25 October 2011

Time is of the essence

68 Comments

Bruce Haigh

The primary focus of Australian diplomacy towards Sri Lanka is to prevent Tamils from getting onto boats and coming to Australia.

To that end there is an AFP presence at the Australian High Commission to liaise and work with the Sri Lankan navy, army and police.

How will they explain these activities at CHOGM? How will Australia explain that its sole cause of concern for the ravaged and defeated Tamils in the north of Sri Lanka is to prevent them seeking refugee status? It is a good look for a country seeking a seat on the UN Security Council.

However the Australian narrow self-concern is surpassed by that of the Sri Lankan government. Two years after the end of the war and all indicators are that Tamils are being pushed to the margins of survival.

In June three members of the Malaysian parliament went to Sri Lanka. They were Dato Johari Abdul, M Manogaran and Senator S Ramakrishnan. They produced a report, Report On Fact Finding Trip To Sri Lanka By Malaysian Parliamentarians, parts of which I quote.

The Sri Lankan government is continuing to mutilate and neglect the war-victimised Tamil community in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The ruling government is only interested in further cleansing any LTTE remnants and mentally rehabilitating LTTE cadres into accepting the current Sinhala mastery in Colombo. It continues to militarise and Sinhalarise (sic) the whole northern and eastern provinces. The traumatised and grieving Tamil population is under complete control of the army. The army controls and in the process rapes, robs, sexually harasses and loots the Tamils of whatever little they have. The Tamils in the northern and eastern provinces will not be able to recuperate and settle back to normalcy for a long time to come. The army is a lord unto themselves and they control and monitor any outside contact and help given to the captive Tamils in IDP camps.

The Sri Lankan government is misleading the whole world into believing that it is doing everything to rehabilitate, reconstruct and reconcile the Tamil population back to normalcy. But on the other hand it is neglecting and hindering the rehabilitating and reconstruction initiatives of India and the Tamil Diaspora. The destabilised Tamil community is struggling among themselves to share very limited resources and the past family cohesiveness and supportiveness is fading away. Their houses flattened and their other belongings are looted by the army itself. Any note of complaint falls on the deaf ears of the army authority. To add insult to injury the Sri Lankan government is attempting to settle the Sinhalese in the Northern Province which has been the homeland of the Tamils for centuries.

Till today nobody is held accountable for war crimes and many war criminals are appointed to high ranking offices and sent as ambassadors to foreign countries… Opposition politicians and civil society live in fear of government reprisal in speaking about war crimes and the post war conduct of the military government in the northern and eastern provinces…The urgent task is to bring the Sri Lankan government to a war crime tribunal and undertake humanitarian work urgently. All attempts must be made to demilitarise the military zones and decentralise the governance and the administrative function to the Northern Province. Under the current jubilant and chest beating mood of the Rajapakse government changes have to be initiated externally and through international bodies.

Further points made in the report:

Our many talks and meetings with the various categories of people, support the conclusion that there is an attempt by the Sri Lankan government to inflict maximum social damage on the Tamils. Even if there is no more LTTE threat or resurgence, the government wants to keep this threat alive to justify the military presence everywhere in the North. Although the war is over, the conflict is not over and civilians who may not have any part in the war are being punished severely.

There is also widespread, planned ‘genocide’ of the Tamil people as girls and women are raped and mutilated so as to prevent them from conceiving in future.

Meanwhile we were told that in Jaffna hospital alone five-six girls go in for abortions daily.

Women cadres (LTTE) who have been released from rehabilitation camps are subjected to the worst of atrocities and many of these women are still in their late teens and early 20s…

Due to the lack of income women are forced into prostitution to make ends meet and the only male presence in the villages are the police or military. The only interactions these women have are with the military. Many of these women have more than four children… To get money mothers sleep with the military or police personnel and even when they don’t need the money they are forced to sleep with the military.

… There now lives a whole population of widowed women, fatherless children who are all victims of trauma. Their emotional stability has not been addressed, there have been no avenues of release or dealing with it and if it proceeds to go unaddressed, the next generation will carry the conditioning of the war. Repercussions of this conditioning can be seen in violent and abusive or withdrawn characteristics and substance abuse.

… More than 30,000 children were orphaned and with the lack of orphanages and proper schooling they are forced into the labour sector… Sexual abuse is also rampant in the orphanages.

There is a clear distinction between being returned and being resettled… women and men were forced to return back to nothing with nothing and to return to normalcy. One is not sure what normalcy means to these people anymore.

Resettlement homes include tin sheets and wooden plank infrastructure. This structure was meant to be for only a period of six months. This was in January 2010; presently June 2011 there are still no toilets, wells or even flooring for these temporary transition homes. The government to date has no housing scheme in place.

Over 300,000 people are in these camps with little or no hope of returning to their original homes. Most homes are destroyed and many Tamil lands are now being resettled by Sinhalese people. Buddhist temples are being erected in areas where there are no Buddhists.

All possible human rights violations are taking place. Activists are labelled as traitors if they seek international help and alliances. Dissent is labelled and attacked as anti-Sri Lanka. All sorts of crime is now being committed by the authorities including rapes of Tamil women and girls on a daily basis. The Sri Lankan army hates the LTTE and, by extension the Tamils. In the last month over 48 people from Jaffna went missing and are still unaccounted for.

Although the Tamils and Muslims have suffered the most, surprisingly none of them had anything bad or adverse to say about the LTTE. In fact a number of them said they felt safer when the LTTE was around.

The hostility of many Sinhalese, particularly the police, army and navy toward the Tamils led to a three-decade war, ending only with the defeat of the Tamil armed forces in 2009. The above report details the ongoing discrimination and hostility toward the Tamils by the government of Sri Lanka and its agencies. This discrimination is racially based and in the manner that it is now being expressed amounts to genocide.

Through their complete denial of human rights to the vanquished Tamils the government of Sri Lanka has validated the war fought by the Tamils against the majority Sinhalese supremacists. The Tamils always understood that this was the Sinhalese end game, that the Sinhalese always wanted to dominate and control the lives of the Tamils.

Faced with a military imbalance the breakaway Tamils had to match the state-sponsored and funded armed forces of Sri Lanka, modelled on former colonial administrator Great Britain.

In his book, The Cage, Gordon Weiss says, "On rare occasions, Black Tigers returned from their missions. They were suicide attackers only in the sense that the daring and destructive capacity of their attacks entailed almost certain death. The value they added was thus twofold: in the extraordinary courage they displayed during attacks, and in the actual destruction of their targets". The events of 9/11 saw the misappropriation of these attacks by the Sri Lankan government and its supporters into suicide attacks with all the negative connotations the US was able to weave into that phrase.

The government of Sri Lanka over the decades of conflict with the Tamils was corrupt. Many of the vital supplies and arms required by the Tamils were received in this way. But the corruption of the present Rajapaksa government and the 52 members of his family, who are also members of the government, surpasses all the governments who preceded it.

Weiss says:

By extension, anybody who criticised Mahinda Rajapaksa, the personification of the new era that would dawn in Sri Lanka following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, also was a traitor. So too those who suggested that anything was rotten in the republic… arms deals linked to the ruling clan, the corruption and brutality of the police, the sprawling employment of hundreds of Rajapaksa relatives and cronies in government service. This … constituted a general warning to dissenters and was backed up by the beating, death or disappearance of those proscribed online and in the press… The ‘white van’ syndrome pervaded the steadily reducing circles of dissent, spreading fear of the ‘abyss without bottom… In under three years, Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government introduced more than 20 new emergency regulations that weakened the rule of law and deepened the existing human rights crisis in Sri Lanka…

In 2009, the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders rated Sri Lanka number 162 out of 175 countries for media freedom… The death squad threat enforces the government’s writ. Opposition media and public opinion remain full of trepidation in the atmosphere of a Sinhalese supremacist ideology vindicated by the conquest of the Tamil Tigers.

On Thursday October 20 the Global Tamil Forum held an all-day conference at the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney. Delegates attended from all over the world and around Australia. The Sri Lankan High Commission made around 40 telephone calls to the hotel seeking to have the hotel withdraw the conference venue. The hotel refused, but it should have reported the conduct of the High Commission to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The High Commission continues to ring and harass members of the Tamil community in Australia; these people are Australian citizens. The AFP and ASIO continue to have close contact with the Sri Lankan High Commission in the interests of terrorism and people smuggling. In view of the ongoing activities of the High Commission this closeness of contact should cease.

Left to the Sinhalese, the future of the Tamils in Sri Lanka has no prospect. They are being subjected to great cruelty. The Sinhalese are lying as to their welfare. They are subjected to arbitrary violence and deprivation of liberty. There is no quality to their lives, no hope and no mercy from a venal and corrupt regime that displays all the qualities and attitudes of the Apartheid regime, with equal lack of care and interest over the people it has subjected to state control.

The Commonwealth heads of government are meeting in Perth from October 28 to 30. Sri Lanka has violated and continues to violate every tenet of Commonwealth membership, the most basic being genocide. On this basis alone it should be suspended.

Zimbabwe was suspended for the basic transgression of the human rights of many of its citizens; Fiji was suspended for lesser crimes and for far less than Sri Lanka is guilty.

Sri Lanka is denying all human rights to members of its minority Tamil population. It should be suspended, but that will do little to change the horrible circumstances for members of the Tamil community.

A stepped approach might work better; if Sri Lanka were to be offered the prospect of staying in the Commonwealth if it allowed a monitoring force of 3,000 to oversee and facilitate the provision of food, health and basic services to the Tamil population and oversee the withdrawal of the bulk of the Sri Lankan armed forces to military duties in areas away from the traumatised Tamil population.

The Sri Lankan military has its fangs around the throat of the defeated Tamils and they must be made to let go.

After basic infrastructure, health and other resources have been restored the Commonwealth might then use its good offices to broker a peace, allowing dignity and hope to be restored to both sides, but particularly to the vanquished Tamils.

Not to do so offers the prospect of further violence from the next generation of young Tamils, who are growing up without the benefit of formal education and against a background of deprivation and dislocation which will breed anger. Further mindless cruelty against Tamils trapped in this nightmare on Sri Lanka could also come, in time, to galvanise Tamils offshore. We don’t need that.

There are people at the top of DFAT who understand this, their considerable experience and understanding must be allowed to prevail in the final run into CHOGM.

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and retired senior diplomat who served in Sri Lanka.

66 Comments

Add your comment

• 
  

  ksk :

  25 Oct 2011 7:33:05pm

  I saw Bruce Haigh on ‘The Drum’ a week or so ago talking about Sri Lanka. And guess what, claiming facts that I know for 100% certainty are false. In an attempt to wave aside facts that LTTE recruited child soldiers, Mr Haigh claimed there was conscription in Sri Lanka. I can tell you there is certainly no conscription and Sri Lanka and there hasn’t been at least since the beginning of the war between Sri Lanka and the LTTE.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Simon b :

  25 Oct 2011 7:18:52pm

  Can someone pls investigate the refugees coming to Australia and their links or connections in Australia? I’m sure u will find a commonality and would lead to the same set of people

  Are we paying our hard earn tax to authors like Bruce to spread misinformation?

  Governemnt needs to Investigate these kind of ppl

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Richard De Silva :

  25 Oct 2011 5:18:17pm

  Hmmm let’s change some words around shall we?

  "Left to the Whites, the future of the Aboriginals in Australia has no prospect. They are being subjected to great cruelty. The Whites are lying as to their welfare. They are subjected to arbitrary violence and deprivation of liberty. There is no quality to their lives, no hope and no mercy from a venal and corrupt regime that displays all the qualities and attitudes of the Apartheid regime, with equal lack of care and interest over the people it has subjected to state control."

  Interesting?

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  John :

  25 Oct 2011 4:18:39pm

  I am all for the truth how unsavoury it is. The problem is that due to heavy lobby’ng and propaganda of the Tamil diaspora and the secret agenda’s of the west a truly independent investigation will not take place. Any country has a right to defend itself. The alternate would be that terrorists diregarding all rules of law kill everyone in their path and control the world. This could easily have happned in Sri Lanka and then India. Whle this was going ahead the LTTE sympathisers were in propaganda and lobby’ng overdrive white washing them and supplying all the nasty bombs and weopons. I truly feel sorry for the brainwashed Tamils that they cannot see that they are puppets in a bigger game and were willing to kill and sacrifice their own brown brothers(Singhalese, Muslims, Tamils and Indians) driven by old racist ideology.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  I think Bruce is a Racist :

  25 Oct 2011 3:47:52pm

  I have been looking at Bruce’s articles. It appears that just as Singhalese are racist so is Mr. Bruce!! Bruce helps to polarise the issue more and more. and just as someone else stated here paints a picture of Sinhalese monsters and it is indicative of racist attitude by Bruce. At the end of the day it is the Tamils and the Singhalese living in Sri Lanka are the one have to unite and reconcile and live peacefully as there within a stone throw of each, elbow rubbing elbow. sharing the waterways

  Meanwhile Bruce here will be potting around his olive farm trying solve World’s problems by surfing the net in his spare time.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Varun Haynes :

  25 Oct 2011 3:28:29pm

  Below Sri Lankan government Propoganda in full action under the disguise of anglo-saxon names. It is this false propoganda and misleading the international community by the ruthless sri lankan governments and supporters that has so far left Sri Lanka to escape internation scrutiny and condemnation. Great to see media such as abc raising a voice for justice, human rights and minnorities who continue to be opressed.

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    Jagath :

    25 Oct 2011 7:36:44pm

    Your comments just goes onto show how little u know of SL. For ur record, there are plenty of Sri Lankans with Anglo-saxon names. LOL

    ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Kannthan :

  25 Oct 2011 3:00:47pm

  Thanks Bruce for raising an important issue at the right time. A government that completely won the war is finding it difficult to accept the mistakes occurred during the war and to arrive at a political solution to satisfy minority grievances. It is still in trumphalist mode and trying to use the opportunity to completely marginallise the minorities.

  Two possible unfortunate outcomes are: (1)Tamil community will be completely cowed and will loose its territory-based identity in a decade or two or (2) at the height of repression, some form of Tamil rebellion may eventuate in a few years time. Both of these are terrible outcomes. There is a third possibility – ie, the realisation of accountability, reasonable political solution and genuine reconcilliation between different communities. Unfortunately, the Sri Lankan leadership, and for that matter the majority Singhalese, have not shown any interest and have been repeating the mistakes which marked the terrible history of Sri lanka. The only hope lies with some form of pursuassion/intervention by the international community, and this is exactly where CHOGM should play its critical role.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Justice :

  25 Oct 2011 2:57:21pm

  Thanks a lot for your honest and brave Sir.Bruce. These Srilanka state terrorist agents can never be awaked up because they are acting like as sleeping. If their hands were clean then why these thugs are so scared for an open unternational UN monitored neutral investigation?????

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  The other Bruce :

  25 Oct 2011 2:49:21pm

  Bruce is a racist plain and simple. This is not to discount Tamil misery. He portrays Sinhalese as monsters.

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    eureka :

    25 Oct 2011 7:28:27pm

    He gives reasons why they are monsters. Refute them if you can – that is logic.

    ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  David Jennings :

  25 Oct 2011 2:46:55pm

  I wonder how many of the comments on here under different pseudonyms are actually from people working for the Sri Lankan High Commission? If the Sri Lankan High Commission is in fact harrassing Australian Tamils then our government needs to respond to that. I know that some of my Tamil friends told me that when they were protesting in Melbourne in 2009 they received death threats (most likely from Sinhalese extremists).

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    kumar :

    25 Oct 2011 4:35:49pm

    your names sounds NOT Sri lankan,but as you say most of your comments are based on the tamil diaspora.

    Australians and their govt are more racist than any other country,why dont your govt let who ever wants to come.have you ever made representations to your govt to allow people to come in,I THINK NO

    ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    Rohan :

    25 Oct 2011 7:37:00pm

    There is strong ‘public relation unit’, whose duites include promoting Rajapakse Family. Not to foget the attempt they made to vote Mahinda Rajapakse to be at the top of the Time Magazine poll. They had Chinese technology to generate new ISPs to populate the internet poll. This time, the poll organiser spotted that.

    ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Sam :

  25 Oct 2011 1:56:44pm

  What a racist article. I know Bruce tends to go overboard with his rhetoric but this is way beyond the line.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Mahinda :

  25 Oct 2011 1:46:47pm

  It is so racist,bias article written by Bruce Haigh.

  Also it is a common thing nowadays that we have come across 90% of articles about Sri Lanka is not true but compilation of fantastic fabricated LTTE bullshit.The ugly fact behind this is to find how much gain these so called journalists who are doing this for?

  We all know that there is no way to spend those illegally collected money by LTTE diaspora like before,that spent for weaponry but may be they are paying these journalists to do their dirty course.To-Bruce: Shame on you! Shame on your parents!Shame on your country what ever you represent!

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    kumar :

    25 Oct 2011 4:38:33pm

    Totally Agreed with your comments.Who is this BRUCE???.if he is a journlist,must be for a little unknown local tabloid.Only way to earrn a buck is support the now defunct LTTE terrorist

    ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Kalppana :

  25 Oct 2011 1:40:25pm

  Hi

  It is so sad to read these comments from those who have no idea of what is going on. Unfortunately all Australia is worried about is stopping the refugees from coming, while they are busy with this the have opened the door to students coming into the country with dodgy student visas, students who work instead of study. Students who send all their money back home to India. They have opened the door to thousands of Indians who are fleeing persecution, instead are coming here to make money, increase the prospects of higher dowries for themselves and eventually invest all their money back at home!! I never realised Australians esp the politicians were so ignorant. As for Sri Lanka, those of you who are in denial please just for fun see the Channel 4 documentary on Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields and think whether it is too much to ask Sri Lanka to have independent investigation and tribunal. Sri Lanka should have nothing to hide. Power, conflict of interest and dictatorship is the values of the new Sri Lanka, where the Rajapakse dynasty rules and ex-army and navy personnel are sent to countries around the world to serve in diplomatic positions!

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Vic :

  25 Oct 2011 1:25:35pm

  Another half baked reporter on the LTTE propaganda budget. It so funny that he wants us to believe this movie script when New York Times placed Sri Lanka as the Number 1 destination to visit and National Geographic voted the island as the second best island in the world. Any idiot would know that these organizations would not rank Sri Lanka in such ways, if theres genocide happening there.

  I quote from the latest Economist about the double standards of some countries. The key is Gadaffi dont have a propaganda budget to pay war mongering unethical reporters such as Bruce…….

  " The death of Velupillai Prabhakaran in May 2009 marked the definitive victory of the Sri Lankan army in a war that had dragged on for 26 years and entailed the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. He ran his fief of “liberated” Sri Lanka with an iron fist, systematically wiping out his ethnic-Tamil opponents, as he commandeered a monopoly on Tamil resentment at rule by a Sri Lankan government dominated by ethnic Sinhalese. Prabhakaran’s Tamil Tigers were pioneers of suicide-bombing, and notorious for the cyanide pills they wore as an alternative to capture and torture. He waged terror overseas, notably in India, where his agents assassinated a former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991. And Tamil expatriates around the world were bullied and frightened into providing him with finance.

  Yet the end of the war in Sri Lanka was marked by little of the celebratory tone that has marked some of the reporting of the death of Muammar Qaddafi this month. A few days before the Sri Lankan army’s final victory, President Barack Obama had called on it to stop using heavy weaponry in civilian areas. And when victory came, there was almost immediate condemnation of the tactics the Sri Lankan army had used in the final months of the war; calls for war-crimes inquiries predated the last battle, and persist to this day. Over Libya, there was no such call for restraint in the battle for Sirte, and on Qaddafi’s death, Mr Obama was quick to hail “the end of a long and painful chapter for the people of Libya”.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Bob :

  25 Oct 2011 1:16:25pm

  Well said Bruce, What we need is an independent enqiry about the conduct of Sri Lankan Government during the war and after the war by the international community.

  Some one need to speak for the voiceless.

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    samuel :

    25 Oct 2011 5:08:01pm

    why not investigate the war crime committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan,

    ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    ksk :

    25 Oct 2011 7:40:17pm

    No offence, but who said Tamils were voiceless. There are approximately 35 Tamil politicans in Sri Lankan parliament-representing a similar proportion of Tamils in Sri Lankan populace.

    Furthermore, if there is any reason why Tamils are under-represented, that can be attributed to Tamils themselves. The LTTE murdered over 200 Tamil politicians. Including leading members of the Sri Lankan Government such as former foreign minister Lakshman Kadiragamar and Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle.

    ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  John :

  25 Oct 2011 11:39:56am

  Two of the MP’s from Malasia who are quoted by Bruce are Tamil’s. There tribal instincts or LTTE affinity will take precedence over the truth. The Tamil diaspora are masters at deceit and propaganda which was unopposed for 30 years. All these Tamil proffesionals should thank the free education they got in Sri Lanka. They will lobby and manipulate all well meaning people to achive their underhand sinister aims.

  Talking about apartheid it would have been the Singhalese who would have lived under minority rule if the Tamil racists had their way in the past. Looks like they still have not given up hope. Tamils can live anywhere peacefully in the country. In Colombo the capital of SriLanka the Singhalese are a minoriry.Both the Muslims and Tamils are achievinf at the highest levels in education, professions and buisness and no Singhales is saying they dont have a right to live there. Still these Tamil racists want a mono-ethnic area in SriLanka( 1/3rd of the Sri Lanka’s land for less than 2% of the poulation). The terrorist proxy’s including Tamil MP’s are shouting hoarse all over the world that Sinhalese are staring to settle down in their "Tamil land". Bruce Who are the victims and who are the racists?

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    don :

    25 Oct 2011 1:27:09pm

    I totally agree with you John,Can not add or omit a thing of what you said.,It is something I was dying to say and Thanks a lot for your valuable effort of educating the misled common people.

    ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    Kalppana :

    25 Oct 2011 1:53:20pm

    Dear John,

    Learn to spell first. Secondly have you been to Sri Lanka… or do you make your assumptions based on watching cricket and cooking shows that take place in Sri Lanka. What is happening to Sri Lankan tamils is nothing short of genocide… all the tamil have to pay the price for a terrosit group called the LTTE that was never supported by all tamils!Rajapakse is a dictator… whose ability to suck up and beg for money means he has both China and India on his side… thrown in Russia… as a result he will never have to worry about the West!

    ReplyAlert moderator

    • 
      

      Appu :

      25 Oct 2011 2:57:18pm

      On the same breath let me tell you a substantial % of the population are NOT with Rajapakse but circumstances are such there is no choice.

      There can be a choice a win all choice only if ordinary Sinhalese and ordinary Tamils unite.

      Everyone and anyone in Sri Lanka should have equal rights.

      ReplyAlert moderator

      • 
        

        John :

        25 Oct 2011 3:46:41pm

        Very true Appu but they can only unite if left on their own. No one wants the lies and deception of the chauvinistic/racist Tamil diaspora vilyfying the entire country. Their agenda is selfish and racist because to them only their egos’s, lost priviledges and revenge matter. The younger generation of Tamils are brainwashed in an organized manner by the LTTE. The ultimate victims are the innocent Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Singhalese have done a lot and will do more for them if they dont listen to the rubbish fed to them by racist Tamil leaders in Sri Lanka and the diaspora.

        ReplyAlert moderator
    • 
      

      pam :

      25 Oct 2011 3:56:41pm

      Before asking other people to "learn how to spell" with such arrogance, can you look up the meaning of the word genocide in the dictionary. Nothing like that is happening in Sri Lanka, where the majority of Tamils live in Colombo and other so called "Sinhalese" regions. Also, last time I heard, the Tamils in the North and the East are getting along with their lives and children going to school and playing kid’s game, not aiming guns at human beings. Is that what you call "genocide"?

      ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    Saleem :

    25 Oct 2011 2:31:30pm

    ‘John’ says that two the Malaysian MPs that visited Tamil areas in Sri Lanka are Tamils and therefore the ‘tribal instincts’ makes them allay with Tamils, that is the point, almost all the Security Forces and presidents and prime ministers have always been Sinhalese and his logic applies there, too. Bruce Haigh’s report is unbiased, analytical and timely to remind the CW leaders that revisit the way Sinhalese president and his brothers massacred Tamils after starving them and the horrible way the escapees of their military campaign were interned behind barbed wires and deploy their army and police to control the tormented and battered community. Their electorates are are kept ignorant of their brutality of Tamils by ru most of the media run by Civil Servants of their choice and the rest are kept threatened to self-censor what they publish. No wonder that no Muslims or Tamils has ever been appointed or elected to the highest offices in Sri Lanka.

    ReplyAlert moderator

    • 
      

      Appu :

      25 Oct 2011 3:13:04pm

      Understand with most of what you say except the part "Bruce Haigh’s report is unbiased…" Bruce portrays singhalese as monsters and all his articles are one sided.

      The point of minorities not elected to high places depends on voting. Our voting has always being ethnic based unfortunately. I suppose it is part of the culture. This is true even for a country like Malaysia (Last time when I visited there, the Tamil ethnic people I came across mistook me for a Tamil and spoke a lot a about Tamil discrimination in Malaysia and they thought I was lucky to be Australia) Most developing countries are like this and they continue to be developing and never be developed if any form of discrimination continue. No excuse. We all wait Leaders to emerge to change the situation. and that is the main problem.

      Solutions to problems have to come bottom up. As long as ordinary singhalese and tamils don’t unite the conflict will continue.

      ReplyAlert moderator

      • 
        

        Heavensake :

        25 Oct 2011 4:39:46pm

        Obviously, he portrays rightly so as the Sinhala mass keeping a blind eye to what had happened and continue to happen. Even worse is justifying the occurrences. The Sinhala community is equally responsible as the Govt.

        ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Simon G :

  25 Oct 2011 11:29:22am

  This is all a load of rubbish. As someone who has lived and visited Sri Lanka for over many years, I will tell you that this is just that. For example, one only has to go to Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo to see the kind of peaceful, prosperous lives Tamils lead there. As well, when one considers that 54% of Tamils have always lived amongst the Sinhalese (even during the height of the war with the LTTE Tamil Terrorists), these kinds of outrageous lies from the likes of Bruce speaks volumes about the extent of disinformation the LTTE-rump abroad is into these day. What many don’t know is that LTTE terrorists had amassed over a $4Billion fund to buy high-tech weaponry – fund raised from criminal activities such as heroin smuggling, credit/bank card frauds, extortion of fellow Tamils abroad, etc. – and as the war ended and the money is no longer needed for that purpose, it is no secret that this same LTTE-rump is today throwing this money quite lavishly at anyone who would do a writeup/produce an "execution video" or speak up in their favor. If Australians chose to believe the likes of this Bruce and entertain economic-illegal-migrant-bogus-Tamil-refugees to their shores, then I am sure most law-abiding, Sri Lankans will not lose sleep over that!!!

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Chan :

  25 Oct 2011 11:06:58am

  This article is absurd,

  Bruce has to remove his colured glasses given by LTTE.Sri Lankans came out from the dark era of LTTE and trying to stand by thier feet.Don’t mess them up.You will have ships of refugees if they were pressurized.

  Your masters just need that,problems to continue in Sri Lanka,to bring their Tamil relatives and friends to Australia as refugees.

  Please don’t play with innocent lives.Just for couple of bucks.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Refugee Madness :

  25 Oct 2011 10:56:00am

  Yes Bruce and that will mean more Sri Lankan refugees for Australia.

  The depths to which some people will go to, both in Sri Lanka (where people are promoting violence to advance their cause) and in Australia (where people are appealing to the people) to get more Asylum Seekers of a particular ethnic or cultural group accepted as refugees into Australia, never ceases to amaze me.

  The creation of an oversea diaspora in the developed world is definite advantage to a developing country. These people send enormous amounts of money home. And for some countries there is no better way of doing this than through conflict and the actions of the highly gullible UNHCR and the 1951/1967 refugee convention.

  The world needs to be putting in structures which reward peace, security and sustainable use of resources and sensible population policies not rewarding wars, dysfunction, non sustainable use of resources and over population. Expecting the UN to be able to do this anything in this regard is unrealistic.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Jeff D :

  25 Oct 2011 10:44:29am

  It is the law of karma or retribution that one has to pay for ones misdeeds.” The rationalist in me is inquisitive to know whether the present predicament of the Tamils is also a result of some kind misdeeds they committed to the Sinhalese (through LTTE) in this birth or to some other group in a previous birth.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Doug Quixote :

  25 Oct 2011 10:26:56am

  Sri Lanka is healing; after a long and bloody civil war, they must be allowed to continue healing in their own way.

  The article is inflammatory; it is hardly surprising Mr Haigh is ‘retired’ if this is an example of his diplomacy skills.

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    Iqbal :

    25 Oct 2011 2:36:50pm

    There is no healing in Tamil areas as the military control the civilians with brutal force. Many Tamils are still not allowed to go back to their homes as the army and navy occupy them. The government has been building war memorials and Buddhist viharas in the areas Tamils occupy since the beginning.

    ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  David Jennings :

  25 Oct 2011 10:23:11am

  It is just shocking that the Australian Government is becoming complicit in criminal activities by assisting the Sri Lankan Government to stop Tamil refugees from fleeing Sri Lanka. In effect, the Australian Government is aiding and abetting a criminal regime to keep and control a hostage population. There would have to be criminal charges that can be brought against AFP, ASIO officials or politicians who are involved in stopping the refugee flows. At some point this has stopped being about border security and has now become a situation in which we are providing material assistance to a criminal regime which has a clear criminal purpose in its activities.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Bruno Umbato :

  25 Oct 2011 10:14:01am

  Quoting from a report by three members of the Malaysian parliament ( Dato Johari Abdul, M Manogaran and Senator S Ramakrishnan) Bruce Haigh plays to the hands of LTTE propaganda .. This article has nothing new except it accepts the report of the three senators as the ‘TRUTH’ and quotes all the lies of the report ..

  Look what this report says ..

  "… There is also widespread, planned ‘genocide’ of the Tamil people as girls and women are raped and mutilated so as to prevent them from conceiving in future. Meanwhile we were told that in Jaffna hospital alone five-six girls go in for abortions daily……"

  Oh! My god… Bruce … Which country are you talking about Bruce?

  You are giving publicity to the most damned lies even die hard terrorists of LTTE are ashamed to utter?

  What happened to journalistic ethics of ABC? Have they all out of the window? Just quoting damned lies of a report and hiding behind it, these journalists are disgrace to the whole media profession .. ABC has to be more vigilant than this as ABC’s reputation is at stake …

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    Thamilselvan’s Ghost :

    25 Oct 2011 3:42:00pm

    This is the same delegation that was rebuked in the Malaysian parliament when they tried to bring their "report" up for debate. It’s interesting how the recent US Congressional delegation missed this planned and obvious genocide that’s going on during their visit.

    ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Dingo :

  25 Oct 2011 10:10:02am

  Bruce,

  You say – The primary focus of Australian diplomacy towards Sri Lanka is to prevent Tamils from getting onto boats and coming to Australia.

  Sounds like an awesome strategy to me; Australia has interfered in far too many countries affairs with disastrous consequences.

  The Tamils and Sri Lanka must sort out their differences themselves and any interference by other countries will only give false hope and delay the process.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  jxk :

  25 Oct 2011 10:03:30am

  An interesting article that confirms what many sources have been saying for a long time about the Sinhalese government. One thing is certain: neither of our two major parties will have anything to say about this issue. Except for the Greens, the Federal Government has become a morality free.

  ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Damian :

  25 Oct 2011 9:44:33am

  My goodness,

  Bruce Haigh is at again. Digging up any fiction he lay his hands on to Justify his tacit support for the terrorist organization know as the LTTE.

  Notice how Bruce cannot even distinguish between Tamils and the LTTE. This is a racist slur of the worst kind because he trying to associate all Tamils with the failed terrorist organization.

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    dogeatdog :

    25 Oct 2011 11:10:30am

    Yes, how quickly Bruce Haigh and other apologists for the LTTE seem to forget the atrocities committed by the LTTE during the war, and how in the closing stages of the war LTTE fighters were quite willing to use their own people as human shields. They also forget how the war was needlessly prolonged because the LTTE refused to admit defeat even when it was staring them in the face.

    Interestly, I know a Sri Lankan gentleman ( I’ll insert a note of caution here by disclosing that this chap is Sinhalese) who is in regular contact with his relatives back home and according to him, since the fighting stopped Sri Lanka has pretty much returned to normal and the horror stories of atrocities against the Tamils are largely propaganda put out by ex-LTTE supporters in order to garner world sympathy.

    Also makes me wonder about some of the Tamils seeking asylum in Australia, are they really fleeing persecution or are they in fact LTTE war criminals trying to escape justice?

    ReplyAlert moderator

    • 
      

      Damian :

      25 Oct 2011 3:00:30pm

      I am very concerned that the ABC Drum has become an open forum for terrorist apologetics and blatant racism as shown in Bruce Haigh’s article above.

      Are the managers of the Drum asleep?

      Or is Bruce’s racist prose welcome?

      ReplyAlert moderator
    • 
      

      Dene jaydhan :

      25 Oct 2011 5:37:14pm

      Hi, GoSL says that Hilari Clington, Erick Solheim,Ban ki Moon,UN panel,Chanel4,Gordon Weiss, Amnesty International,HRW and now Bruice are LTTE or LTTE sympathizers. If that who is honest people? Kadaffi,Iraq president,Sonia,and some underworlds…

      ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Raskul :

  25 Oct 2011 9:43:47am

  I worked in Sri Lanka for three years at the height of the civil war. The war was the result of a string of Sinhalese government decisions which discriminated against Tamils in all fields of life. The Sinhalese refused to recognise their responsibility for creating the conflict and now that they have won the war there are no signs that they will attempt to build bridges to the Tamil community.

  I was always amazed that my intelligent, warm and witty Sinhalese friends were unable to see that crushing the Tamils in military conflict would not solve their problems.

  The international community should focus its efforts upon convincing the country’s stubborn and aggressive politicians and the Sinhalese community that the only path to lasting peace and national development lies in sincere reconciliation between the two ethnic groups. The Sinhalese will need to go more than half way in achieving this. I have no hopes of seeing this happen under their current political leadership.

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    Leela :

    25 Oct 2011 3:59:33pm

    Tamils have a dilemma. That is; Tamils are over 65 million but have no country. And they make bogus claims of discrimination to reach their goal. Sinhalese couldn’t have discriminated Tamils before independence for it was British who ruled Sri Lanka then.

    The fact that Tamils demanded to divide Sri Lanka since 1928 prove its sham.

    Sri Lanka had been a one country for over 2500 years and a Sinhala one at that. Tamils ruled it at times but they went back every time they were chased out. Modest Tamil population in Sri Lanka and affinity of their language, culture and history to Tamil Nadu Tamils prove their base is not Sri Lanka but Indian.

    Besides, 95% of all Tamils live in India. Tamils tried to divide India as well. 16A to Indian constitution in 1968 had put a stop to it. And Tamils concentrated their effort to have their homeland in the North and East of Sri Lanka since. It has peaked when Tamil majority party ITAK declared war on Sinhalese at a mass rally on May 14, 1976 known as Waddukkodai resolution. LTTE is the end result of that. Now that Tamil terrorism has been defeated better Tamils accept it and try to live as equals.

    Leela

    ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Fred :

  25 Oct 2011 9:30:05am

  And 39 Tamil refugees, yes mandated refugees, confirmed to have fled persecution,are in a limbo created by ther ASIO security concerns which they, and we, are not allowed to know. Foreign policy and border control and the international legal obligations intersect, and the result is an inhumanity and hope-less-ness which shames this democratic nation of Australia.Get it together Government of the day, and end this disgusting torment and torture on Tamil refugees.

  Release those Tamils from Scherger where Serco guards mistreat them. End this insane practice of locking up indefinitely fellow human beings who ultimately will be living among us, savouring our peace and a future for their children. What other country in the western world do you really think will take our ASIO reject "real refugees"? We saw no Tamil faces in the 4 Corners expose last evening, but they are there,slipping into a mental brockennness that may never heal. Along with Rohingyans, 2000 Hazaras, Kurds , Iranians, Iraqis. Foreign policy, our actions on the world stage must recognise asylum seekers and mandated refugees as the human collateral damage of persecution and war in their countries of origin.

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    billie :

    25 Oct 2011 11:01:31am

    Agree!

    You have to wonder whether ASIO isn’t asking the Sri Lankan government for security clearances for Tamils. If I was the Sri Lankan government I would not give my enemy a good security clearance.

    Oops I am assuming that the Singhalese community has buried the hatchet . . . for now, but they are not yet friends with Tamils. The Australian government must be assuming that all citizens of Sri Lanka are treated equally by their government.

    ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    Refugee Madness :

    25 Oct 2011 11:05:27am

    NO FRED,

    ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    Refugee Madness :

    25 Oct 2011 11:09:27am

    No Fred,

    Send all 39 home, repatriate them, like other countries are doing.

    Like India, like the UK etc, etc

    And no Fred, we are not the cause of countries and people being unable to sort out their ethnic and cultural differences peacefully.

    ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    Dingo :

    25 Oct 2011 11:38:50am

    Fred,

    Regardless of your assessment, they have been determined as potential terrorists by our security people and I know who I trust when it comes to security.

    There are many other countries that have Tamils and if they are not prepared to take them, then they should be returned to Sri Lanka and the Government held accountable for their safety.

    I agree, they should not be held in limbo, at Australian taxpayers expense.

    ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    KJ :

    25 Oct 2011 12:58:16pm

    Why wouldn’t the so called Tamil ‘refugees’ go accross the Palk Straight to Tamilnadu (histyoric tamil homeland)?? Which is just 20 miles from the Northern Sri Lanka!!

    ReplyAlert moderator

    • 
      

      billie :

      25 Oct 2011 4:35:03pm

      If you want to send Tamils back to their historic homeland of Tamil Naidu get ready to be transported back to your historic homeland in Europe that your family left 50 to 200 years ago

      ReplyAlert moderator
    • 
      

      Rohan :

      25 Oct 2011 7:43:34pm

      It is so easy to shout from here. There are over 150,000 Tamil refugees in various camps and live in lodges and with friends and relatives. Check the facts before opening the keyboard.

      ReplyAlert moderator
• 
  

  Karen W :

  25 Oct 2011 8:45:50am

  Thank you Bruce Haigh for this piece. I would like to know what Australia is prepared to do to improve the lives of Tamils in Sri Lanka. It is clearly wrong for our efforts to be focussed simply on preventing Tamils from seeking refugee status in Australia. The plight of the Tamils must be kept in the forefront of international affairs and all pressure must be applied to the Sinhalese government of Sri Lanka to cease the abuses and reconcile with the Tamil people.

  ReplyAlert moderator

  • 
    

    Simon G :

    25 Oct 2011 11:42:38am

    Karen you are either naive or misguided.

    Just 15 nautical miles from Sri Lanka is a place called TAMIL NADU (Tamil translated to English, that means TAMIL NATION) state in India where 65 Million Tamils live. This is the true "homeland" of Sri Lankan Tamils and it is there they would run to if they are persecuted or whatever and historically, they have always been welcomed there with open arm, although the living conditions there are far from what they would get in Melbourne or Sydney’ under the Australian Government funded "refugee" welfare programs. Now if you still insist, ask yourself the question: Why are there so many Tamil "refugees" trying to come to Australia! Bingo!

    ReplyAlert moderator

    • 
      

      Jacoob :

      25 Oct 2011 1:57:35pm

      Aney Deiyane ( Translated from Sinhalese “ oh my God”) ,

      The question is NOT why they cannot do 15 nautical miles instead of all the way to Australia BUT why in the first place they even consider leaving, FYI , there are lot of countries in the world where living standards is inferior to what is available in Sri lanka. But why people from those countries do not think of leaving those countries.

      Maty, you got to complete your primary, secondary and also higher secondary b4 thinking of entering university . Try to get the fundamentals correct first.

      Cheers , Jacoob

      ReplyAlert moderator

      • 
        

        Bud :

        25 Oct 2011 3:19:42pm

        "FYI , there are lot of countries in the world where living standards is inferior to what is available in Sri lanka. But why people from those countries do not think of leaving those countries."

        The answer is, because all those people from those countries where the living standards are inferior know that they get no chance in getting the refugee visa, as they cannot get into the ‘refugee’ basket of the UN.

        ReplyAlert moderator
      • 
        

        Thamilselvan’s Ghost :

        25 Oct 2011 3:28:05pm

        The fact is genuine refugees did take the short trip over to Tamil Nadu; these are the same ones who have been filtering back into Sri Lanka since the end of the war. The ones who skipped hopped and jumped over dozens of safe countries in search of economic gains are the ones now making noise about Sri Lanka. Even when the terrorist Tigers had de facto control of their mythical "Eelam" nation none of them would have even dreamed of returning from their ghettos in the 1st world.

        ReplyAlert moderator
      • 
        

        Peace for the world :

        25 Oct 2011 5:37:57pm

        There cannot be two homelands.

        Tamils have one in Tamil Nadu in India.

        Also these Tamils did originally come to the North of Sri Lanka through invasions and also by the English bringing them to work on the Tea palntations.

        Anyway this issue has been blown out of proportion by the pro LTTE Mafia and their cahoots who are paid well with their BLOOD money earned in the past 30 years.

        Majority of Tamils are living in the Sinhala population mostly in the south.

        Also Sinhalese are now a minority in the Capital Colombo.

        These are NEVER revealed to the world by these pro LTTE rump operating internationally.

        It is a shame thta journalism has fallen to the gutter with ethical standards at an all time low.

        Bruce Haig take a deep breath and do some meditation to calm your evil mind!

        ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    Dingo :

    25 Oct 2011 11:44:52am

    Karen W,

    If you believe in the cause, then the question is what are YOU going to do to improve the lives of Tamils.

    Its easy to be noble when taxpayers money is used and someone else has to do the dirty work.

    Enough of our soliders have died trying to sort out other people problems.

    Their problem, only the Tamils and the Sri Lanka govt to resolve it.

    ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    JoeBloggs :

    25 Oct 2011 12:13:44pm

    What are the Tamils doing to reconcile with the Sinhalese majority who they persecuted for years when the place was run by the Tamils for the British?

    ReplyAlert moderator

    • 
      

      Heavensake :

      25 Oct 2011 4:47:18pm

      Hope you have conveniently forgotten the fact that Sir Pon Ramanathan went all the way to UK for fight for the rights of the Sinhalas.

      ReplyAlert moderator
  • 
    

    Colin :

    25 Oct 2011 2:35:31pm

    Karen my dear,

    I always tell my 6 year old daugther not to trust everything they tell you and the same goes for you. We aussies are so naive and trusty when it comes to humility and that’s what these terror cohorts try to exploit. Bruce Haige has been long known as an LTTE crony and this whole article is just smoke and mirrors. LTTE has plenty of blood money to splash on these journos, ex politicos and the Greens, whoever supports their baseless alegations. None of the nasty acts Bruce is yapping about in this one sided article is really happening. So, relax and crack a stubby. Cheers!

    ReplyAlert moderator