A General on the loose: Caught Lying about Dying Tigers:

A General on the loose


Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka

By Ranjith Jayasundera - Sunday Leader:

It is with a great deal of apprehension that one is compelled to acknowledge today that the lives of the 162,000 soldiers serving in the Sri Lanka Army are being made the subject of a numbers game.

The Army Commander, Lt. General Sarath Fonseka was last week quoted in the Sunday Times telling his senior officers that 11,000 Tigers have been killed since July 2006 and that 4,000 remain. This claim flies in the face of every other claim made by him and other government agents since this business of announcing timelines for the LTTE’s annihilation came into fashion last year.

Lt. Gen. Fonseka last provided an LTTE casualty count two months ago when he was interviewed for the July 20 issue of the Sunday Observer. Therein he stated that the LTTE had "lost 9,000" cadres over the last two years. "These official figures were officially released at the last security council meeting," the Army Commander claimed.

Yet just two months later, the number of Tigers killed has spiked to 11,000. Even more frighteningly, the Army Commander attributed over 1,000 ‘kills’ to the air force, which has not to date released regular figures of LTTE cadres killed in its strikes. If this number was made up, it means that someone has lied to the National Security Council.

Fire from the sky

If it is accurate, the military hierarchy has killed over 1% of the adult population of two of Sri Lanka’s districts – Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu – by dropping dumb, largely unguided bombs from the sky.

How the Army Commander could not be shocked by this revelation is simple to explain: the inhabitants of those two districts are largely ethnic Tamils. The Army Commander, in the Sunday Observer, explained one of his most traumatic childhood experiences. When Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka was but five years old, and had two fears while living in his "jungle village."

"I can still remember how the villagers used to run to a rocky cliff when Tamils attack our village. We spend two to three days there until the situation comes back to normal,’’ the Army Commander recalled to the Observer.

As for how these experiences have shaped the Army Commander’s views, he provided proof aplenty in another interview with the Daily News. "This country will be ruled by the Sinhalese community which is the majority representing 74 percent of the population," he declared.

The General has not considered what happens if a Sinhalese person marries a Tamil. Would that couple’s offspring be barred from leading the country?

Tamils ‘living it up’

"Sometimes" the Tamils "are living much better than the Sinhalese and Muslim community," he complained. Heaven forbid.

"I don’t think the people in the north and east are subjected to any injustice," he told the state run daily.

If this military officer does not think that having over 1,000 of your ‘kind’ blown to oblivion by airstrikes, being forced to live under a terrorist dictatorship and having essential supplies such as food and medicine regularly stifled for "security reasons" does not constitute an injustice, we need to know what he is fighting for, since it is clearly not to ‘liberate’ the poor, starving Tamils of the Northern Province.

And what was the Commander’s justification for the starving and hardship of the majority of the people of Sri Lanka? "Like any other country in the world where people have to fight wars to safeguard the territorial integrity of their countries they have to go through hardships. They have to spend a lot of money. They have to sacrifice. The Sinhala nation has to sacrifice if you want to protect the country and survive."

How Fonseka can expect any self respecting Tamil, Muslim, Burgher or other ‘breed’ to "go through hardships" or "spend a lot of money" to ensure the survival of a "Sinhala nation" is simply beyond belief.

‘Sacrificing’ with a Benz

He has also failed to explain why it is the civilians and innocent villagers who have to make all these ‘sacrifices’ whilst he sports a brand spanking new Rs. 44 million Mercedes Benz courtesy of the Sri Lanka Army. As we reported exclusively on April 13, the army paid an extra Rs 3 million rupees on the base price of the vehicle, for an extra 15 cm of leg room for the backseat passengers.

He also had an interesting take on the fate of those who dare to criticise ‘the army’ – in Fonseka’s language, criticism of his own behaviour and actions is equal to criticising the 162,000 member force that he commands.

Keith should live in fear?

Referring to the brutal attack on Nation Deputy-Editor Keith Noyahr, the Army Commander made it clear in no uncertain terms that Noyahr should have seen it coming. "He has never accused that the army had assaulted him. And I think perhaps he is guilty that he has done something wrong by writing against the military," Fonseka said.

"If he has not done anything wrong, he does not have to live in fear. If he has done some damage to our organisation or to a person, especially when he has done something which he is not supposed to do, then it is natural he must be living in fear."

It is this same Sarath Fonseka who claimed in May 2007 that the LTTE had 4,000 cadres remaining in their ranks and that "they are finished" after losing 2,000 cadres.

Seven months and 2,500 dead LTTE terrorists – by Defence Ministry figures – later on December 30, 2007, the same Army Commander claimed that "the LTTE has 3,000 cadres remaining" and that the "military plans to kill them within six months."

By February, the LTTE had "5,000 fighters" he said, despite the Defence Ministry propaganda machine claiming to have killed 891 between January 1 and February 10 when he made the statement.

Again in June, after our ‘Kill-O-meter’ had recorded 5,051 kills for the year 2008, the Army Commander claimed that there were (yet another) 4000 – 5000 LTTE cadres remaining.

Then, after having claimed to have killed 1,017 terrorists in July, another 922 in August and nearly 300 in the first week and a half of September, we were told last week that another 4,000 are remaining.

It is (reassuringly) most likely that Fonseka is simply lying, and talking through his hat. But if he is telling the truth, the government may have a phenomenal problem on hand with its military campaign.

If the LTTE truly is able to keep recruiting from the ranks of innocent Tamil civilians, whether they fight willingly or not, then this war is truly turning into a battle not between the government and the LTTE but one between ‘north and south,’ or Sinhalese versus Tamils.

Milking the war for politics

The Army Commander also clearly believes in politicising war for the benefit of the party and president in power. These are not our words, but his own. "The military is no doubt entitled to get political mileage especially after capturing areas like Vidattalthivu and Mannar. Most probably we will capture many more places before the elections," he told the Sunday Observer in the run up to the North Central and Sabaragamuwa Provincial Council elections.

"The President of the country being the Commander in Chief is entitled to get the credit for all these military victories. He is the one who takes decisions and responsibilities of launching these major offensives. Wars are launched by the governments and credit of its success will naturally go to the government."

There is a huge discrepancy between the number of soldiers claimed killed by the Defence Ministry on a daily basis, and the figure presented each month by the government during the emergency debate.

The Army Commander also put the Defence Ministry’s own daily casualty reports to shame in grand style. The Observer interview was published on Sunday, July 20. In it, he further states that "where we were able to kill more than 150 terrorists a week. Last week only 15 terrorists were killed."

Never mind the entire week before the interview. There was not even a single three day long period in the whole of July where the Defence Ministry didn’t claim that at least 50 (more often 100) LTTE cadres were killed.

So the Army Commander says 15 LTTE cadres were killed in a given week. The Defence Ministry’s news reports say more than 50 were killed. Who is the public to believe? Where this trend becomes all the more disgraceful is in the military’s regular reporting of its own casualties.

Desecrating the sacrifice of the over 800 soldiers who have been killed this year alone, and the 5,400 plus who have been wounded and maimed, the Defence Ministry regularly downplays the number of our own casualties, despite being caught in the act every month.

Playing with figures

Every day the Ministry or the Media Centre for National Security gives us reports that added up to between 80 – 100 soldiers being killed in action every month. Yet in parliament, either Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake or Leader of the House Nimal Siripala de Silva has presented monthly, ‘true’ figures for the number of soldiers killed in combat, which have, with the exception of March, always numbered well over 100.

155 soldiers were killed in battle last month alone. This practice of gently oozing out the numbers is how the government helps to numb the public to the human sacrifice being made every day to enable its own survival.

Their excuse for the discrepancy is the difficulty in getting accurate information about battles and casualties on the days they occur. In this case, how is it possible for the military to have such accurate estimates of the LTTE’s dead and wounded on the day of a battle, when it is clearly not in a position to be sure of its own for days after an encounter?

One and one is three - Thelma's column: Letter to the President who is in New York:

My dearest Ma-hinder,

Thellie, nicely oiled in the internal organs, by large doses of Scandinavian Aquavit and dollops of pink salmon, will not venture to speculate on what is up with that top brass Fonnie. But this does not stop me dearie from raising a recently threaded eyebrow as I learn that Sarath Fonnie’s latest figures put the death toll of the cyanides at 11,000 since July 2006.

This is a bit of a worry darling. I mean to say dear this numbering of dead by various websites on both sides of the divide is getting my goat. Speaking of goats dearie I don’t know if long ago in the days of your youth when I wore red bows at the end of my pigtails and you risked mob violence by frolicking about in the alleys of Medamulane in a little blue jungi, you had happened to have come across Herge’s account of Tintin the reporter who was making preparations with old Calculus and Captain Haddock to wing it off to the moon.

A slight verbal slip by Haddock accusing Calculus who was building the rocket of acting the goat had set the professor in such a mindless frenzy that those stirring images of the tiny professor expressing his frustration would stick with me for years to come. But I always thought the phrase was a pretty nifty one in the most trying circs.

Apart from the fact that this particular version of historical events as related by Belgian cartoonists had such a profound effect on Thellie that to a question in her third grade history paper, ‘Who were the first men on the moon?’ I was to write ‘Tintin, Calculus, Haddock and Thompson and Thomson.’ That phrase about the goat has haunted my memory. And darling as I now watch this numbers and military deadline game you chaps are playing I cannot help but feel that you fellows are acting the bally goat and who better to lead you to this state than ole Goatie himself eh?

Given that careful calculation of day to day claims of enemy dead in these past nine months alone tot up to a hefty number, Thellie is a little puzzled as to who or what is actually dead and/or counted as dead. I’m a tad concerned that perhaps our Fonnie has not been keeping your websites and the media centre informed. Abreast of things if you know what I mean.

Is it feasible one wonders that like the republican VP candidate Palin on a customary right wing moose and bear hunt, Fonnie is counting the heads of dead animals. Then again no. Lions may be fighting Tigers in ole Paradise but funnily enough no four legged varieties of the species roam the jungles scaring whole villages and carrying off new born babes left in makeshift hammocks in tiny mud huts.

Could it be perchance that certain chappies minding their own business, merely walking past the mayhem are suddenly found dead having unwisely caught a bullet in their left ventricle in a careless way or stopped a bomb with their bally head? There’s a word for these fellows — stupid? Did I hear you say? Hardly, I am compelled to reply. No the name is far more pedestrian, now let’s see — Cecilian, no zoarostrians...oh yes I remember now, civilians!

That’s what those hapless fellows strewn about in the street drains are called. One often forgets I suppose when the important things in life like tanks and UAVs are taking up all of one’s time.

But back to the numbers. It is entirely possible I suppose that some poor goof is sending out telegraphic messages to headquarters counting off all these hapless blokes also known as collateral damage victims as dead cyanides. This I can only tell you is akin to Republican candidate Sarah Palin pinning up on her foul hunting trophy wall, among the heads of moose, deer, bear and tiger, the head of a cockroach accidentally caught under her flapping, bally foot.

And with you assuring the martyred proletariat of a capture of all Tigers by Christmas, the Martyred Pee are entitled to expect the heads of the remaining 4000 cyanides for that is the number Fonnie says remain to be potted off by Paradisian sharp shooters — delivered in a box come Boxing Day. That’s if a political tsunami doesn’t hit Paradise before then. But let’s not be doomsday prophets, dear.

And having promised a motley crowd of foreign correspondents to hand over the cyanide chief to mother India all we gotta do now is get this numbering system in place. And Fonnie does seem a tad numerologically challenged if you get my drift. But not to worry dear, with Pee Bee Jay now out of a job, let’s stick a pencil behind his ear and send him on his way with note book and abacus in hand to keep the count. Begorra and Begob as Patrick Macdonald of the Macdonald and Mcnamara clan was to once tell me, one hopes PB will do a better job counting heads than he did counting pennies.

And even as I sit in my rocking chair feeling thoroughly confused by the conflicting numbers, I may as well tell you that it is only my breeding that does not prohibit me from bouncing something solid on Fonnie’s balding pate.

But debarred as I am from physical self expression by a careful upbringing, I am resigned to sit and sip my chardonnay and relegate the antics of Fonnie, Goatie et al., as one of those great historic mysteries like the Man In The Iron Mask or the bloke in the President’s House.

Tara m’dear