17 February 2009
"If we had been on the government designated safety zone already, we'd probably be dead right now," she says, still fighting to hold back tears.
Several hundreds of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) assembled within the "safety zone" have died in the last weeks from artillery and air strikes by Sri Lanka military.
Civilian targets have been hit by hundreds of Sri Lanka Army fired artillery and motor shells.
More than 300 people have died and several hundreds were injured in one day alone - 26 January.
The Sri Lankan military has bombed ICRC offices, hospitals and killed paramedics, and it stands accused of shelling a house full of IDPs.
For the Gaza bombardment, Israel is being condemned by the UN, the Red Cross and the Vatican, but in the Vanni, nothing is being said.
Vanni health authorities said at least 900, mostly women and children, were confirmed dead in the bombardment, and more than 1500 wounded. They said the death toll could top 1,000.
This is the 21st century's hidden holocaust ... a worse human tragedy than Bosnia.
It was the most deadly incident in the current on going war.
Unattended bodies and injured people unable to move were lying around everywhere, while the remaining doctors fled and helpless ICRC officials virtually cried at the scene from their bunkers.
While hundreds of civilians are slaughtered by government forces in Vanni, India and certain Western countries, Britain and the US, for instance, are negotiating with the government to create a system that will allow them to increase their geo-political and economical activities.
There is no significant shift in global public and media opinion towards the Sinhala majority state.
They refuse to see the Sinhala state as one of the worst ‘failed’ states in the world, and the plight of the Tamil people as the ‘most-ignored’ human tragedy.
Even the ‘international community’ and India help Sri Lanka to perpetrate the war on Tamils by ignoring government corruption, human right abuses and genocide against the Tamils.
By now the LTTE is facing an enemy of greater tactical sophistication than they encountered in late 90s.
Eight military divisions of the Sri Lanka Army, numbering approximately 50,000 soldiers (around 80 - 100 battalions), with the help of Indian military field commanders, are pushing towards the last bastion of the LTTE in Mullaitivu district.
They said that they have already “boxed” the Liberation Tigers and around 300,000 civilians into an area of the size of 300 km2.
This is due to the biggest ever offensive operation launched by the Sri Lankan armed forces called "Vanni Operation".
This operation started in February 2007 and has not yet come to an end, but been dragging on for more than 25 months.
Human-rights groups describe the dire conditions in the Vanni as a “humanitarian disaster”.
Food-aid groups also say the violence in the region has increased to the extent that 300,000 people have fled to the small area in a single month to avoid it.
They added that the lack of food and medicines has multiplied and that Sri Lanka is the most dangerous country in the world to distribute food aid in, because the government continuously imposes bans on foods and medicine and also accuses non- governmental humanitarian agencies of being LTTE supporters.
The government has instructed UN and World Food Programme officials to keep away from their self-declared 'safety zone,' which has been subjected to continuous artillery barrage, denying civilians any meaningful space of refuge.
300,000 Tamils are denied of even drinking water and are facing starvation.
Completely abandoned by the International Community, the civilians are left to face their fate at the hands of their genocidal killers.
If that is the case why are India, ‘the international community’ and countries around the Indian Ocean more concerned about Sinhala government and paying less attention to the increasing violence against Tamils?
The reason is simple: most of those countries are opposed to the assumption of power by the Tamils, as they all back the Congress led Indian central government’s war on Tamils.
For many, the abiding image of the past months will be the picture of Tamil children dying on the streets and their parents and relatives weeping near them, as displayed in Tamil media sources.
In the mean time, Indian and international news agencies operating from Colombo publish no accounts of the mass genocide taking place in the Vanni. They continue to eulogize Colombo’s military victories, painting a picture of LTTE ‘terrorists’ using civilians as human shield.
If the abettors of Colombo's war, India and especially the co-chairs, do not change their attitude, these people would face hunger and death. The situation is worse than what the world has witnessed in Congo and other countries in the Africa.
However, there is no real chance of war being stop in the island, and especially in the Vanni region, without an effective measure of the international community.
The European Union, the world's biggest importer of Sri Lankan goods, has not bothered to suspend its recently upgraded GSP trade agreement with Sri Lanka, while USA arms sales to Sri Lanka have increased.
According to a report in the Indian daily, Thinaththanthi, India is to give dozens of tanks and other deadly weapons to Sri Lanka under a secret agreement with the Sinhala government.
The Indian navy already has warships in the Palk Strait that assist the Sri Lanka Navy.
These can all be considered part of the war on Tamils, and India can be seen as playing a major role in this war.
As such it can be argued that the ‘international community’ and anti-Tamil rulers in the region are determined to keep the war on track and to continue their support to the Sri Lankan government, which enjoys public support via war propaganda in south.
One possible positive result of the false war on LTTE is that most Tamils will see the whole exercise as a foreign intervention designed to destroy their rights and identity, and therefore decide to unite to fight for both.
In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s hold on power is looking increasingly vulnerable, with anti-government demonstrations taking place almost every day in Tamil Nadu.
Most of the people of Tamil Nadu are opposing the Indian central government’s use of its own military in supporting these atrocities against the Eelam Tamils.
But while those found supporting Eelam Tamils are arrested and punished in Tamil Nadu, anti-Tamil elements, which are opposed to the Tamils right and support the Sri Lankan government, are free to express themselves.
The task of Tamils across the world is to raise an international outcry that can match the scale of Sri Lanka’s brutal assault.
Sri Lanka is carrying out a war on Tamils backed by Indian central government and its loyal allies.
There have already been protests and demonstrations across the world by the Tamil Diaspora, urging the international community to stop the state terror and genocide.
From the international community, the Tamils are expecting two things must be done immediately: first strong action against Sri Lankan genocide and second the recognition of Eelam Tamils’ rights.
In the mean time, Indian and International Medias need to undercover this mass genocide, which is most-ignored human tragedy in the world, taking place in Vanni.
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