Slaughter in Sri Lanka
On 18 May 2009 the Sri Lankan regime declared
victory in its 25-year war against the Tamil Tigers. In the final weeks
of the conflict, at least 40,000 Tamils, the vast majority civilians,
were massacred as the armed forces bombarded hospitals, food lines and
camps. SENAN, international coordinator for
Tamil
Solidarity, reviews a graphic first-person account of the slaughter.
The Cage: The fight for Sri Lanka and the last days of the Tamil
Tigers
By Gordon Weiss
The Bodley Head, 2011, £14.99
THE CAGE IS significant because of the information
it gives on the final phase of the war in Sri Lanka that ended in May
2009. Gordon Weiss’s position as United Nations (UN) spokesperson during
the war gives the book authority. His description of what took place as
a "bloodbath" has provoked anger from Sri Lankan officials, who are
trying to dismiss this book as a fantasy.
One of the government’s loyal servants, Rajiva
Wijesinha, a writer and language professor, says Weiss was irritated
with his superiors, had "a lot of trouble with his own junior staff",
and pushed his own "particular agendas, some insidious, some based on
idealism". Set apart from the UN staff and journalists who stuck to the
official line, Weiss is seen as an odd one out, dismissed as an idealist
because he dared to reveal some of what was going on. Weiss admits that
he did not have his own way with the chain of command. As a UN
spokesperson he was prevented from speaking out despite eyewitness
accounts of war crimes collected by UN staff.
The title, The Cage, is a reference to the tiny part
of northern Sri Lanka into which tens of thousands of Tamil-speaking
people were pushed and bombed. The book points to the failure of the UN
to protect them. And it is a devastating account of the human rights
violations of the Sri Lankan regime headed by president Mahinda
Rajapaksa.
An eyewitness report of the decimation of the last
UN convoy, Convoy 11, provides a graphic account of the "intentional
murder of civilians", in the words of Harun Khan, the retired
Bangladeshi army general who led the convoy. Weiss details several
massacres, including the repeated bombardment of hospitals and so-called
‘no-fire zones’ where shells fell among densely packed civilians.
Despite the UNHCR’s frantic attempts to communicate their coordinates
and the civilian presence to the military high command, the bombing
continued.
The book catalogues the struggle between the defence
ministry and those humanitarian agencies and journalists who dared to
stand up to the regime’s false propaganda. The regime claimed that this
was a "zero civilian causality war", the "largest hostage rescue
operation in the world". This argument was used as a cover to attack,
abduct or murder those who raised concern over civilian casualties.
Yet, nowhere does Weiss explicitly assert that war
crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan regime. To those who see the
outcome of the war as positive, he asks: "Were the deaths of between
10,000 and 40,000 people an inescapable fact of war, and thus forgivable
in the ultimate search for a just and stable Sri Lanka?" He does not
answer this directly. Incidentally, the figure of 40,000 is widely
recognised as an absolute minimum.
Months of massacre
THE WAR WAS almost over by 25 January 2009, when
Mullaitivu fell into the hands of the military. Here, a large number of
cadres from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were killed.
Even before then, Tamil Tiger fighters sensed defeat. What took place in
the following months until 17 May was the brutal hunting down of wounded
Tigers and an unrelenting massacre of civilians.
The LTTE was in retreat and was beginning to look
for a way out of the war. On 31 January, around 200,000 Tamils took to
the streets in London demanding an end to the conflict. Similar massive
demonstrations followed across the world wherever Tamil-speaking people
lived. In February, the LTTE put out a low-profile call for a
‘negotiated surrender’. Weiss denounces this as a "classic Tiger
strategy", echoing the Sri Lankan regime’s position. In April, defence
minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa denounced the ceasefire offer as a joke.
Weiss fails to recognise the importance of this – to do so would go to
the heart of the military’s brutal killings.
By 20 January, soon after the no-fire zone (NFZ)
along the A35 road was declared it was crowded with people. Heavy
shelling of Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) forced people into the NFZ. Then
artillery began to fall among them. These NFZs "had little to do with
protecting civilian lives and everything to do with their removal as an
obstacle to unrestrained firepower", notes Weiss.
Khan said: "It was not directed fire, but the kind
of indiscriminate covering barrage that is used to shield an advance.
But it was non-stop, and it was striking the field full of people".
Incredibly, Khan survived seven hours of non-stop bombing on one day and
heavy bombardment for the next two days until 25 January. Immediately
afterwards, army commander General Sarath Fonseka remarked that "95% of
the war is over".
The military knew that the Tamil Tigers had
sustained heavy losses and that large numbers of elite cadres had
probably been killed in this operation. A humanitarian emergency
developed with a lack of food and medicine for thousands of badly
injured civilians. Thousands of dead bodies were left among the injured
while the military continued the killings.
On 27 January, Colonel R Hariharan, a retired Indian
military intelligence officer who headed the Indian army when it fought
the LTTE in 1989, stated that the ‘real’ end would not be achieved until
"most of the cadres are killed or caught", and that the death of Tamil
Tiger leader Prabhakaran was the only way to finish off the LTTE. This
was the policy the Sri Lankan military followed, fully backed by Indian
intelligence and military forces. The Sri Lankan regime continued its
indiscriminate massacre of civilians until 18 May, when Prabhakaran’s
death was announced along with an end of the war.
Those who fought the Sri Lankan army were mostly
conscripted fighters, young people forcefully recruited and pushed into
the frontline. Absolute chaos existed among civilians trying to flee and
even among the LTTE ranks. Communication between different groups of
fighters had largely broken down. There was no chain of command. In the
midst of this chaos, civilians fell victim to military bombardments and
LTTE guns.
Indiscriminate attack
WEISS GIVES A glimpse of the indiscriminate attacks
of the military: "More than 65 attacks took place on hospitals and
clinics… In the last ten days of January, for example, three different
hospitals sustained five strikes that killed 17 people and wounded
another 68… In the first ten days of February, there were eight strikes
on three hospitals, including multiple strikes on the same day that
probably killed around 100 people".
People ran to hospitals, schools and Red Cross and
UN-marked buildings in the hope that the military might refrain from
firing there. People tried to prevent the UN from leaving. UN officers
on the ground did their best to communicate their presence to the Sri
Lankan government. Khan, for example, was in contact with Jagath
Jayasuriya, commander of the security forces headquarters in Vanni who
reported to Fonseka. UN security chief, Chris du Toit, was in touch with
senior army officers, including Donald Perera, overall commander of the
armed forces, as well as with Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Despite this,
civilians were targeted mercilessly.
Instead of unreserved opposition to the targeting of
civilians, Weiss points to the US air force’s Intelligence Targeting
Guide. This guide has not stopped the US or its Nato allies from bombing
civilians in places like Afghanistan. Weiss’s dangerous conclusion
effectively means that it was OK to bomb a hospital if LTTE fighters had
taken refuge there. This is particularly horrific because people
gathered in these places in a desperate attempt to survive. The LTTE
strategy of using civilian places to hide is well-known and was exposed
from 1989 when it fought the Indian military. But that is no excuse for
bombing these areas. Many reports, including those of hospital staff,
indicate that the LTTE did not fire from hospitals.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared that anything outside
the NFZ was a legitimate target – while bombing continued inside the NFZ.
Not only did the Sri Lankan military force people into tiny areas to
kill them, but it also fired at fleeing civilians, such as the 60 killed
at Omanthai checkpoint. The military killed most of those who
surrendered at the end of the war, in summary executions sanctioned by
the tops of the regime.
Shamefully, the surrender negotiations included the
UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the
Norwegian government, along with members of the Tamil National Alliance,
a Tamil political party. They had spoken directly to government
ministers, Basil Rajapaksa and Palitha Kohona. It is disgraceful that
they did not openly state that they knew about the surrender in advance.
Some of those involved in the surrender negotiations are outside the
country now but have so far failed to speak out. The UN should publicise
all the details of the negotiations. Even though there is widespread
acceptance that the Sri Lankan regime committed war crimes, the UN is
still withholding information.
Western hypocrisy
WEISS TRIES TO explain the failure of the ICRC by
saying that it protects its "commitment to discretion and neutrality" so
that it can provide a "lifeline to utterly defenceless people who might
otherwise simply disappear". This is hypocritical. Weiss points out the
ICRC’s role in visiting Nazi camps during the second world war and not
broadcasting the horrors that lay within. Neutrality is a dirty word
when it is used to justify silence in the face of slaughter. Such
silence only serves those who commit the barbaric acts. The ICRC
consistently compromises civilian lives to maintain its dealings with
notorious governments.
Weiss says that the UN has a "sovereignty-centred
character", and that the conflicting interests of member states handicap
it. He correctly points out: "The UN relies on the fiction that it is a
single body". This means it is unable to act against the interests of
countries which hold veto power on the security council.
Weiss avoids any serious criticism of his former
employer. Yet the UN has consistently failed to prevent massacres or
humanitarian crises. It is dominated by the US, and thus also by the
interests of the multinational companies it represents. The US will use
the UN where useful and ignore it where necessary. Where the UN
frustrates the US, for example voting against war in Iraq in 2003, it is
circumvented. The UN’s weakness is illustrated by the fact that it has
passed more than 50 resolutions against Israel’s occupation of
Palestinian territory and yet the US veto means they are never acted on.
At times, governments of neo-colonial countries gang
up to advance their own interests. This is exploited by these
governments to get away with murder. This tactic was used by the Sri
Lankan regime just after end of the war was declared. The former Sri
Lankan ambassador to the UN, Dayan Jayatilleka, attacked the western
powers at the eleventh special session of the UNHCR in May 2009 to win
the support of the so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ states. Referring to the
western powers he said: "These are the same people who told the world
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I wouldn’t buy a used car from
these people let alone allegations of war crimes". Gotabaya Rajapaksa
went further: "They are jealous of us because they have not defeated
terrorism as we have".
The hypocrisy of western governments is seen by the
fact that they are responsible for many massacres – in turn used by the
Sri Lankan regime to defend its own actions. Supporter of the Sri Lankan
regime and so-called expert on terrorism, professor Rohan Gunaratna,
argued: "In Iraq and Afghanistan where over a million civilians have
been killed, there is no UN panel advising the UN secretary general to
investigate war crimes".
Spheres of influence
ONE OF THE major concerns for western powers is the
growing Chinese influence in the region. So they have been careful not
to alienate the Sri Lankan regime. They fear that a war crimes
investigation may push Sri Lanka further into the hands of China,
eroding their influence. For that reason the western powers are willing
to talk about crimes as a ‘violation’ but are not prepared to take any
action. The ideal situation for them would be the replacement of the
blood-stained Rajapaksa with a ‘cleaner’ figurehead. Western powers
certainly have been quick to capitalise on the hoped for post-war
economic growth. In July 2009, the IMF approved a $2.6 billion loan, and
Canada tripled its ‘aid’ to Sri Lanka.
In fact, it was the mass mobilisation of diaspora
Tamils in countries like Britain that did the most to draw attention in
the west to the massacres.
The vast majority in the world are left to starve
and die by hunger and war. They do not have any political
representation. The UN is a body of governments most of which brutally
suppress the democratic rights of their own people. Those who are chosen
to occupy decision-making positions in the UN rely on the blessing of
the major powers.
Weiss’s narration of the methods of senior members
of the UN is shockingly revealing: "The secretary general [Ban-Ki Moon]
had known the president [Mahinda Rajapaksa] for some years. He felt that
he had the kind of personal leverage that would achieve real results…"
Weiss describes how Ban replied to a journalist who asked him why he
came late to the conflict, and why the UN is "continually going to Sri
Lanka as a petitioner". Ban boasted that he had been in touch with the
regime from "the beginning of the crisis… making phone calls all the
time, even until just right before and after the conflict". Ban claims
that Rajapaksa assured him of a meaningful enquiry. If this is to be
believed, the secretary general of the UN relied naively on telephone
promises from Sri Lanka’s president.
Meanwhile, he sat silently on the pile of
information and eyewitness accounts from his own staff of the massacres
– and as tens of thousands marched through London and other cities,
crying out: ‘Ban Ki-Moon, Ban Ki-Moon, save the Tamils’. In reality, the
leader of the UN was using his power to prevent information about the
killings being revealed. No wonder Tamil-speaking people’s anger has
turned on the UN, widely seen as having blood on its hands.
A leaked memo of Norway’s deputy UN ambassador, Mona
Juul, revealed where Ban’s interests lie: "China is happy with Ban’s
performance". (China was the first to support Ban’s re-election as
secretary general; Sri Lanka also supported his candidacy.) Juul
attacked Ban as a "powerless observer", "passive and not very
committed". In Sri Lanka, the UN stood by while a personal ally of the
secretary general commanded a massacre of thousands. It stood by while
its staff were bombed and its rights were restricted.
Justifiable homicide?
IN SRI LANKA there is an attempt at an ‘intellectual
justification’ for the war and horror. For those who looked for a quick
fix, the main obstacles were the major players in the conflict. An
‘easy’ way out was seen as the elimination of one side! Weiss states:
"The conquest of the Tigers was a resounding military success". His only
concern seems to be the way the war was conducted. Had the Sri Lankan
regime respected ‘international law’ and minimised the casualties,
apparently, all would have been well for Weiss.
The regime was determined to inflict an irreversible
defeat on the LTTE and Tamil-speaking people through a bloody massacre.
Removing the LTTE from the picture has not resolved the conflict,
however. Until there is a real solution to the national question, the
Tamils’ struggle will continue to erupt in one way or another.
The LTTE had not survived for so long merely through
‘brutal control’. Its strength came mainly from the support that emerged
among the Tamil-speaking people whose national aspirations did not find
political representation. But the methods of the LTTE failed, as it
sought to control the fight-back from above rather than mobilising the
masses in the battle for the democratic, national and social rights of
all Tamil-speaking people.
Claiming that it was the sole representative of the
Tamil-speaking people (including the diaspora), decisions were left in
the hands of an undemocratic few who were not answerable to the broader
masses. This partially alienated the wider mass from participation. The
LTTE used the mass as a resource and demanded unconditional support.
This led to a series of mistakes, such as attacks on Tamil-speaking
Muslims (mostly in the eastern province), clamping down on dissent, etc.
This, in turn, aided the Sri Lankan regime’s campaign to proscribe the
Tamil Tigers’ international operations.
Clearly, the working class, poor and oppressed, when
faced with military occupation, have every right to armed self-defence.
When organised democratically, this can form an important part of mass,
united, non-sectarian struggle organised under the leadership of the
working class. One of the LTTE’s crucial mistakes was not to appeal to
those in the Sinhala majority south who continued to fight bravely for
Tamil-speaking people’s rights. It also failed to engage politically
with the vast Tamil-speaking population in southern India, and to build
solidarity with the struggling masses in South Asia and around the
world.
Guerrilla tactics linked to terrorist methods such
as suicide bombing were, by and large, a reaction to the brutal
repression carried out by the oppressive state. As a method of struggle,
however, it is always used by the oppressors as an excuse to wipe out
the resistance as a whole. It also reflects the lack of confidence in
the revolutionary masses on the part of activists and can only be
maintained by exploiting the weakness and disorganisation of the masses.
Putting itself above the movement inevitably led to
many mistakes by the LTTE leaders. Colonel Karuna, the eastern commander
of the LTTE whose defection played a key role in weakening the LTTE, is
now a deputy leader of Rajapaksa’s Sri Lankan Freedom Party. Kumaran
Pathmanathan took control of the LTTE leadership after the war, but is
now working with the Sri Lankan defence ministry.
Destroying the LTTE has not eliminated the struggle.
Only a political solution that addresses the national aspirations of the
Tamil-speaking people would bring a lasting solution. In this respect,
the "resounding military success" of the Sri Lankan armed forces is
completely hollow and will not provide the basis for a lasting solution
to the national conflict.
February to May 2009 cannot be described as a war.
It was a bloody massacre. For bravely exposing this brutal final phase,
Gordon Weiss deserves the highest credit. It is also important to
emphasise the extent to which the Sri Lankan regime was prepared to go
to wipe out the LTTE and its supporters, overwhelmingly civilians. |