UN ‘expert panel’ findings – to prevent repeats of the Sri Lanka (SL) genocide massacres?
The SL ‘Mullivaykkal’ massacres led to Ban’s ‘expert’ team urging UN action against those committing genocide atrocities against civilians. Its historical significance earns it a ‘semi-official’ war crimes report status to convince humanity into reacting appropriately to the tragedy of the Eelam Tamils; this would benefit the world as a whole as well. A well researched piece in the SouthAsiaAnalysisGroup of 28 April titled ‘Sri Lanka: Last Phase of Civil war at Mullivaykkal: What happened really?’ by Sivanendran is most praiseworthy for highlighting that the crime inflicted on Tamil civilians by Sinhala SL was far graver than reported by the ‘expert’ panel and that the panel’s call for UN action in SL becomes all the more urgent.
When Ban and his expert team deserve praise it receives the wrath and abuse of the Sinhala genocide practitioners. The Elders including the respected Elder, Desmond Tutu were savaged by this crowd of genocide practitioners following the media release of The Elders of 3 August 2010. Elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew’s brave and courageous words (’So what Asia saw was ethnic cleansing’ a reference to SL in Tom Plates – Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew) did not provoke a similar response from SL agent in Singapore Rohan Gunaratne. He chooses to be discrete and not play with fire. The ‘Elders’ speak up for justice anywhere and everywhere in the world.
The Elders were deeply moved by the brutality of Sinhala SL genocide especially the ethnic cleansing in SL that rid over 50 per cent of Eelam Tamils over six decades; killed, displaced as refugees, war casualties (mostly civilians) , extra-judicial killings and the rest through savage deprivation losing livelihood (farms), starving and homeless. Media images of these gruesome and revolting atrocities moved the hearts of humanity in lands far and near. The most notorious ‘Mullivaykkal’ is now imprinted in the history of mankind as a classic example of ‘man’s cruelty to man’.
The expert panel confirming the atrocities that the victims knew adds credibility to the crimes that were committed and deflates the credibility of the claims of the offenders and its apologist skeptics to evade ‘accountability’. According to the panel’s revelation the notorious ‘Mullivaykkal’ massacre in May 2009 could have been prevented by those in positions by not compromising the moral authority of their UN positions and UN itself; this refers to the dubious role of a Keralite mafia member Nambiar in the office of Ban himself. This is most unfortunate and explains why the panel report took nearly two years after the tragedy to enter the public domain. It is widely accepted that Nambiar with Keralite compatriots had a role as a Sinhala SL ‘in the loop’ agent.
The panel report also effectively vouches to the unparalleled ingenuity of Sinhala genocide practitioners in executing yet vehemently denying their crimes in the Mullivaykkal massacres. The genocide practitioners ensured that the massacre carnage of civilians was executed in a ‘no-journalist, no aid worker zone’ in a ‘no fire zone’ where heavy artillery shells rained day and night in early 2009. The genocide practitioners had ‘measures to control information about and access to the combat zones’ and relying on them Rajapakse himself proclaimed there were no civilian deaths ever the reward for SL’s policy of ‘zero civilian casualties’. This is lying and lying big.
‘Unlike Libya, the battlefields in Sri Lanka were sealed off to reporters preventing them from covering the alleged crimes as they happened’. Though the Sinhala genocide practitioners hoped to get away with just denying ‘any’ killings Ban’s expert panel reports to the contrary claim that SL forces used heavy weapons accounting for most civilian deaths and that the sheer proportion of the killings constituted a ‘grave assault on the entire regime of international law. It lamented that this happens in a world that gives due respect the rule of law’. For apologists to still argue that the genocide was to fight LTTE ‘terrorism’ over blows that phenomenon for a sharp observer to be forthright in advising ‘..It is high time we stop describing those who fight for human freedom; against military occupations that violate international law, with this ugly branding word.’
To engage in rebutting SL’s self serving (endanger reconciliation efforts) criticisms of the panel report is unlikely to improve the quality of the debate. Serious study of the report and its candid findings is bound to produce useful measures to prevent genocide atrocities not merely by Sinhala SL but by other brutal regimes.
The essence in the Eelam trauma is the brutal Sinhala SL genocide mindset akin to Nazi mindset, nourished by Sinhala ethno-religious myths. When the British left Ceylon in 1947 with a parliamentary system the minorities were 2.5 million with a 30 per cent political representation. To the Sinhala genocide mindset bent on making Ceylon into a Sinhala land disenfranchised and deported to Tamil Nadu about a million of the plantation Tamils the very next year (1948). The sectarians in power in Chennai like the Keralite Mafia today manipulated Delhi into caving in to this ethnic cleansing of non-Brahmin Tamils.
This was the critical start of the Sinhala genocide that continues to devastate the lives of all Tamils in SL. The sectarian’s pro-Brahmin policies led to the emergence of the Dravida movement and their ouster from power in Chennai who then infiltrated the Delhi bureaucracy to carry on their anti Tamil crusade though Delhi had to reckon with the aspirations of the mainstream Tamils as a factor in TN politics. Despite repeated Delhi-Colombo talks the sub human plight of the remaining plantation Tamils in SL continues to this day and there are still the stateless.
As one commentator laments ‘..Let us not forget the Indian plantation workers who were sold out by the same (sectarians)…They live in ghettos (like Jews under Nazis), cannot leave their area, (no proper education for their children).. under paid and live in 10×10 feet sheds called lines..worse still there are still workers ..who are stateless.. they are..almost slaves ..’ Keeping a community (in this case – Tamils) in deprivation is classic genocide. These victims of Sinhala genocide lived in Sinhala South and were the first (like the TN fishermen today) to be subjected to violence (their leaders were not spared) and silenced into accepting a non-Sinhala second class status in SL.
These are the Eldorado conditions that Sinhala SL apologists boastfully encourage that the Eelam Tamils post May 2009 enjoy, blacking out how successfully Sinhala SL reduced an industrious and reasonably prosperous Eelam Tamils to homeless pauper hood. Tamils throughout SL post LTTE live in fear of state engineered mob and police violence once fleeing North (their safe haven) and now fleeing South to etch out a living suffering deprivation in a semi-servile state. Tarzie ‘Emergency’ is graphic on the fear complex that grips the Eelam Tamils in SL. Then the land escape route through Sinhala South was too dangerous and Eelam Tamils endured over three days long harrowing cargo boat journey to the North to escape violence (beginning 1956 .. .. … 1983 pogrom) regularly unleashed.
Now the North under total Sinhala armed forces occupation has an open terrain ideal to commit Mullivaykkals; the desperate homeless Eelam Tamils seeking to save their lives risk perilous sea journeys in ramshackle boats as refugees overseas or live as vagrants under road side tin sheds for extended periods. This is Sinhala SL’s very cost effective model of ethnic cleansing. Some reckon a cost; the irreversible Eelam-Sinhala divide but does Sinhala SL care?
Eelam Tamils live under a climate of fear not experienced when the Eelam insurgency ran a de facto state’; now post May 2009 conditions have reverted back to one of unbearable fear of Mullivaykkal massacres to cause a demographic Eelam Tamil dispersion erasing the historical reality of Eelam Tamil homelands. Do the perpetrators of such atrocities have the mindset to build genuine ‘reconciliation’ in SL; taking the gloss off the ‘reconciliation’ project in South Africa. Ironically the leaders in Delhi acted as cheer leaders of Sinhala SL’s Mullivaykkal massacres and Menik farm internments only lauding the end of the civil war and deceitfully claiming ‘life returning to normality for the Tamils’. The crude logic of Delhi’s Singh (a Bushite) using the slogan ‘there are no good and bad terrorists’ puts him on the opposite side of humanists; Amnesty International, Red Cross, David Millibrand, Hilary Clinton, The Elders; all advocates of R2P.
Nambiar who is supposedly working for the UN a world guardian institution deputed to prevent Mullivaykkal massacres was actively involved in the Gothabhaya’s ‘in the loop’ with M’kal Narayanan/Menon planning the timing of the Mullivaykkal assault to cause the massacre. The expert panel’s vague reference to this holding the UN political organs and bodies failing to take action that might have protected civilians, omits Nambiar’s role in the white flag waving surrender of insurgent leaders episode that raises serious concerns about the propriety of Nambiar continuing in his position in the UN. His contacts with his brother (in SL’s employ) and other Keralite mafia members at that time have UN’s crimes implications.
The details in the expert panel report will have far reaching implications for a Delhi that traded off Indraji’s humanitarian support to save the Eelam Tamils for the farfetched mercenary promises of the Sinhala genocide practitioners. Delhi that SL let down disgracefully may now join the international community that the Eelam Tamils trust for the will and intent they show to act to save them. Delhi joining will assure successful war crimes outcomes that will deter SL continuing with its genocide. Delhi is fully aware and the expert panel vouches that SL’s genocide record are too brutal that Eelam Tamils to save their lives yearn for the safeguards under the UN war crimes tribunal umbrella.
Furthermore a crucial measure of the gravity of the genocide crimes is the numbers killed at Mullivaykkal and elsewhere. SL denied the expert panel access to witnesses on the ground. Yet based on the evidence of the émigrés is a trickle when witnesses await tribunals with effective witness protection mechanisms. According to Sivanendran in a SAAC study ‘Mullivaykkal: What happened really?’ ’Some estimate the dead as..10,000 whilst some others have even suggested as much as 100,000 (none according to Rajapskse).’ ‘The heavy casualties amongst the civilian population could have been avoided. The victims have many stories to tell. There are about 300,000 who survived these onslaughts waiting to tell their stories.’
Diaspora visitors without risking the lives of those in SL are prepared to file sworn affidavits giving details without names, the summary of the stories of the atrocities that occurred in Mullivaykkal and elsewhere as narrated by internees in Menik farm camps. Fear explains the reluctance of witnesses now living in the North to give invaluable evidence to any tribunal without assurance for the safety of their lives. In Kilinochjchi of the 24 persons taking shelter in sand pit bunkers 20 were killed by an SL fighter aircraft repeatedly flying over to ensure that all who were there were killed. This aircraft flew a more times to locate and kill any escapee later turning up as witness. The 4 who escaped went into hiding and surfaced only recently.
Stories of Sinhala soldiers on the rampage killing off victims in sand bunkers spread like wild fire that most families including the infirm in Mullaitivu fled to save their lives in the LTTE controlled areas including Mullivaykkal; they were not volunteering to serve as human shield a much abused phrase. Intense artillery fire was emptied into each one of the houses that would have been their graves had the occupants stayed back. These stories again can be vouched by the visiting diaspora in affidavit form before international tribunals. The UN Nambiar’s 7,000 a fudged numbers of those massacred is a tiny fraction and certainly more than 40,000 quoted in the media. Only ICC proceedings will reveal the real extent of the massacres by the Sinhala SL armed forces in Mullivaykkal and elsewhere.
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