Take Rogue Sri-Lankan War Criminal beasts by the Horns to Criminal Courts

By: Dr C P Thiagarajah

Mahinda Rajapakse is the leader of a pack of rogues that committed the world’s worst war crimes of the century. The genocide of 40000 Tamils civilians in May 2009 in Mullivaikal was the culmination of the war crimes that destroyed the homeland of the Tamils in Vanni and disappeared nearly 146000 Tamils in total. The war also spawned 89000 Tamil widows and more than 125000 disabled persons. All these vicious acts were meticulously planned and the war was a ‘war without witnesses’ as described by the world media. The perpetrators of the conflict termed ‘blood bath on the beeches’ of Mullivaikal went unpunished by the UN and other watchdogs of the world. The inaction of the world to track down these war criminals is the dilemma that shook the world. With the impunity provided by such inaction the world had given licence to the Mahinda Rajapkse (MR) and his brothers to terrorise the Tamil Ethnic minorities and subjugate them. Now the promise president Rajapkse gave the world, he would give a political settlement to the Tamils after the conclusion of the war is being retracted.

That a world that cares for animals’ welfare and take utmost precautions to prevent cruelty to children could remain unmoved at the atrocities committed on the Tamils in the ‘No Fire Zone’ in May 2009 is a paradox. Why is this silence? The UK Channel 4 Video “Sri-Lanka Killing Fields” has gone to extra length to prove beyond doubt that such genocide took place. Still for all that proof the UN remains mute and the leading politicians of the enlightened world are too timid to open the topic in the UN. I will remind these honourable men to recap what Martin Luther King Jr prophesied “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere “.

The belatedly appointed three member UN expert Panel of the Secretary General Mr Ban Ki Mun had done a brilliant job utilising their expertise to bring out the truth of the matter beyond doubt in their 196 odd pages report. However nothing came out of it and the UN general assembly and the five members Security Council remained oblivion of these revelations of crimes against humanity, war crimes and the genocide. Inner City Press of the UN said on August 15 that Secretary General Ban Ki Mun had still not officially presented the report to the UNHRC nor the Security Council. Is Vijey Nambiar, the special Indian adviser to the SG who was implicated in the report behind all these break down of the UN administration? Let the world citizens take the Sri-Lankan brutes by the horn to an international inquiry in order to deliver justice to the Tamils.

An old English proverb reveals the actual position of the UN. “It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest” – the UN is really run by sick people at the moment and Mr Ban Ki Mun should be psychiatrically analysed for his failures. It was Ms Navi Pillai the UNHCHR, the only person in high command in the UN who in reality raised alarm over the serious violation of Human Rights in the Sri-Lankan one sided war.

History tells us that world condemn outright all those who made the lives of others miserable or those who remained passive observers without taking positive action to halt the perpetrator or bring them to justice. Be warned. The sins of the fathers are visited on their children to the third and fourth generation says the bible. Wise are they who worship Nemesis.

The UN Expert Panel Report covers mainly the last stages of the war that resulted in the genocide of nearly 40000 Tamil civilians-a sizeable portion of the population of Vanni. That is the months from September 2008 to 19 May 2009. This war clearly taught us that “The first casualty when war comes is truth” an axiom from US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson in 1918. The Sinhala communalist regime started hiding the truth behind the war right from the start. It ordered all NGOs working in the Tamil Homeland (TH) to quit the area and iron curtained the area from the reach of all media. All social media too was jammned by the government. Consequently, the war started without independent eye witnesses which were the main intention of the government. Therefore it was aptly named the ‘war without witnesses’ by the world press. Mahinda Rajapakse remembered the first part of what Abraham Lincoln told on war “Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived” and forgot the latter part. The victory he got out of the war was a phony one and one that caused the genocide and much misery to an ethnic group in Sri-Lanka –the Tamils.

Mr Ban Ki Mun, UN SG was insensitive and ineffective to do anything to halt the carnage although he was forewarned by several Human Rights groups of the impending human disaster. World wisest man Albert Einstein said “Force always attracts men of low morality”. Sri-Lankan bird brained military leaders chose to use extreme force against civilians; cluster bombs, thermobaric bombs, phosphorous bombs and multi-barrel shelling and heavy bombs. This heinous preplanned genocide should not be allowed to go unchecked and the perpetrators unpunished. The erstwhile UNHCHR Ms Navi Pillai was very specific about the extent to which HR laws should be extended to protect even those who take up arms against a regime. On Friday Jun 11 2010 The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay made it clear “While any State has the right to use force to guarantee security and maintain public order, it “should observe certain limits aimed at respecting fundamental rights of individuals and the rule of law, even when responding to unjustified attacks by illegal armed groups.”

The UN agencies that were supposed to help defenceless civilians in the TH left even without the presence of any token guards. By permitting a genocide in Sri-Lanka Mr Ban has allowed, as the Editor of guardian.co.uk, in an article titled Sunday 14 August 2011 titled ‘United Nations: Weak leaders wanted” pointed out , the slow decay of the UN secretariat, an institution that should be working, as Hammarskjöld said, on the edge of progress.

The dismal failure of Ban Ki Mun and the big world powers has resulted in the mushrooming of war criminals in Sri-Lanka. There are more or less 12 head of the government and army who are involved in the genocide and war crimes and crimes against humanity. These war criminals some of whom have been named below remain Scot-free. All are enjoying the forbidden fruit- victory in genocide of Tamils. Sinhalese military personnel had been appointed as Governors of the TH of the Tamils ie the North and East of Sri-Lanka. As widely reported these men are continuing the physical genocide as well as the cultural and structural genocide of the TH. Can the world afford to let these men of question integrity to roam the corridors of the UN and other world capitals as gospel bearers of foul war tactics and fighters of terrorism?

Some of the Armed Forces Personnel who Share the Loots of the War:

Numbered from right to left.

1. Majaor Jegath jayasooriya-Promoted Army Commander.

2. Air Chief Marshal Jayalath Weerakkody (former Air Force Chief) – Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Pakistan.

3. Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda (former Navy Commander) – Highways Ministry Secretary and tipped to become Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Japan.

4. Major General Jagath Dias (former General Officer Commanding the 57th Division) – Sri Lanka’s Deputy Ambassador to Germany.

5.Major General Udaya Perera (Director Operations of the Sri Lanka Army) – Sri Lanka’s Deputy High Commissioner to Malaysia.

7. Major General G.A. Chandrasiri (former Jaffna security forces commander) – Northern Province Governor.

8. Major General Shavendra Silva (former General Officer Commanding the 58th Division)– Deputy Permanent Representative for Sri Lanka in the UN.

9. Major General Amal Karunasekara (former Head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence) – Charge d’affaires for the proposed Sri Lankan Mission in Eritrea.

10. Air Chief Marshal Donald Perera (former Air Force Chief and Chief of Defence Staff) – Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Israel.

11. Rear Admiral Mohan Wijewickrema (former Navy Chief of Staff) – Eastern Province Governor.

Major General Nanda Mallawaarachchi (former Chief of Staff of the Army) – Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Indonesia. Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe (former Navy Commander)– Board Member, Water’s Edge Complex and tipped to become Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Australia

We all must take to heart what the former UN SG Kofie Annan said of leaving war criminals unpunished to roam respectable congregations. He said “Impunity anywhere is a threat to international peace and security everywhere.” He further castigated the world for its inaction thus, “There has been a deafening global silence in response to Sri Lanka’s actions, especially from its most influential friends. The international community cannot be selective in its approach to upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights”.

Hopefully, the opening Statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Navaneethan Pillay in Geneva, UNHRC back on 30 May 2011 gives hopes that the UN International Community will respond positively this time on 12 Sept 2011 in UNHRC Geneva meeting after the latest turn of events.

Ms Navaneetham Pillai-DSG-UNHCR

She said, “Let me also refer to the report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on accountability in Sri Lanka, which concludes that there are credible allegations of a wide range of serious violations of international law committed by both the Sri Lankan Government forces and Tamil Tigers in the final stages of the conflict. It is incumbent on the Government to investigate these allegations and I also urge it to implement the measures recommended by the Panel. I fully support the recommendation to establish an international mechanism to monitor national investigations and undertake its own as necessary. It would be important for the Human Rights Council to reflect on the new information contained in this important report, in light of its previous consideration of Sri Lanka and efforts to combat impunity worldwide”.

The greatest US president Abraham Lincoln humbly claimed “Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow”. Ban Ki Mun and his world allies like MR had planted thistles (tyrants) in the Tamil Homeland, UN and the world capitals to carry on the cacophony of uneasy reconciliation without first dispensing justice for the genocide crime.

Mahinda Rajapakse and his gang of war offenders still believe what Hitler advised his henchmen to do “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”. The truth is the world quite well familiar of the quote given by Albert Camus “The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants”.

The world remembers what MR told the world when he made war against the Tamil homeland of Vanni that he wanted to rescue the Tamil citizens from the strangle hold of the LTTE. But when he scorched through Vanni the world could not believe what they saw in the Channel 4 Video ‘Sri-Lanka’s killing Fields’. The Sinhala army of Rajapakse rained massive bombs including cluster and thermobaric boms through out the length and breadth of Vanni in his hollow rescue of Tamil civilians. Enough is enough. He doomed the Tamil Nation and took 300000 Tamil civilians into concentration camps.

A Sinhalese HR activist of world fame, Ms Nimalka Fernando, described this macabre scene as reducing the once rich Vanni civilians who lived like kings to paupers.

Ms Nimalka Fernando-HR Activist

The Sinhala chauvinist politician must learn from great politicians like Franklin D Roosevelt who said “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth”. However much the Sinhalese say that they are helping the Tamils it simply amounts to shedding crocodile tears. Tamils Against Genocide an NGO in its Grand Jury Indictment for Genocide of 2009 against Gothabaya Rajapakse (MR’s brother- the defence secretary) and Sarath Fonseka the army commander expound this idea “Since 1983, three ethnic civil wars have been fought up to the Cease Fire Agreement of 2002. Each served as a pretext for continuing the Sinhalese Buddhist genocide of Tamils. Among other things, between 1983 and 1995, in the NorthEast including the Jaffna peninsula, 1,224,000 Tamils were displaced; 469,000 children were orphaned; and approximately 1,500 non-Buddhist places of worship were damaged, looted, bombed, or shelled”.

In addition to these difficult day-to-day terror and humiliations, Tamil’s are threatened with creeping ‘Sinhalization’ and the resulting erosion of their right to express their cultural, religious, and linguistic identity. The TH is the most militarised civilian settlement in the world now. The victory of government forces over the LTTE was presented, as a victory of the Buddhist Sinhalese majority over (mainly) Hindu Tamils and Muslims. The victory celebrations staged managed at huge expense reflected this attitude and even the Tamil version of the National anthem was not permitted to be sung at least in the TH.

The arrogance of this rogue regime, one would imagine, springs out of the leniency and impunity permitted by the laxity of the UN and other world HR bodies failing to take action against the war crimes. Now even the obstinate Sinhala government had to

relent to reality. The Associated Press reported on Monday 1 August that under constant international pressure Sri-Lanka acknowledged for the first time that civilian casualties occurred in the final phase of its 26-year war against the LTTE rebels, but called the deaths unavoidable. The Defence Ministry statement was a reversal from its previous insistence that its troops adhered to a “zero civilian casualty policy”. I think most of us could recollect what MR’s minister of Human rights Mr Mahinda Samarasinghe declared with great fanfare immediately after the war that Tamil civilians were rescued without shedding a drop of blood. Incidentally, it is this same minister who will be leading the Lankan delegation to the UNHRC in September 2011 arguing against any UN action on the UN panel report.

After all we know Sri-lanka is a small country that finds it difficult to balance its budget and goes begging for credits and loans. Ironically, it spends trillions on war machinery only to fights its own Tamil minority. This is ethnocentric communalism. All this vast amount of money if spent on developing the TH it could have helped the Tamil citizens to lead a productive and useful life. The Sinhalese does not want to do that justice but wants to go on a destructive trajectory.

The IC should take into account all these issues and take these war criminals to the ICC. India under Sonia Gandhi, a naturalised Indian citizen, should come out openly and declare that it supported the genocide war foolishly. On 18 June 2011, Mr J Jeganaathan, Research Officer, Regional Security Programme, IPCS addressing the political pundits and policy-makers in New Delhi who have remained silent on the issue of human rights violations and war crimes since the UN report was released, strongly advised in the following terms “It is high time for the Indian government to decide whether it stands for the rule of law or the law of the ruler on the Sri Lankan issue”. The European Parliament (EP) had already adopted a resolution on 12 May 2011 expressing concern at the serious nature of the allegations cited in the UN Expert Panel report. It took the view that those allegations warrant a full, impartial and transparent investigation. The rest of the Western world should take a positive stand like the EU and come out openly in the UNHRC to demand an international Inquiry against the Sri-Lankan government for war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide. Once this is done the world will find itself in peace at least in the Indian Ocean.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times

Published on: Sep 06, 2011 0:56:28 GMT