Human Rights
International groups examine Sri Lanka war crimes allegations
[stream flv=
Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.
It’s been just two years since some resemblance of peace returned to the island nation of Sri Lanka, with its 25-year civil war drawing to a close. But now, Britain’s Independent Television News charges that government forces herded thousands of Tamil civilians into a “no-fire zone” and opened fire on them. Ray Suarez discusses allegations that Sri Lankan forces killed thousands of civilians toward the end of the country’s civil war with Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the U.S. Jaliya Wickramasuriya and Mark Schneider of The International Crisis Group.
watch full video at Sri Lankan government accused of human rights abuses
warning: Some of the documentary material includes disturbing images.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Next tonight, the deadly and gruesome end to a civil war in South Asia.
Ray Suarez begins with some background.
RAY SUAREZ: It’s been just two years since some semblance of peace returned to Sri Lanka, once famed for its tea and beaches. For more than 25 years, beginning in 1983, a civil war raged in the north and east of the tropical island nation off southern India. Militant members of the Tamil minority, the so-called Tamil Tigers, fought a guerrilla war for independence against a government run by the Sinhalese majority.
The Tigers were accused of dozens of suicide bombings in the capital, Colombo, during the 1990s, and human rights groups reported atrocities by both sides during the conflict. The U.N. has reported at least 40,000 civilians, more than half the toll for the entire war, died in the final months of the fighting, in late 2008 and 2009.
Now Britain’s Independent Television News has charged that Sri Lankan government forces herded thousands of Tamil civilians into a no-fire zone and then opened fire on them.
Sri Lanka Accused of Human Rights Abuses on Tamils
Jon Snow narrated the ITN documentary “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.”
JON SNOW: There were between 300,000 and 400,000 people living in the no-fire zone. Satellite and drone footage meant the U.N. and other powers knew a great deal about what went on throughout the war in the no-fire zones. In their Colombo H.Q., the U.N. monitored what happened.
Was it safe in the no-fire zones?
GORDON WEISS, former United Nations spokesman in Sri Lanka: No, it wasn’t. The no-fire zone was taking significant amounts of shelling from the government of Sri Lanka. And it was killing civilians.
JON SNOW: The U.N. special panel report published this April found that government heavy artillery was constantly retargeted in the so-called no-fire zones.
Yet, the Sri Lankan government continued to insist it was engaged in a humanitarian rescue operation, with a policy of zero civilian casualties. In April, the government adopted a new approach. They focused a lethal barrage of heavy shelling along a line stretching back from a temporary hospital in Putumattalan, splitting off a section of the zone.
GORDON WEISS: The government cut the sand spit in half, so that 80,000 to 100,000 civilians flooded out and were shipped off to internment camps inside government-held territory.
JON SNOW: This is government footage of some of those fleeing civilians before they were taken into custody by the army. But no one knows how many had died in the assault.
RAY SUAREZ: The other serious charges against the government in the program come from footage too graphic for us to show. The video was apparently shot by government soldiers themselves, and includes extensive evidence of rape, torture and extrajudicial killings of captive Tamil soldiers.
JON SNOW: As thousands of terrified survivors struggled to escape the slaughter at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in May 2009, triumphant government forces made sure no international observers were allowed anywhere near.
The reason is now clear. Whilst the world was shown these official images of government forces meeting triumphantly on the beach, other members of those same forces were committing a series of horrific war crimes.
The reason we know about these crimes is that some of them were recorded on mobile phones as grotesque war trophies.
RAY SUAREZ: British Prime Minister David Cameron called today for an investigation into the allegations. His government said the documentary shows convincing evidence of violations of human rights in Sri Lanka.
RAY SUAREZ: Late today, we heard the response of Sri Lanka’s government from the island nation’s ambassador to the U.S., Jaliya Wickramasuriya. We spoke with him here at the embassy in Washington.
JALIYA WICKRAMASURIYA, Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States: We believe that this video not authentic. This is produced as a piece of propaganda.
RAY SUAREZ: The documentary goes much further than the video and says that the government created a no-fire zone, asked Tamil civilians to enter it, and then made artillery strikes on these places, involving widespread killing of civilians.
[stream flv=
Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.
JALIYA WICKRAMASURIYA: All this is propaganda.
A lot of people can say a lot of things. We like to see credible evidence for anything. For any war, anybody can say, you know, this person was killed by an army artillery or the LTTE artillery. So, we need to see the evidence to believe that. So, in fact, as you know, what we did was, as a government, we rescued nearly 300,000 innocent civilians who were just taken by the LTTE, by this terrorist group, as human shields.
As a government, we started safe passages. And, also, we had to open up enough roads and take out these innocent civilians. In fact, we lost more than 6,000 soldiers by trying to do that. Our president has created a commission called Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. We do not want this bloody war come again. But we have suffered enough.
And we are Sri Lankans. As Sri Lankan people, we do not want these terrorists to come back. That is the very reason president of Sri Lanka appointed this very, very, very prestigious commission.
RAY SUAREZ: You can watch all the documentary “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: on Channel 4’s Web site.
And for more on the international response to the allegations of mass killing, we go to Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group. He is in charge of advocacy with the U.S. government and international organizations.
And, Mark Schneider, does the information that the ICG has support Channel 4’s documentary?
MARK SCHNEIDER, International Crisis Group: It does, indeed.
And we issued a report a year ago that, in fact, found the tens of thousands of civilians that had been killed in the final months of the war, and specifically, as the documentary indicated, most of them had come into these areas that the government promised were going to be safe, so-called no-fire zones.
In fact, the government really turned them into free-fire zones, in which they shelled hospitals, food centers. And, in the end, actually, as people were leaving the area, after the war essentially was over, as you have seen from the documentary, there were summary executions of individuals. Some of those leaders who allegedly were seeking to surrender apparently also were killed.
And this comes to us now also from a special panel of experts that the United Nations secretary-general appointed to look into these questions.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, you say you issued this report a year ago. Why do you think there was so little international interest in killing on this scale?
MARK SCHNEIDER: I think the reality is that all of us recognize that the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, were a terrorist organization that had carried out horrendous acts themselves, suicide bombings, et cetera.
And what we basically said, though, is that this cannot justify a government and its armed forces carrying out essentially the same kinds of acts of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law. Unfortunately, there was no immediate venue for someone to carry out the investigation because the government refused to permit international human rights or other kinds of inquiries.
RAY SUAREZ: As you heard, the ambassador talked about the Lessons Learned Reconciliation Commission, a Sri Lankan investigation into the events in the final months of the war, and said, because of the existence of that commission, Sri Lanka will not cooperate with any further U.N. investigation.
MARK SCHNEIDER: Well, we hope that the United States government, that the United Kingdom and others will press the secretary-general, in fact, to form his own international commission of inquiry. That’s really the only hope we have.
The fact is, is that that Lessons Learned Commission is totally biased. The U.N. panel of experts said it fails to meet international standards. It’s chaired by the former — the former attorney general of this government. It has in that commission several members who are government representatives as well.
And so it fails basically in terms of finding the truth, and it fails also in the ability to actually bring charges against those it finds to be responsible. One other point I would make is that going up to the — those who are responsible at the top levels of the government, one has to ask the United States, the U.K. and others to investigate who among their citizens, dual citizens, had responsibilities for carrying out the war policy.
In this case, the former — the minister of defense and the adviser to the president, both brothers of the president, we have heard are dual citizens of the United States. One would hope that that would be investigated here.
RAY SUAREZ: Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group, thanks for joining us.
MARK SCHNEIDER: Thank you.
Courtesy: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june11/srilanka1_06-15.html
3 Comments to “International groups examine Sri Lanka war crimes allegations”
June 24, 2011 at 9:30 am
The answers to all the questions raised on the killing of civilians IN NO FIRE ZONES was answered by Maj,General Shvendra Silva OUR PRESENT PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE IN THE UN AS HE HAS FIRST HAND INFORMATION ON WHAT HAPPENED ON THE GROUND AS HE COMMANDED THE 58TH DIVISION AT THE FINAL STAGES OF THE CONFLICT.HE SAID THAT THE LTTE MOVED HEAVY ARTILLERY TO THE NO FIRE ZONES AND HERDED THE CIVILIANS AS HUMAN SHIELDS TO PROTECT THE ARTILLERY AND STARTED FIRING.WHEN THE CIVILIANS RAN AWAY THE LTTE SHOT DOWN THOSE FLEEING AND THAT IS THE MANNER IN WHICH THE SAID MASSACRE TOOK PLACE.THE ARMY WAS UNDER ORDERS TO MAINTAIN ZERO CASUALTY LEVELS.
THESE PEOPLE SHOULD REFRAIN FROM TRANSFERRING THE ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY THE LTTE ON THE HEROIC SRI LANKA ARMY.
November 12, 2011 at 10:32 pm
Real brain power on dipsaly. Thanks for that answer!
June 22, 2011 at 8:53 am
Can there be a human face in a war?. Beautiful words to mislead the common citizens