow diminish the Chinese and Pakistani influence there, at least in the short-term. Quite apart from the fact that this policy has not produced the desired results even in the short-run, the long-term outlook for India if Sri Lanka wins the war against the Tamils is even gloomier.
A strong Tamil presence in the Sri Lankan polity (either federal or as separate countries) is India's best bet. It is the only way India can counterbalance the congenital and hereditary Sinhala Indophobia.
I base this on another of my early childhood memories in Sri Lanka. It is about my own home and that of my relatives and friends. Every Tamil home during that period had a framed photo of Mahatma Gandhi displayed in their living rooms. Many had pictures of other Indian leaders, like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subash Chandra Bose, etc. as well. In some cases these were kept in their shrine rooms among pictures of their gods. No Sinhala home ever had pictures of Indian leaders.
Sri Lankan Tamils are the natural allies of India. The Sinhalese are congenitally and hereditarily ill-disposed towards India, perhaps their attitude being rooted in the historical memories of invasions in centuries past, or the Mahavamsa teachings, or whatever. Merits of these dissimilar dispositions apart, it is the ground reality. It is something that India needs to understand and recognize, or ignore at its own peril.
Current Indian analysts mesmerized by the famed Sinhala hospitality may not fully comprehend all of this. The new chumminess is interpreted as Sri Lanka’s final acceptance of India’s regional super-power status. Given the past history, and the subliminal Indophobia that still exists, this is an obviously flawed assumption. The Sinhala leaders are acting friendly today only for India’s help to crush the Tamil rebellion. President Jayewardene once said at a news conference in Hong Kong, “the Sri Lankan government will accept help from the devil himself” to fight the Tamils. Currently the Sinhala leaders are consorting with the Indian devil for this help.
A politically weakened Tamil population in Sri Lanka will in the long run result in the realization of India's worst nightmare. Nothing can be worse for India than a country in its backyard, ruled by an innately hostile population. India needs a strong Tamil hand in Sri Lanka, and the sooner it understands this basic fact the better it is for them.
A Chastened Indian Foreign Secretary, Jyotindra Dixit, six years after his debacle in Sri Lanka, told me something privately, which he didn’t (or couldn’t) say openly in his book, Assignment Colombo (1998). He said to me “I say, if I were Prabakaran, I won’t trust any of the Sinhalas. Tell him that I told you so.”
I never have had the opportunity to tell Mr. Pirpaharan that.

Terrorist-criminal-political nexus in Tamil Nadu growing - Prof. Rohan Gunaratna

International counter terrorism expert based in Singapore, Prof. Rohan Gunaratna warns that there is a well concerted campaign in Tamil Nadu, launched by the LTTE, to make Tamil people rise up against Sri Lanka and this is a development that Sri Lanka should be concerned about.

In an interview with the Sunday Observer he said, "The terrorist-criminal-political nexus (in Tamil Nadu) is growing...." and went on to caution the Government that the LTTE misinformation and disinformation campaign was sure to spill over from Tamil Nadu to other south Indian States unless the Government took immediate steps to counter their malicious moves.

He claimed that the LTTE support base which was lying low after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was once again being effectively revived by the LTTE.

The excerpts of the interview:

Q:Following a leaked confidential Indian government document it came to light a few days ago how the LTTE orchestrated a campaign of appeals, including from the EU to delay the hanging of the Rajiv Gandhi killers. Media reported that Rashtrapati Bhavan was bombarded with clemency pleas originating from France, Germany, Denmark, South Africa, UK and from its own MPs. In fact the campaign has been successful todate. Isn't this a good eye opener for the international community?

A: The LTTE political network in India is deep. The terrorist-criminal-political nexus is growing as some Tamil Nadu politicians are susceptible to LTTE funding, business (film industry) and fanaticism. After the Rajiv Gandhi assassination by the LTTE, once again its supporters, Vijayakanth, Gopalasamy, Karunanidhi, Nedumaran and Seeman are re-emerging.

The LTTE orchestrated the attack on the Sri Lankan pilgrims and also the protests when President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited India. The LTTE misinformation and disinformation will spread from Tamil Nadu to other south Indian States unless the Sri Lankan Government takes immediate steps to counter that.

With the LTTE politicising Indian Tamils to hate Sri Lanka the Ministry of Information in Colombo should counter the propaganda in Tamil Nadu in their own language. The Ministry of External Affairs in Colombo should invite Tamil Nadu politicians including Jayalalitha to visit Sri Lanka's north.

Q:Sri Lanka is bracing for a tough time at the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva, with a US sponsored procedural-resolution and an adverse report by High Commissioner Navi Pillai ready to be tabled. Your comments?

A:Geneva is not an exercise in Human Rights. It is an exercise in politics. Sri Lanka is a resilient nation that has withstood such challenges. Amidst international pressure generated by LTTE lobbying, Sri Lanka defeated one of the most ruthless groups.

Thereafter amidst pressure to withdraw, its security forces, Sri Lanka maintained its presence to ensure the continued stability of the North and the East. The US led European coalitions could neither defeat terror nor restore stability either in Iraq or Afghanistan. Today, both countries are suffering and they even threaten their neighbours. In contrast Sri Lanka is building a vibrant infrastructure and restoring livelihood.

In comparison to countries facing similar situations, Sri Lanka performed exceptionally well as its focus was to advance national interests and neither be deterred by threats nor influenced by regional or superpower politics.

Q:What is your take on the strength of LTTE propaganda and their support base in Geneva?

A:The LTTE that waged terror died with Prabhakaran but the support network that enabled violence re-branded itself as champions of human rights. The LTTE overseas network has begun to degrade with the majority of Tamils considering LTTE dissent leaders a waste of time and resources.

However the failure of the Government to engage the West created opportunities for a reinvented LTTE to access human rights lobby groups in foreign Governments, at the UN and in NGOs. Today in three-piece suits, LTTE ideologues, propagandists and activists discuss human rights issues.

The latest trend is for the LTTE to reach out to West-funded, anti-Sri Lankan government NGOs, human rights activists, journalists and co-opt them for Geneva.

LTTE fronts and sympathetic groups fund the LTTE proxy, the TNA. Canadian and British politicians driven by LTTE orchestrated votes and funds issue pro LTTE statements. This is a serious threat for Sri Lanka to fight its case and convince the international community.

Q: What is the way forward for Sri Lanka in your opinion?

A:First the government should continue to build a harmonious relationship between Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims and secondly re-engage the West. Sri Lankans tend to withdraw when the mind of the other is poisoned. Then the tendency of Colombo is to disengage foreign governments when the foreign governments are influenced by misinformation and disinformation.

The strategy should be to engage and address issues that can be resolved. As Sri Lanka is misperceived as an ally of China, Colombo should inform the West and India, that the relationship with China is economic and not military. Otherwise, Sri Lanka will be trapped in a new 'cold war'. Sri Lanka should be mindful of the changing geostrategic and geopolitical realities and not antagonise India.

Courtesy : Sunday Observer

http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=Terrorist_criminal_political_nexus_in_Tamil_Nadu_growing_20130224_01

One more report nails Sri Lanka’s lies; time for action is now!

There is something terribly wrong here: the whole world says with evidence that Sri Lanka has killed thousands of innocent Tamil civilians and committed war crimes; but the island nation laughs them off saying it is a concerted effort to discredit the country.

Forget America, the UK and the rest of Europe, it was the most neutral interlocutor that one can imagine, the UN, which said first that about 40,000 innocent Tamils had been killed in 2009 – mostly by shelling to no-fire zones created by the Sri Lankan military itself – as the country pushed for its victory against the LTTE.

Rights groups all over the world recorded testimonies and case studies corroborating what the UN has said. Then came two documentaries by UK’s Channel-4 which showed chilling evidence of shelling on civilians, executions, evidence of sexual abuse and everything that can be counted as war crimes.

But Sri Lanka still maintained that there were no civilian deaths. Initially the triumphalist Rajapakse gave some silly figures of unavoidable civilian casualties, but when the evidence was mounting, he marginally revised them. Still, they refuted everything the UN and the rest of the world have said.

A Sri Lankan factory worker interviewed by the HRW. Screen-grab from YouTube video.

In Sri Lanka’s eyes, the entire world was lying and whatever it said alone was absolute truth.

Now, there is more damning evidence against Sri Lanka.

International watchdog, Human Rights Watch (HRW), on Tuesday released a 140-page report which establishes that scores of women and men were sexually abused by the security forces of the Sri Lankan regime – the military, police, intelligence and others – during 2006-2012 and it is still continuing.

The report, aptly titled “We Will Teach You a Lesson”, talks about a vengeful and ultranationalist government taking on its own citizens purely based on racial prejudice and hatred. It corroborates the recent assessment of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that “ sexual violence, including but not limited to rape, against Tamil men in detention has also been reported recently, including reports of cases perpetrated in the post-conflict period.”

The report is a compilation of 75 case studies of alleged rape, both men and women, based on in-depth interviews with victims conducted in several countries. HRW has said that it was able to interview this many people in such a limited number of former detainees strongly indicates the possibility of widespread sexual abuse. Thousands of people had been detained during and after the war in Sri Lanka.

The report said eight cases that it documented occurred in 2012, indicating the impunity with which the Sri Lank is still thumbing is nose at the international community.

“In all of the cases documented in this report, the acts of rape and sexual violence were accompanied by other forms of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by state security forces. The conditions in which the individuals were held—without access to judges, defense lawyers, relatives, or doctors—violated fundamental due process rights. Often the perpetrators came from more than one branch of the security forces, and included members of the Sri Lankan army, police, and pro-government Tamil paramilitary groups,” the report said.

“In the cases we investigated, most of the detainees were interrogated by Sinhala- speaking security officials with Tamil interpreters. Most were forced to sign a confession in Sinhala following their abuse, though the torture often continued after they signed confessions. Detainees were normally not released but rather allowed to “escape” after a relative paid a bribe. Human Rights Watch of necessity was only able to interview those no longer in custody—the fate of detainees who remain in custody, while unknown to us, is of urgent concern.”

Here is one of the accounts in the report – the sexual abuse of a 31 year old man, identified as KP, who was abducted by a “white van” (one of the state symbols of terror in Sri Lanka). It’s pure horror.

“During the first interrogation, the official in military fatigues forced me to undress. He tried to have oral sex with me. He forced himself on me and raped me. During questioning, the officials would squeeze my penis. They would force me to masturbate them. One of them masturbated me. I was severely tortured when I resisted. The officials would furiously say some words in Sinhala when they sexually abused me. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. They abused me in Tamil and used slang words. I was sexually abused many times during my detention. On some days, the army official who had arrested me sexually abused me during interrogation. On two nights, I was raped by prison guards. The sexual abuse by the officials stopped after I signed the confession.”

The report also quoted detainees who said prior to their rapes, they were forced to strip, their genitals or breasts groped, and they were verbally abused and mocked. HRW said it found evidence of such violation on many of their medical reports.

A number cases involved people who had returned to Sri Lanka, either as deportees with failed attempts at overseas asylum or voluntarily, indicating that for Tamils, it is a dangerous place to return to even as the government claims peace and equality for all its citizens. They get picked up at the airport itself for detention and torture. Recently, an Australian citizen (male) also had disclosed after getting back to his country that he was detained and raped in Sri Lanka.

The HRW report is one more addition to the mountain of evidence on alleged war crimes and other excesses against humanity that the Sri Lankan government and its various agencies have committed. The world will repeat what it has scientifically documented and Sri Lanka will continue to pooh pooh them with impunity.

The timing of the HRW report, as well as the upcoming Channel 4 documentary (the third in a row) that will show the alleged execution of LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s son by security forces, is no secret. It’s to build pressure on the rest of the world, particularly on fences-sitters such as India, to press for action against island nation at the UN Human Right Council.

Even under optimum circumstances, the UNHRC’s options are limited. It will at best ask for the implementations of LLRC (The Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission) that the country had established to investigate the allegations of war crime. Sri Lanka has successfully procrastinated any possible action of the LLRC by telling the world the bureaucratic steps it has taken to implement the recommendations.

What is required now is way beyond LLRC. The LLRC was a ruse of Sri Lanka to hoodwink the rest of the world – show something symbolic and continue with its excesses. And even under best circumstances, a country-led process such as LLRC will be a complete sham because the country is plainly lying.
The action should be plain and simple as Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa has demanded – economic sanctions and action at the International Court of Criminal Justice.

Taking Rajapakse to the ICC is not easy because Sri Lanka is not a signatory. It requires a UN Security Council resolution to refer the case to the ICC. With China and Russia on its side, the alleged war criminals in Sri Lanka are perhaps confident that such a resolution at the SC will never get through and they don’t go behind bars.

However, what can still work is economic sanctions. It’s high time that the world has moved towards such an affirmative action. It is the minimum that the world, particularly India, should do to instill confidence in the rest of the world’s humanity. A rogue-nation such as Sri Lanka is as dangerous as a Talibanised Pakistan.

http://www.firstpost.com/world/one-more-report-nails-sri-lankas-lies-time-for-action-is-now-641643.html

Witnesses support claim that Sri Lanka army shot prisoners

Two eyewitnesses have come forward for the first time to support allegations that the Sri Lankan army executed two Tamil Tiger rebel leaders after they surrendered, carrying a white flag, at the close of the island’s civil war in 2009.

Their accounts cast fresh doubt on the Sri Lankan government’s claim that the rebels were killed by their own supporters and add to a growing body of evidence of war crimes allegedly committed by the Sri Lankan military during the conflict.

Last week, The Independent published photographs of the 12-year-old son of the Tamil Tiger chief eating a snack after being captured by the Sri Lankan army. Shortly afterwards, he was shot five times in the chest, probably at very close range according to a forensics expert.

The two new witnesses in what has become known as “the white flag incident” can testify they independently saw from different vantage points the Tamil Tiger leaders accepted into the custody of the Sri Lankan military and escorted from the front line, alive.

Now in London, he says he was taken to the front by members of the Sri Lankan military on the morning of 18 May 2009, and positioned behind an earth embankment. His job was to confirm the identity of the Tamil political leaders as they walked towards the army carrying white flags. He says it looked like a well-organised surrender with hundreds of soldiers, including senior officers with bodyguards, present.

The second witness, a government teacher, also now in London, says he was press-ganged into service for the rebels in the last months of the war. Hours before the incident, he says he also surrendered, knowing that the war was over and it was his only chance of survival. After being searched, he says he was held with others in a derelict building close to the front line. From this position he watched several groups of Tamil Tiger leaders and their relatives walk out of the war zone towards the Sri Lankan army, carrying white flags.

He admits he was surprised to see the leader of the Tiger political wing,  Nadesan, his Sinhalese wife and the head of the Tiger Peace Secretariat,  Pulidevan, in the first group. Officially the Tigers did not hold with surrender, issuing all recruits with cyanide capsules to wear around their necks to use in case of capture.

Both witnesses say Sri Lankan soldiers went out to greet several groups of surrendering rebels and escorted them over a bridge across a lagoon to waiting vehicles on the other side.

The former bodyguard waited for more than an hour until the military put him in the back of a pick-up truck and drove him away. Along the road he spotted soldiers taking photos on their mobile phones of corpses lying on the ground. As they went past, he recognised Pulidevan and Nadesan’s bodies. Photographs have since appeared on websites abroad showing the two Tiger leaders’ half-naked corpses, with bullet wounds and burn marks on their chests. 

The “white flag” incident also involved approximately 40 other rebels believed to have negotiated a surrender with the Sri Lankan government. None of them have been seen since.

Tamil Tiger rebels conducted a vicious campaign of terror for a separate homeland for decades, using suicide bombers to kill civilians and scores of politicians, including a President and an Indian Prime Minister.

Pulidevan and Nadesan were two of the most senior rebels to surrender. In the hours beforehand, they used satellite phones to send messages to diplomats, journalists and peace mediators to ensure top Sri Lankan officials, including the country’s President, knew of their intention to lay down their arms. They had been assured that their surrender would be accepted if they raised a white flag. 

However, the Sri Lankan defence ministry’s website lists Pulidevan and Nadesan as killed by troops of the 58th Division on 18 May 2009.

Sri Lanka’s government holds that the Tiger leaders were shot in the back by their own people, and say the army never executed any individuals.

Allegations the Sri Lankan army and rebels  committed war crimes at the end of a brutal war are widespread. According to United Nations investigators, the last months saw repeated and deliberate government shelling of hospitals, food queues and safe zones for civilians.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/witnesses-support-claim-that-sri-lanka-army-shot-prisoners-8508617.html

Important Srilankan story pages

http://jrsusa.wordpress.com/2009/04/

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/frances-harrison/

http://www.sangam.org/2009/05/Photos_Vanni.php