Channel 4 screened this last night. At 23:05. Way past the watershed because the scenes were too distressing and some quite gruesome. For those outside of the UK – it can be watched on 4OD here.
My FB , texts, emails and Twitter were bombarded with reminders and pleas urging friends and families to watch it. To spread the word and help raise the profile of it. I did the same.
Tamils in the Diaspora are labelled as “terrorist sympathisers” because they want to see people brought to justice for the death of innocent Tamil civilians.
The short documentary shows footage from civilian recordings and from military personnel (trophy videos I call them!). I cannot even begin to explain how I felt seeing this stuff.
Let’s face it – the end of the civil war in SL was a bloody one. I mean wars usually are. And the defeat of the LTTE signifies hope and peace for the beautiful island but it was at a big cost to the civilians that were caught in the no fire safety zone.
The no fire safety zone – created by the GOSL and its military powers so that civilians leaving the north would be able to be safe. Encouraged to stay there for their own safety only to be bombarded by shelling and artillery fire. By both sides. I don’t doubt that the LTTE didn’t have some part to play in the deaths of civilians by using them not only as human shields but their own shelling in retaliation to the attack by the military forces in the “no fire safety zone” (they might even have instigated it – but without independent reporting, we’ll never know).
The report calls for an independent war crime investigation. The UN published a report in April 2011 that as many as 40000 people died in the final weeks of the civil war and the report states that Ban Ki-Moon refuses to call for an independent inquiry.
The UN is a complete and utter joke. How can it be taken seriously when it talks of war crimes in Libya but Ban-Ki Moon ignores them elsewhere? Are civilian casualties not important when they are in the third world?! Or when there is a lack of oil profits available? How disheartening is it that a human life is worth so much less than the commodity that is oil?!
Look at the similarities between Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb army chief and what happened in Srebrenica and what has happened in SL. Will the world need to wait an excess amount of years before someone is to answer for the deaths?
It will be said that this is LTTE propaganda and in all fairness the documentary does not present a balanced view (in my humble opinion). Both sides are to blame and both should face the consequences. But the GoSL should hand over the captured LTTE members (if in fact they are still alive) so that they can also face charges against them for war crimes.
You judge a person by the company they keep. SL allies itself with China, Russia, Iran and Israel – all countries with questionable human rights and still the UN stands by and does nothing. The worst thing is - SL gets it weapons from these countries but these countries get it from the USA/UK. It's a joke!
I don’t live in SL. I never have. I will never know what it’s like to experience being a Tamil in SL first hand. Nor will I never know what it is like questioning whether I would have able to board a bus safely in the Colombo without fearing for my life. So my writings here are a reflection of what I have seen, heard and do know.
What I do know is that it is not our place to take peoples’ lives.
It’s not a question of LTTE vs. GoSL. It’s not a question of Tamils vs. Sinhalese. It’s a question of how were tens of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians were allowed to die and nobody did anything to stop it. And now nobody is doing anything to question it.
