These are comments by former Indian Foreign Secretary Jaswant Singh during the discussion hosted by Headlines Today on the atrocities highlighted by the acclaimed Channel 4 documentary, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.
A Canadian Tamil man has returned to Toronto after spending three years in the custody of Sri Lanka’s anti-terrorism police, who detained him until he signed a false confession saying he had smuggled equipment to the Tamil Tigers.
“As a first step, Britain must support the international isolation of the Sri Lankan regime until it accepts an independent, international investigation into the mass killings.
“Not all Sinhalese are evil. Neither is every Tamil a saint. But the fact remains that every soldier in the Sri Lankan army who fought the war against the LTTE during 2008-2009 was a Sinhalese.
“This background information is essential for any non-Tamil to understand how the Sri Lankan army can be so brutal against its own civilians.”
At the screening last week in New York of the Channel 4’s documentary ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ to UN diplomats and US media, representatives of Sri Lanka’s government insisted on responding to it.
On Friday Sri Lanka hailed $1.2bn of investment in its tourist industry so far in 2011.
But $1bn of this is for a hotel and a shopping mall, both in Colombo, on prime land purchased from Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry. And both investments have been attracted with major tax concessions.
"I tried to die. That was better for me. But then I found that I was being revived so that I can be killed by torture in Sri Lanka. I don't feel any animosity towards anyone but I cannot understand why the British authorities saved my life only to send me back to where I would be killed."
