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

Sri Lanka’s war on the Tamil people has reached an extremely brutal level. Many neutral observers and human rights activists have called it ‘genocide’. While brutal attacks against Tamils have reached a new height, lies spread by the government have also reached a new height.

ON May Day in 1993, Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa was in the back streets of Colombo, greeting supporters as they streamed into the capital for the day's festivities, when he was killed by a suicide bomb. Had the conventions of diplomacy permitted it, I would probably have been at his side.

For the past 3 months, at least 300,000 people in Sri Lanka have endured suffering as a result of the country’s ongoing civil war between the Singhalese-dominated government, the SL Army (SLA), and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The gathering momentum of global Tamil protest against Sri Lanka’s genocidal war has included acts of self immolation by Tamil activists in India and Europe. This form of protest appears at first sight to be exceptional and unusual; in need of explanation when sitting alongside the other more accepted forms of public dissent.

The Tamil case for genocide has been extensively discussed in a series of articles in this paper among others. We have shown structural similarities between the genocide of the Tamils and other historic genocides including the Nazi and Rwandan examples.

"There were dead women and children all around, I saw that and I began to strike my cheeks and cry. I won't forget this until the day I die," said Kalaivaani, who had narrowly escaped from the Sri Lankan government’s bombardment of the civilian safety-zone in Vanni.

The Tamil case for genocide has been extensively discussed in a series of articles in this paper among others. We have shown structural similarities between the genocide of the Tamils and other historic genocides including the Nazi and Rwandan examples. For lack of space, we will not repeat our case here.

The United Nations’ Security Council, though initially formed to keep the peace between the post WW2 Great Powers, is today the hub of global peace and security in wider terms. The UNSC’s permanent members are the world’s most powerful states – those capable of decisive leadership and robust action on international peace and security issues. India, along with other rising great powers, has declared its ambitions for a permanent seat in a reformed UNSC. However, the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka is revealing the limits of Delhi’s ability to both be decisive and to act on matters at the core of the UNSC’s agenda.

In his dream of monumental importance in the modern human history, Dr. King declared that all men are created equal and that they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.