INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA

INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA
Sri Lanka's Genocidal War '08
...after Abrogation of Ceasefire
Tamil Nation -------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------Proposed evacuation a calculated ploy by Sri Lanka to uproot Tamils from their traditional habitat - B.Nadesan, LTTE Political Head, Times of India, 2 March 2009
In an e-mail interview to TV channel Times Now, the political head of LTTE - B Nadesan - has called the eviction of people from their homeland a calculated ploy by the Lankan government to uproot Tamils from their traditional habitat.

Nadesan writes:

"I ask if the UN, or India, or any other country would ever promote uprooting and relocating the people of Gaza as a solution? And the Tamil people are expected to willingly rush to these barbed wired internment camps in these surrounding situations? Is this what UN, India and other nations are envisioning for Tamils? The human shield term is a propaganda used towards uprooting the Tamil people from their traditional habitat. The Tamil people have lived here for generations and want to continue living here and make a livelihood in these lands. The Sri Lankan Government, UN and other international community's statements that claim to seek the well being of Tamil people - in uprooting them to forcibly and put them in barbed wired military run camps is unprecedented... As India also continues express calls for safe passage of civilians and lukewarm calls for truce, these are seen as temporary measures and a blessing to continue the military onslaught on the Tamil Homeland by Colombo...

India and UN will be in no position to ask Sri Lanka to adhere to these empty promises of resettlement in the future. Remember that the new uprooting is being proposed while thousands of Tamil people in Jaffna have been waiting for over a decade to be re-settled. Sri Lankan government has refused to adhere to the dignity, security and safety of even of Tamils who have been living in cities like Colombo for generations.

The Sri Lankan government promises to the international community of resettling Tamils will be broken at the same speed soon before the promised assistance funds are made available to the Sri Lankan government coffers that are already facing a crunch of foreign reserves due to vast military expenditures."

The LTTE has also, for the first time, condemned the UN for its latest report accusing the Tigers of forcibly holding people back. Nadesan said that the United Nations has given a recent report without any first hand information. The reality, he said, was that Tamil people do not want to move to UN and Sri Lankan refugee camps.

"The UN was already forced to abandon the Tamil people last year when the Sri Lankan government asked all the UN and NGO staff to leave Vanni last year, in order to carry on its war without witnesses. It is regrettable that the UN Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes was not provided a safe passage to come to Vanni and see the plight of the civilians first hand and see if they are being forcibly held. The people are staying here at their own will. They want peace and security right where they live and do not want to move into any UN and Sri Lanka government planned camps - internment camps, as described by the Human Rights Watch on Feb 20th."


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[see also Sathyam Commentary Nadesan Satyendra on The Politics of Humanitarian Intervention. "

- having refused to admit to the horrific truth that faced with the unity of a whole people in their struggle for freedom from alien Sinhala rule, Sri Lanka has resorted to the anti guerrilla strategy of the genocidal destruction of that people, in other words, the civilians, women and children;

- having suggested that Tamil civilians are 'trapped in the fighting in the Vanni' when in truth Tamil civilians are not 'trapped in the fighting' or in the crossfire but are being deliberately targeted and killed by Sri Lanka armed forces;

the co-chairs now propose a 'humanitarian operation', assisted by the United States Pacific Command (US PACOM) to evacuate civilians 'trapped in the fighting' in the Vanni....

(Again) in October 2008, when Tamil civilians were being targeted and killed by Sinhala Sri Lanka's armed forces which New Delhi had armed and trained, Mr.Mukherjee urged his Parliamentary colleagues that in their anxiety to protect Tamil civilians, they should not forget the strategic importance of Sri Lanka to India's interests. Now that Tamil villages have been bombed and shelled and Tamil civilians have been driven from their homes into so called 'welfare villages' which they cannot leave, and Tamil armed resistance to Sinhala rule has been weakened, Mr.Mukherjee has formally offered assistance to 'friendly Sri Lanka' to evacuate Tamil civilians somehow 'caught up' in the battle zone! And Sri Lanka has accepted the offer coming as it does from a 'friendly country' which had been told by India that ' we will look after your security concerns, if you do not look around.' After all what are good friends for if they cannot help each other in time of need...

Humanitarian intervention' to prevent the humanitarian tragedy that is taking place in the Tamil homeland, had it been early, would have been kind. But the belated attempts that are being made today expose not the humanitarian concerns of the international actors but the strategic interests that impel the international actors to act the way they do... more ]