Sri Lanka: breaking news - LTTE surrender

Link: After 70,000 dead, Tigers surrender in war-weary Sri Lanka

It appears that the surviving LTTE leaders have declared an end to their campaign to build their own breakaway state. There remains a small area where holdout fighters are still trapped but apparently the leader of the LTTE has indeed been killed.

"In other capitals, and in the office of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, there were grave criticisms of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa for a campaign of unprecedented violence that appeared to ignore humanitarian concerns and the Geneva Conventions as the Sri Lankan military bombed and shelled tens of thousands of Tamil civilians whose homes and lives are intermixed with the Tiger forces. There have been at least 7,000 civilian casualties in the north" - TheGlobeandMail.com

The fierce battles have resulted in about 250,000 refugees, many of whom are wounded. These civilians have been displaced and cannot return home for fear of reprisals from remaining LTTE members. The article states that the LTTE regime was a punitive and strict regime. Once again, the sheer magnitude of the humanitarian cost of this conflict is immense and these people have been victims of both the LTTE regime and the governments programme of shelling and bombing.

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Sri Lanka: Fear of mass suicide as LTTE surrender

Link: Fears of mass suicide as Tamil Tigers face final defeat [TimesOnline]

A week ago, Moggy at TPM Cafe warned of this exact possibility:

“It is therefore unsurprising that LTTE members, regardless of their ideology, would prefer a relatively quick death via explosion or cyanide capsule rather than surrender and risk being tortured, raped, starved and/or imprisoned prior to being killed” - Moggy @ TPM Cafe

The Tamil Tigers are a banned organisation in the UK and I’ve found that international news reports often reflect this, focusing on the terrorist nature of LTTE activities rather than the humanitarian crisis.  The above article TimesOnline article has painted quite a grim humanitarian picture though and these are the salient details:

• The LTTE have offered to lay down their weapons in return for a guarantee of their safety but will consider suicide otherwise.  Until earlier this year, the Tamils had run what was essentially a mini-state in the north of the country.  The significance of this is that if they do opt for suicide, it is entire family units (including wives and children) that will take the cyanide capsules.  The number of possible casualties is about 10,000.  They are willing to surrender to a third-party international force and as part of the agreement there must be a commitment to an political process that will guarantee the political and human rights of the Tamil people.
• Doctors have reported that due to shelling of the area (which is the size of Hyde Park), there are about 2000 to 3000 unburied corpses and they cannot access the sick and wounded because of continued shelling.  Families have been trapped in bunkers for a week without access to food and water.
• Aid agencies and journalists have been prevented from entering the region but estimates say that between 30,000 and 80,000 civilians are trapped.

Not only are the civilians being used as human shields, they are also all under suspicion of being in league with the LTTE, as Medico International reports: 

“More than 30 000 persons have managed to flee the enclave through the front lines into the area controlled by the army. Around half of them have been brought into the city of Vavuniya., where, some heavily injured, they have been interned in prison camps run by the army and allied paramilitaries. They are all under general suspiscion (sic) of being LTTE members and are being subjected to systematic torture, rape and shootings, especially the young men and women” - Medico International

So by all accounts, it seems that we are on the threshold of a loss of between 10,000 and 80,000 lives this weekend. That is a terrifying possibility.  Without urgent international intervention, the cost of human lives is going to be immense.

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Sri Lanka: UN genocide expert calls for end to conflict

Link: UN expert on genocide prevention calls for end to conflict [TheHindu.com]

Link: Still time for Sri Lanka and Tamil Tigers to reconcile says advisor [BruneiNews]

It does not matter which side you are supporting or what you opinion of the LTTE is but a human catastrophe is in the process of happening in Sri Lanka.  UN genocide prevention expert and special advisor to Ban Ki-moon, Francis Deng has called for an immediate end to the conflict and he has specifically made mention of the ethnic nature of the conflict.

There is still time for the Government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to halt their fighting and “pursue a reconciliatory and peaceful path with the ethnic Tamil population,” Francis Deng said in a statement.

“This polarizing conflict is identity-related with ethnicity and religion as deeply divisive factors,” he said. “It will not end with winners and losers and it cannot be ended solely through a military victory that may not be sustainable in the long-run unless legitimate grievances are addressed.”

Mr. Deng underscored that women and girls are particularly vulnerable to “excesses of conflict,” stressing that the Government is legally obligated to give them special protection. He called on authorities to allow the UN and other agencies “full and unfettered access to all civilians and detainees.”

The Special Advisor also called on the LTTE, for its part, to “immediately cease holding human shields and let civilians leave the conflict area,” a shrinking pocket of land on Sri Lanka’s northern coastline where the UN estimates that at least 50,000 people are still trapped - BruneiNews

Also commenting was Walter Kälin, the Secretary-General’s Representative for the Human Rights of Displaced Persons.  He drew attention to the fact that the LTTE is preventing civilians from leaving the area in which they are trapped and setting up military installations around them but that the Sri Lankan government is heaving shelling the areas.  This is resulting in an unacceptably high level of civilian casualties.

Given the Gaza conflict a couple of months ago, why is the world not being more vocal about this?  It is the same action – a government shelling an area they believe to contain military installations but killing civilians instead.

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Sri Lanka: Genocide against Tamils

Link: Sri Lanka's Genocide [Moggy's Blog]

This is a previous post on Moggy's excellent blog. If, like me, you are a newcomer to the situation in Sri Lanka, this will give you a good introduction and it is a good place to start.

Within the last six weeks, I've watched Sri Lanka's 25-year ethnic conflict become a full-scale genocide against the Tamil population (the primary minority group in the country). Some of the more obvious indications include:

1. The government is in the process of putting approx. 300,000 Tamil civilians into military-run camps, which are, for all intents and purposes, Holocaust-style concentration camps: forced labor, lack of basic necessities and sanitation, indiscriminate killings and generally dire conditions.

2. A few weeks ago, the military began systematically raping the women being held in these camps.

3. In mid-January, the Sri Lankan military created a "safe zone" for Tamil civilians who were still in the war zone so that they would not be "caught in the crossfire". Once the civilians moved into the area, the military started bombing it, even hitting a hospital multiple times.

4. The government instituted a mandatory registration last month whereby all Sri Lankan citizens are legally required to provide the government with such details as their name, ethnicity and home address.

That last point sounds frighteningly similar to what the Rwandan government did just before the genocide in 1994.

Link: Repeating Rwanda: The Consequences of Euphemizing Genocide [Moggy's Blog]

This excellent article warns of the danger of euphemising what is going on in conflicts around the world. It does not help to call it "ongoing conflict" or "humanitarian crisis" no matter how much we want to bury our heads in the sand.

It is genocide, plain and simple and we need to identify who is doing what to whom so that the international community can exert pressure and action can be taken.

Link: Thousands call for international help to end 'genocide' in Sri Lanka [harrowtimes.co.uk]

Earlier this month a memorial service was held for Murugathasan Varnakulasingham, a 26-year-old from Harrow, London. Last month he burned himself to death in front of the UN headquarters in Geneva in protest of the Tamil deaths in Sri Lanka. Comments on this article have raised the question as to why the world is remaining silent about the conflicts when they have raised their voices about the Palestinian situation.

Link: Thousands of Tamils decry Sri Lankan 'genocide' [google.com/AFP]

Thousands of supporters of a Tamil state protested in Brussels, Belgium on Monday against the genocide in Sri Lanka. Presently, up to 50 to 100 Tamils are being killed a day in so-called protected areas.

Protestors also demonstrated outside of the UN's headquarters in Geneva and said that the world body was complicit in the genocides. This seems to be because UN calls for a cease fire in northern Sri Lanka were not heeded. Now up to 170,000 civilians are trapped in the crossfire between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

[photo source]

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