The next time you buy some lingerie, a T-shirt or a pair of rubber gloves, you may want to reflect on this: they were probably made in Sri Lanka. And like it or not, your purchase plays a role in the debate over how to respond to the Sri Lankan Government's successful but brutal military campaign against the Tamil Tiger rebels, which reached its bloody climax this week.

The UN Secretary-General must speak out about civilian deaths in Sri Lanka wrote The Times in an editorial on 1 June.

The silence of those who were warned of civilian deaths in Sri Lanka is shameful. They must speak out now to prevent future atrocities wrote The Times in an editorial on 30 May.

The events of the past few weeks, while marking a dark phase of Tamil history and indelible shame on contemporary world leadership, have imperceptibly brought in new equations in global power politics.

The liberals have finally got what they wanted, the military defeat of the LTTE. But Sri Lanka is further from a liberal peace than at any point in its bloody sixty year history.

The Sinhala state's leading foreign policy advisor sets out a strategy for Colombo to fight Tamil aspirations.

There is a saying that has become common amongst those in the United Nations Human Rights Council. When a tense stand-off arises someone will say "Let’s not play the naming and shaming game – let’s try and work together." Perhaps this "game" played in the most elite policy circles is counter-productive – but it does allow history to identify those in positions of power who were complacent, cowardly, and indecisive at a moment when hundreds of thousands of civilian lives were on the line. In the case of Sri Lanka, there is no shortage of those to blame, and the footage from the civilian carnage in recent weeks should put all of us to shame.

Received wisdom for some years has been that Washington has developed a close understanding with Delhi on security issues relating to Lanka, and to put it loosely, had subcontracted its interests in this respect to India.

As in the medieval Mahavamsa, so today, the Tamils are no longer human.

THE horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it.