Why Are We Not Looking at These War Crimes

7/28/2019 Why Are We Not Looking at These War Crimes

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Collateral damage? Photographs o f a tortured

LTTE cadre (top ) and Prabhakarans so n

Balachandran

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THERE IS little doubt that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksas war machinery

spared neither a bullet nor a thought f or civilians trapped in an ever-shrinking area in

the f inal stages o f the o f f ensive against the Liberation Tigers o f Tamil Eelam (LTT E)

in 2009. The United Nations has no ted that not only did the Sri Lankan fo rces disobeyall rules of war by deliberately forcing f leeing citizens into areas that were being

carpet bombed, their bloo d-thirst y campaign led to crimes that would even put the

warring Af rican militias to shame.

Of t he thousands of wartime photos and to rture videos t hat

were shot by disgruntled soldiers and so ld by opportunistic

ones, two stand out. One shows a woman, naked, hands tied,

shot in the head even as the so ldiers stomp on her breasts

and try to poke it with a twig. Shot in May 2009, in Mullivaikkal,

the photo is o f a f emale LTT E cadre separated during thescreening of civilians af ter the Lankans wrested cont rol o f

Mullaitivu in January 2009.

The government not just shelled three no-f ire zones (NFZs )

where it was encouraging the concentration of civilians but

also subjected the victims and survivors to f urther suf f ering

as hordes f led the incessant po unding. The UN expert panel

report says, Screening of suspected LTT E cadre f rom

civilians was done witho ut t ransparency or external scrut iny.

Some of tho se who were separated were summarily executed

and women may have been raped. The other is the clinicalexecution of LTTE chief V Prabhakarans 12-year-o ld so n

Balachandran shown shot in the chest by Lankan soldiers.

Tho usands of such photos have been pored over by the UN

expert panel comprising Marzuki Darusman, Steven Ratner

and Yasmin Sooka. In the midst of new evidence emerging, the

worlds eyes right now are o n Geneva where the US has

tabled a reso lution with reverberations being f elt in the Indian Parliament as well.

India knows what happened to the innocent Tamils. It is high time f or India to send a stro ng message to Sri

Lanka, says CPM leader D Raja. The Indian government should have taken the initiative in moving the

reso lution. There should be an impartial internat ional panel to invest igate accountability in the atrocities

against Tamils.

The US reso lution was placed bef ore the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on 7 March and is expected

to be voted on by the councils 47 member states, including India. The councils 19th session currently

underway in Geneva sho uld see India evaluating the resolut ion that, calls on the Sri Lankan government t o

implement t he constructive recommendations of the Lesso ns Learnt and Reconciliation Committee (LLRC)

report and to initiate credible actions f or ensuring accountability and reconciliation o f all Sri Lankans. The

reso lution also requests the government to give a comprehensive action plan fo r implementing the LLRC

recommendations and address violations of international law.

The reso lution, which is bound to be oppo sed by Russia, China and India, also encourages Sri Lanka to

submit an implementat ion report bef ore the UNHRC in the 22nd sess ion to be held in September.

Altho ugh a storm has been whipped up in India with parties such as the DMK, AIADMK, CPM and BJP asking
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Manmohan Singh and Mahinda Rajapaksa, Photo :

Benjamin Sug athan

the Indian government to vo te f or the reso lution and iso late Sri Lanka on the issue, South Block mandarins

believe that there is too much emphasis being given on the resolution without understanding its

implications.

We have traditionally never backed count ry specif ic resolut ions at t he UN, said Pranab Mukherjee, the

Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha. India realises t hat the f ocus is on two words LLRC and

accountability. The reso lution merely seeks to reiterate what Sri Lanka is already doing; asking Colombo to

f ix accountability through the LLRC. The eight- member LLRC appointed by Rajapaksa in May 2010, which

is at the centre of the US reso lution, has been slammed by the UN as incapable of conducting a fairinvestigation into t he war crimes.

The UN panel report observes, The LLRCs work demonstrates that it has not conducted genuine probes

about what happened in the f inal stages o f the conf lict, not treated victims with dignity or provided the

necessary protection f or witnesses even in circumstances of actual personal risk. The LLRC is deeply

f lawed, does not meet international standards f or an ef f ective accountability mechanism and cannot meet

the jo int commitments o f the Lankan president and the human rights commissioner to an accountability

process.

THE PROBLEM with the LLRC is that it is headed by Sri

Lankas Attorney General whose powers have been diluted t o

make Rajapaksa the undisputed master o f deciding whom to

prosecute f or t he war crimes. Tamil activists say that an all-

Sinhala body under Rajapaksa cannot be t rusted to carry out

a probe in a f air manner. Because if the United Nations

f indings were anything to go by, the Lankan war room,

including military top guns, would be guilty o f murder,

extermination, persecution, enf orced disappearances and

intentional attacks on civilians in ef f ect, the entire gamut

of violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

The UNs distrust with Sri Lankas internal processes have

been f uelled partly by the manipulation of the mass media by

Rajapaksa to make ordinary Sinhalese believe that their

sovereignty is under threat f rom the West and by the f act

that the war was run by the Rajapaksa f amily and all the top

commanders who abused civilians are already well cocooned

f rom any domestic or internat ional law.

For instance, the naked woman in the picture was shot dead during the screening process in Mullivaikkal.

The area was captured by the 59th Battalion under Maj Gen Nandana Udwatta, while the 58th Battalion

under the command of Brig Shavendra Silva rampaged thro ugh Killinochi. Silva was rewarded f or his hero ics

and promoted as Maj Gen befo re being made Lankas Deputy Permanent Representative at t he UN

headquarters in New York, while Udwatta was promoted as commander of the Security Forces HQ in

Mullaitivu.

Sri Lanka of f icially ended its 28- year-o ld emergency in 2011, a goo d two years af ter t he war. Tamil

nationalist s allege that of f icers such as Silva and others clinically silenced all the justice seeking Tamils

during the post war cont inuation of emergency that makes it impossible to ho ld any one in the

establishment accountable.

The UN expert panel relied on reports o f its o wn workers and eyewitnesses who were trapped in NFZs andhospitals. And eyewitness accounts po int to all-night shelling by Lankan army in NFZs, where the next day

outs ide the UN bunker revealed mangled bodies o f women and children. Remains o f babies had been

blasted upwards into the t rees and among the dead were people who had helped dig the bunker the

previous day.


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And now with pictures of sys tematic t orture of LTTE cadre co ming out in the o pen, t hings are becoming

clearer. Sri Lankas dirty war closet holds untold tales of to rture and the insane vio lence unleashed by

so ldiers and commanders who were yearning for sadist ic pleasures.

In the heat of the war, the Lankan army misled people to f lee into death t raps. Those Tamils who survived

these traps were then screened and randomly to rtured and executed. That should make it clear that the

f uture o f justice for Lankan Tamils does no t depend on this US resolution. It depends more on how India

can use its power to ensure that the innocent women and children who died dont just get counted as

collateral damage as Colombo wants to make the world believe.

Sai Manish is a Correspondent with Tehelka.

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Why Are We Not Looking at These War Crimes