INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA
The Charge is Ethnic Cleansing

" Ethnic cleansing is about assimilating a people. It is about destroying the identity of a people, as a people. And it often occurs in stages. The preferred route of a conqueror is to achieve his objective without resort to violence - peacefully and stealthily. But when that fails, the would be conqueror turns to murderous violence and genocide to progress his assimilative agenda.In the island of Sri Lanka, the record shows that during the past sixty years and more, the intent and goal of all Sinhala governments (without exception) has been to secure the island as a Sinhala Buddhist Deepa." Nadesan Satyendra in Indictment Against Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's Continued Ethnic Cleansing ...
 - after Tamil Armed Resistance Ended on 17 May 2009
 - the Record Speaks...

On 17 May 2009, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam silenced their guns.  The LTTE statement said - "... The LTTE had for almost three decades fought the Sri Lankan military and defended its right to carry arms as a means of protecting the Tamil people living in the island.  Since the war intensified in 2007, several thousand Tamil civilians have died. The recent thrust by the military into the Northern strong holds of the Tamils have seen an escalation in the deaths and has resulted in untold misery with people succumbing to starvation and lack of medical supplies....We need to do everything within our means to stop this carnage.."  

The Leader of the LTTE met his death on 17 May 2009. But after the armed resistance of the people of Tamil Eelam ended, Sri Lanka continued its ethnic cleansing with renewed vigor. Ethnic cleansing is about assimilating a people. It is about destroying the identity of a people, as a people. The Record Speaks....

"...The plight of the Tamils is not due to a natural disaster but the result of the conscious policy of a government that had no qualms of bombarding people that it claims as its own citizens with heavy artillery.."  Professor Dr.John P.Neelsen, 11 June 2009

A naked, blindfolded man crouches on the ground, as a uniformed soldier kicks him in the head then abruptly ends his life with a point- blank rifle shot. Other bodies lie nearby, their blood staining the earth around them.

The video, aired by Britain's Channel 4 news, comes with a warning to viewers of "extremely disturbing scenes." It shows alleged killings of unarmed Tamils by Sri Lankan soldiers during their military assault on Tiger-held areas last January.

And it has touched off a new political battle over the Sri Lankan government's actions as it drove the separatist militants � and thousands of Tamil civilians � into a narrow strip of coastal land where the fighters were defeated last May.

"I had to force myself to watch this video," says Harini Sivalingam, policy director of the Toronto-based Canadian Tamil Congress. "But it shows what we have known all along. This is the smoking gun."

 "300,000 people displaced by the fighting in Sri Lanka are held by the government in de facto detention camps. They cannot leave the camps, where conditions are "appalling" according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon... Call on the Sri Lankan government to immediately allow the displaced civilians freedom of movement: those who wish to leave the camps should be free to do so. Urge them to place the camps under civilian, not military, management and to allow aid agencies, journalists and human rights observers full, unhindered access to the camps to carry out their functions and prevent possible abuses." Draft Petition also in PDF

"In May 2009, the Sri Lankan government declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. By the end of May 2009 an additional 300,000 displaced people had fled fighting and were detained in camps: these internally displaced persons camps remain overcrowded and unsanitary. Management of the camps is supervised by the military. Displaced people are not permitted to leave � they are in fact detained without charge or trial. Amnesty International is calling for the release of all displaced people wishing to leave the camps and for the immediate cessation of arbitrary detention of internally displaced people.

 The Amnesty report is a wide-ranging critique of the conditions in which some 300,000 Tamils are now living after surviving the horrors of the war's final weeks. But its main focus is on the linked issues of liberty and freedom of movement. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, freedom of movement would cover people's right to leave the camps and choose where to live. Liberty refers to their right to move freely in and out of the camps as long as they live there. Amnesty says that in denying them both these rights, the Sri Lankan government is in effect detaining them "without charge or trial" - which Amnesty says also breaks international law.  The report, entitled "Unlock the camps in Sri Lanka", includes testimony from some refugees now abroad, or their relatives. "

"..For the past three months, Ati* has been living in a camp in Manik Farm with her husband and three children. Two weeks ago, her five-year-old son had a fever and was barely responding. She carried him to the clinic in the camp at 5 a.m. and waited to see a doctor until 6 p.m. Like many others that day, she did not get to see a doctor and returned to her tent with her sick child and no treatment. She went back the next day and again failed to see a doctor after waiting for another 13 hours. It wasn�t until the third day that she finally managed to see a doctor who gave her some antibiotics....

Maruthani,* a 24-year-old woman, arrived in Manik Farm at the end of May. She is badly disfigured from a bomb shell fragment that cut her lips, cheeks, and chin during the conflict. Her mouth is always open, and her tongue is badly affected; she can barely drink and cannot speak. She is in need of reconstructive surgery�something impossible to get inside the camp. When her wounds became infected, she went, in pain, to the clinic in the camp. There they were unable to do anything for her and she was not transferred to a hospital outside the camp because she was not considered to be an emergency case. She spends her days lying in the sand outside her tent, waiting for the day to pass...

In the camps, people are dealing with the trauma they experienced during the conflict, and it is difficult to rebuild any semblance of a normal life. There are very few job opportunities inside the camps. People are not allowed to leave the camps, and parents worry about their children�s education. People have difficulties searching for relatives, making plans, or taking control of their futures. With nowhere to go, there is little to do other than walk from one distribution to another. The uncertainty of how long they have to remain in the camps is difficult to live with....

MSF is not allowed to enter camps where we do not work and we have not been able to carry out an independent assessment of the needs of the displaced people in the camps.

MSF has the capacity to scale up activities and provide medical and mental health care for the people inside the camps. So far, the authorities have not accepted this proposal for assistance."
 

Eventual Resettlement No Excuse for Holding 280,000 Displaced Tamils - Keeping several hundred thousand civilians who had been caught in the middle of a war penned in these camps is outrageous. Haven�t they been through enough? They deserve their freedom, like all other Sri Lankans. Brad Adams, Asia director .(New York)

The Sri Lankan government should immediately release the more than 280,000 internally displaced Tamil civilians held in detention camps in northern Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said today.

The government, in violation of international law, has since March 2008 confined virtually all civilians displaced by the fighting between government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in detention camps, euphemistically called �welfare centers� by the government. Only a small number of camp residents, mainly the elderly, have been released to host families and institutions for the elderly.

"Do I know what it means
To stand in the queue as a mere 13 year old,
Collecting charity for my younger brother
and widowed and aching mother,
a wound in my stomach which hurts and oozes.
With no one to care for the pain
To live on, not knowing why
or the reason or meaning of hope...�

These are the opening lines of a poem by Sumathy R, who worked as a volunteer for a few days in a Tamil refugee camp in Sri Lanka. She describes the travails of the destitute and the orphans living in army-controlled camps According to reports, about three lakh Tamils displaced from erstwhile LTTE-controlled areas by war are treated like prisoners in these camps in North Sri Lanka. more

It looked like another Guantanamo Bay as inmates, some mentally ill, some disabled with one hand and one leg, are losing hope disillusioned by their long incarceration in Chengalpattu refugee camp.Nearly 86 of them are locked in a small campus which has 32 cells without basic amenities. more

"In just six months, one of the world's largest camps for war refugees has been carved out of the jungles of northern Sri Lanka, complete with banks, post offices, schools and a supermarket. But no one is allowed out, and hardly anyone is allowed in...Neil Buhne, head of the U.N. mission in Sri Lanka, said aid agencies would review the situation in the camps in mid-August, but declined to say whether they would pull out if the gates remained shut.For now, those trapped inside worry about their future, Buhne said. "Every time I go to the camps more people ask me, 'When are we going to be let out?'" more

"Thousands of dead are children, and most of them died before they even knew that they were Tamils. Scores of people died in bunkers, or were burned alive and bombed in open spaces. People were also shot at close range by the Sri Lankan army. Sri Lanka had no qualms about using heavy weapons to bombard the very people it claimed to be rescuing. According to some reports, the army even used illegal chemical weapons."

Defeated, friendless Tamils face annihilation - Dr John Whitehall

"The victory was won with overwhelming firepower that fell indiscriminately on the Tamil Tigers and civilians and included such banned weapons as cluster bombs. Some 20,000 civilians are believed to have died, with Colombo's military victory assured by the support of China.

The real victory, however, was inevitable, thanks to Western governments which, during the "war on terror", proscribed the Tigers as terrorists and categorised them with the likes of al Qaeda. This gave Colombo an apparently higher moral ground to do what it wanted. It also invited the Western audience to imagine the Tigers to be like Islamic terrorists - presumably unrepresentative of peoples under their control and committed to the destruction of Western democracy and culture. The war in Sri Lanka turned on the word "terrorist".

But were they terrorists? Certainly, they employed terror, but so had the Colombo state. However, the Tamil Tigers were not like the Vietcong or al Qaeda which emerged from hiding simply to destroy. During the 2002-06 ceasefire they were a de facto government administering land traditionally belonging to the Tamils. They ran their affairs through ministries of health, education, welfare, agriculture and sports, as well as police and security. They were certainly an autocratic if not a military dictatorship, but they perceived the Tamils as facing genocide at the hands of the majority Sinhalese."

"..About 1,400 people are dying every week at the giant Manik Farm internment camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees from the nation�s bloody civil war, senior international aid sources have told The Times. Mangala Samaraweera, the former Foreign Minister and now an opposition MP, said: �There are allegations that the Government is attempting to change the ethnic balance of the area. Influential people close to the Government have argued for such a solution.�

"The recent action of Sri Lanka to detain two national staff members appears to be a campaign against United Nations personnel, which is illegal under international law. Authorities have been arresting, without explanation, United Nations staff members, initially refusing to provide access to them by United Nations officials."

"..What, in sum, we are faced with in my country today, is a brainwashed people, brought up on lies and myths, their intelligentsia told what to think, their journalists forbidden to speak the truth on pain of death, the militarising of civil society and the silencing of all opposition. A nation bound together by the effete ties of language, race and religion has arrived at the cross-roads between parliamentary dictatorship and fascism. It is for the Sinhalese people I fear now - for if they come for me in the morning, they'll come for you that night.' "

"The Government of Sri Lanka, citing security concerns, after three months continues to detain in temporary camps the more than 300,000 men, women and children who escaped fighting. This gives rise to concerns of arbitrary detention. Many have endured months of terrible conditions in the conflict zone before their present internment�We deplore that in the camps some have already died from starvation or malnutrition."

"There are very significant grounds to question whether these statements were voluntary" says Amnesty International

"Sri Lanka's government has been accused of killing thousands of its own civilian citizens, war crimes, rape, torture and inhuman treatment of hundreds of thousands of refugees from its war against the Tamil Tigers. Al Jazeera has conducted its own investigation into the conflict and spoken to Tamils who have suffered and aid workers who have remained silent until now, revealing testimonies that call into question the version of events Sri Lanka's government wants the world to believe."
 

but "Visiting the Vavuniya IDP camps was an uplifting experience"  - except the little matter of freedom of movement! says N.Ram, Editor in Chief of the Hindu in Tamil Nadu.
 

"...What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If the Sinhalas do not object to the ethnic ratio in Colombo changing in favour of the ethnic minorities, have the so-called champions of minority rights any valid reason to object to the Government changing the ethnic ratio in trouble spots (where racist elements have surreptitiously succeeded in building up ethnic enclaves) to encourage integration and thereby prevent separatism from raising its ugly head in the future? .."

 "The Government of Sri Lanka should immediately release the six Catholic priests who were imprisoned and kept in secret solitary confinement in centres for Internally displaced persons (IDPs). Four are from the diocese of Jaffna, and two belong to the Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate (OMI). These priests unselfishly helped Tamil people during the war, until the last hours of the military campaign. These priests have only helped people. The Government of Sri Lanka has put them in isolation in the IDP camps where no-one is allowed contact with them. There are fears for their safety, their emotional and psychological conditions, and also for their physical health."

"Wherever minorities are being persecuted we must raise our voices to protest. According to reliable sources, the Tamil people are being disenfranchised and victimized by the Sri Lanka authorities. This injustice must stop. The Tamil people must be allowed to live in peace and flourish in their homeland."

After the positive statement by the External Affairs Minister Hon. Mr. S.M.Krishna on Wednesday evening (24 June 2009) regarding the Mercy Mission ship the MV Captain Ali, Mercy Mission personnel, supporters, volunteers and the Tamil Diaspora as a whole were relieved that there was movement on the part of the Government of Sri Lanka and that the desperately needed humanitarian relief aboard the ship would be delivered to the 300,000 Tamil civilians in the internment camps in Sri Lanka. As of Friday evening (26 June 2009) Mercy Mission has yet to be formally notified of the 24 June decision and statement by the Indian and Sri Lankan governments. There has also not been ANY movement at the ground level and the MV Captain Ali remains anchored five (5) miles off the Port of Chennai. The situation on the ship is now critical. The crew and passengers have been onboard for 51 days without respite and in very harsh, stressful conditions. The passengers, Uthayanan Thavarajasingam and Kristjan Gudmundsson have formally requested that the authorities allow them to disembark and to take the next flight to London and Iceland.

Jan Egeland, the former UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tuesday told the press that "Sri Lanka is one of the latest examples of the World community letting a government get away with denying access for the international community of witnesses, of humanitarian relief and protection for civilians," adding that world governments failed what they swore in 2005 of the "responsibility to protect," and that "for Tamil women" there were a "number of horrors."

�Remember, of the 300,000, something like 80,000 of them are children. They are not combatants. They are not criminals. Lot of them are under-nourished and a lot of them will fail, will die through illness if there is no proper protection. It is up to us, and the media, to let the government know that we want something done, we want some protection for the Tamil people and we want exposure of what is going on now�

"The government is treating all the detainees as suspected supporters of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), saying that no-one can be released until the camps have been screened to identify those with LTTE connections. Every day 20 to 30 young people are taken away and their whereabouts are unknown, a human rights organisation, INFORM, reported this week. Interviewed by the BBC Sinhala Service, a spokesperson for the organisation said people wearing hoods were brought into the camps and they indicated by signs whether a detainee had LTTE connections or not..."

Mercy Mission ship outside Chennai since 12 June awaiting permission to dock and unload the humanitarian relief

"One of the matters that I think our Government should give immediate and ongoing attention to is the horrific situation facing the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. Their aspiration for an autonomous Tamil region within the Sri Lankan State has been crushed by massive force. This year anything up to 20,000 Tamils have been killed by huge air and artillery bombardment of the territory that for some years has been under the administration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as the LTTE. Most of the population of that territory-around 300,000 people-has been herded into what can best be termed concentration camps. I think that term is apt because what is happening to the Tamil people in those camps is similar to what happened in Hitler's concentration camps, but without the mass extermination programme.

The Sri Lankan Government aims to use these camps to destroy all traces of the former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam administration, in the same way that Hitler used concentration camps to eliminate the German communists and socialists as political forces. All those associated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam will either be imprisoned long term, "re-educated", or perhaps they will disappear. There have already been reports from the camps of "white van disappearances" of young Tamil Tiger activists. Hitler believed that anything was justified in the war against communism, and the Sri Lankan Government proceeds as if anything is justified in the so-called war against terrorism. It need not have been this way. "

�Is there no way to help the interned? How can we help them? The wife of my brother, who is in a camp, cried, telling me that her daughter has only one piece of clothing, which is a school gown. The Eelam People�s Democratic Party [EPDP] is collecting goods to send to these refugees but it�s a partner of the government. People are suspicious about whether refugees will get these goods.�

Murdered, missing, imprisoned in camps...The guns may be silent in Sri Lanka for the first time in 26 years, but the price of peace for the innocent Tamils caught up in the fighting could not be higher

"He is dead, my brother; this is what my head says, but there is still hope in me that he is lying in a hospital somewhere, fighting for his life, making it through for me and my mother. There are so many trapped in the camps and they are unable to get messages to the outside world. People are scouring websites and the news for a glimpse of their parents or their brothers. It's the uncertainty that kills you slowly. You see their faces in your sleep, you wake up at night and cry, wondering where they are, if they are suffering, if they are starving to death, if they are in prison being tortured or cast out to sea in a boat."

As he speaks Karunakaran produces a pile of paperwork from a file. At the head of the most recent document from Eaton House Immigration Service in London the words "Liability to Detention" glare out bleakly from the page. "I've been in Britain for 10 years but the immigration authorities are now telling me it is safe for me to go back to Sri Lanka," he says. "My sister was killed, my brother and cousin are missing. They are telling me to go back, and I'm not the only one. Your country gives me the right to protest here on Parliament Square, but your government is also intent on sending me back to a land where those same protests will lead to my death." more

" Angel of death flew over the skies of Vanni and took the lives of more than twenty five thousand innocent Tamil men, women and children in a single day. Thousands of wounded are still crying out for help. They are bleeding to death on the streets. They have touched neither water nor food for days. Nobody has come to rescue them. Those who fight for the rights of the animals and those who preach about Buddha and Mahatma have no compassion for the dying Tamils. Chinese weapons, Indian intelligence, Sinhala Armed personals and racist Sri Lankan leaders came together to perform one of the most cruel war that has cost the lives of many thousands innocents. While thousands of innocent children and women are facing painful and slow death, Sinhala Buddhist extremists are celebrating victory with flags and fire crackers in the south of the country."