| Al Jazeera, April 28, 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||
The United Nations’ humanitarian affairs chief has failed in his attempt to bring a halt to fighting between government forces and Tamil Tiger separatists in Sri Lanka. John Holmes was unable to get permission from Mahinda Rajapkase, the Sri Lankan president, to allow a UN aid mission into a pocket of rebel-held land that is surrounded by the Sri Lankan military. “We don’t have agreement on this [failure to get a UN team into the conflict zone] … I am disappointed about this,” Holmes said during his visit to the country on Monday. The United Nations estimates that up to 50,000 non-combatants are still in the conflict zone, although the government maintains that the number is less than 20,000. The Sri Lankan military said on Monday that it had ordered its troops to end the use of heavy weaponry and aerial bombardment in their fight against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. ‘No change’ Holmes met Rohitha Bogollagama, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, before visiting camps in northern Vavuniya where more than 113,000 civilians have sought refuge in camps that are overcrowded and still without enough supplies.
But David Chater, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, said that the UN official had not managed to secure access to the combat zone for a small team from the world body. “Absolutely nothing has changed as a result of John Holmes’ visit, apart from another ten million dollars in humanitarian aid being pledged,” Chater reported. “[That money could provide] at least a bit of relief for those who got out of the combat zone, but no relief for those still inside.” Aid organisations, journalists and other independent observers are banned from entering the conflict zone, making independent assessment of the continuing fighting impossible. Sweden’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that he has been refused entry to Sri Lanka on a European mediating mission aimed at bringing about an immediate ceasefire between the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE. Carl Bildt was due to visit the country on Wednesday with his British and French counterparts, but he told the Associated Press that Sri Lankan authorities did not give him permission to enter the country. David Miliband, the British foreign minister, and Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, will be allowed into the country, Bildt said. ‘Army halted’
The Sri Lankan government said on Monday that it would stop intensive fighting against the LTTE in an effort to ease the suffering of civilians, although the statement contradicted earlier assertions that it would continue its fight against the Tigers who had offered a ceasefire on Sunday.A statement from the president’s office said on Monday: “Combat operations have reached their conclusion.” Soldiers will “confine their attempts to rescue civilians who are held hostage and give foremost priority to saving civilians”. The military has also ordered troops not to use “heavy-calibre guns, combat aircraft or aerial weapons, which could cause civilian casualties”, the statement said. The Sri Lankan government had previously said that no heavy weapons were being used in populated areas and that the operation was merely a “rescue” exercise. But Chater said that hostilities had not necessarily ended. “The government is determined there should be no pause in the fighting … [The government] says it knows how ruthless [the Tamil Tigers] are and have no intention of negotiating with them unless they lay down their arms and surrender.” LTTE accusation A pro-Tamil Tiger website on Tuesday accused the military of continuing to pound areas of the conflict zone populated by civilian. Thileevan, an LTTE spokesman inside the conflict zone, also told Al Jazeera that the area had been shelled heavily. “We don’t know how many people were killed because we could not get out of this area. But when I went to the hospital this morning I saw hundreds of severely wounded people,” he said on Tuesday.
“We ask the international community to intervene in this problem and save our people… We [the LTTE] carry weapons to save our people and protect their rights.”A day earlier, the Tamilnet website quoted S Puleedevan, an LTTE spokesman, as saying the government’s announcement on non-use of heavy weapons was an attempt “to deceive the international community, including the people of Tamil Nadu [a Tamil-majority Indian province]”. The Sri Lankan military has denied the LTTE claims, but says it is aiming to capture more territory and that its aim is to wipe out the Tamil Tigers. Tamils in India have been pressuring the Indian government to intervene to bring about a ceasefire in Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, Sri Lankan forces are continuing with “humanitarian operations aimed at rescuing” the remaining civilians trapped in the island’s northeast, where the LTTE is defending a narrow strip of jungle, the military said on Monday. “We reduced the coastline they have to 6km from 8km last week,” Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman, said. “Our operations are continuing, and yesterday we managed to rescue another 3,200 civilians,” he said. About 110,000 civilians escaped from the LTTE-held combat zone last week after an ultimatum by the government for the Tamil Tigers to surrender. Sri Lanka’s government has said it is on the verge of defeating the LTTE after 37 years of conflict, and has consistently brushed off international calls for a truce. On Sunday, the government also rejected an LTTE call for a unilateral ceasefire. |
Posts Tagged ‘civilians’
Sri Lanka war zone closed to UN
April 28, 2009
Tamil ceasefire bid fails as fears grow for 50,000 trapped civilians
April 27, 2009By Ben Farmer | Irish Independent, Monday April 27, 2009
Sri Lanka‘s government last night rejected a ceasefire offered by Tamil Tiger rebels who said they were prepared to allow humanitarian workers access to up to 50,000 civilians trapped by fighting.
The unilateral offer came after the United Nations appealed for a ‘pause’ in the fighting, which is centred around a tiny strip of land in the north-east of the island.
But Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan defence minister, said the offer was a “joke” and instead demanded that the rebels surrender.
“There is no need of a ceasefire. They must surrender,” said Mr Rajapakse.
A Tiger statement announced the ceasefire “in the face of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and in response to the calls made by the UN, EU, the governments of India and others”.
The civilians are trapped in the last remaining Tiger enclave, where they have little food or clean water and are taking “very high” casualties, according to the UN.
John Holmes, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said there was an “urgent need” for aid agencies to get into the combat zone.
But government forces fear the Tigers will use a pause in fighting to regroup or escape.
A Tiger spokesman said that the group’s fighters would only keep their offer of a ceasefire if the government reciprocated.(©Daily Telegraph, London)
– Ben Farmer
Sri Lankan envoy rejects calls for ceasefire
April 26, 2009The Peninsula Online, April 25, 2009
Source: AFP
GENEVA: Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva yesterday rejected calls for a humanitarian pause in the Tamil conflict, saying temporary ceasefires did not work.
“The largest number of civilians who have come out (of the conflict zone) came out not during the humanitarian pause, not as a result of the humanitarian pause,” said Dayan Jayatilleke.
“They came out as a result of a military operation which … blindsided the .”
The United Nations on April 17 made a fresh call for humanitarian pauses to allow civilians to flee. Rajiva Wijesinha, who heads Sri Lanka’s government Secretariat for Coordination of the Peace Process, said in Geneva that 110,000 people have fled the conflict zone since renewed hostilities.
Jayatilleke and Wijesinha spoke in a press conference as hundreds of Tamils streamed into the main square outside the UN building a kilometre (half- mile) away to demonstrate against hostilities in the north of Sri Lanka.
Sheryl Mathavan, an organiser of the event, said “thousands are expected,” including about 2,000 from Switzerland and many other Tamils from other European countries. “We are demonstrating against genocide and racial discrimination in Sri Lanka. We want an immediate ceasefire. We want the UN to intervene to stop the genocide,” she said, as she joined demonstrators carrying the Tamil Tiger flag.
Both Sri Lankan officials criticised the demonstration, with Wijesinha saying he was “deeply upset that countries which have banned the Tigers are not treating this as terrorism.”
“How can Western liberal society permit a movement that is clearly militarised to use and misuse western democratic space in this manner?” Jayatilleke said.
Sri Lanka guilty of ‘humanitarian disaster’
April 24, 2009
American Jewish groups must speak up over Gaza
April 20, 2009It is a sensitive subject, but the movement for Gaza accountability needs full Jewish participation
guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 April 2009 09.00 BS
When Israeli forces left Gaza in January, they left behind 1,400 Palestinian dead, 4,000 homes destroyed, universities and government buildings flattened, and tens of thousands homeless. The Israeli and world press documented IDF atrocities including the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus in densely populated urban areas, the assault on United Nations humanitarian facilities, the shelling of civilian homes, and the shooting in cold blood of unarmed civilians.
Israeli human rights groups have called for war crimes investigations of IDF actions. In the last few weeks, on-the-ground reports supported by eyewitness testimony have become available. They paint an even more damning picture. The attacks on UN facilities spurred the Palestinian Authority to call for a security council investigation. Officials announced they are investigating whether the international body has jurisdiction, but it seems likely that US opposition will doom such an avenue of redress.
The UN human rights council has just appointed a distinguished jurist, Richard Goldstone, to head an investigation of both IDF and Palestinian actions in Gaza. The council made a wise choice in Goldstone, who served as chief prosecutor of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda: he has an impeccable record in his field and can be expected to issue a fair, balanced and thorough report.
Last week, Judge Balthazar Garzon announced the investigation of six Bush-era officials for devising a scheme that justified torture of terror suspects. With this development, it became clear there was a new method to hold violators accountable for their alleged crimes, and I am certain activists are already preparing dossiers for submission. Earlier this month, an international assemblage of individuals announced the formation of the Russell tribunal on Palestine. Modelled on the Russell tribunal on war crimes in Vietnam, and named after philosopher and peace campaigner Bertrand Russell, it aims to bring to bear international law as a force for adjudicating and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The tribunal will hear a legal case prepared by volunteer experts from around the world. A jury of respected individuals will hear evidence from both sides and announce its finding of guilt or innocence to the world.
There is one important consideration that should encourage Israel to participate. If it truly believes Palestinian rocket attacks constitute war crimes, then it should vigorously make this point. The tribunal has already taken pains to point out that this is a part of its mandate: “Do the means of resistance used by the Palestinians violate international law?” However, I would imagine that Israel will not participate.
While Israel’s savage assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon during the 2006 war generated an uproar, one wonders whether the massacres that occurred in Gaza crossed a moral threshhold. Can an effort to end Israeli impunity have real impact, both in terms of influencing world opinion and of impacting on Israeli behaviour? Israel has become an expert at wearing down its opponents, honing such skills during 40 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The question is: what, if anything, can the peace community do differently this time?
Each time the world witnesses another humanitarian tragedy resulting from Israeli military action, the outcry is louder. For example, the UN has never before entertained the possibility of investigating Israeli war crimes. The EU has informally made known that it intends to freeze a planned upgrade in relations with Israel and cancel of visit of Israel’s prime minister as an indirect result. American universities such as Hampshire College and church denominations such as the Presbyterians contemplate ever more seriously the issue of divestment. Gaza crossed a red line. Now, new methods of protest and new means of ensuring accountability must be devised.
Horrors such as the Gaza war also breathe new life into movements like the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions initiative. Recently, Naomi Klein and Rabbi Arthur Waskow engaged in a provocative debate at In These Times about BDS. The Gaza war made Klein a believer. Recently, Rabbi Brant Rosen wrote words that many in the American Jewish community might find heretical, that BDS could be a legitimate expression “of a weaker, dispossessed, disempowered people”.
There can be no doubt that horrors such as Gaza serve as moral ice-breakers in the psyche of diaspora Jews. Ideas that hitherto might have been taboo or “anti-Israel” become suddenly legitimate. As Israel drifts farther to the right, American Jews are challenged to respond morally. In this context, the forbidden becomes acceptable. Boycotts, divestment, sactions and war crimes investigations now appear tools through which to try to draw Israel back from the brink.
No major American-Jewish peace group has called for a Gaza war crimes investigation. It is a sensitive subject among diaspora Jews. But if Israeli human rights organisations can make such a call, there is no reason why Americans should be afraid to do so. The movement for Gaza accountability needs full Jewish participation.
My motivation in writing this is not to avenge the deaths of innocent Palestinians. Nor is it for pure justice. It is rather to bring Israel back from the brink. Like one of the slogans of the Israeli military during the Gaza war – “baal habayit hishtageya” (“the boss has lost it”) – Israel’s policy has verged on madness. Nor has it achieved its objective of pacifying Gaza or toppling Hamas. And isn’t one of the definitions of madness to repeat a behaviour even after it has failed, with the conviction that it will succeed the next time? When you see a loved one or family member descending into self-destruction, you reach out and help. My goal is to turn Israel away from the path of madness.
Sri Lanka’s war
April 15, 2009The Sri Lankan state is waging a brutal war on the island’s Tamil population. Yuri Prasad looks at some of the background to the conflict
A vicious and increasingly one-sided war is taking place on the island of Sri Lanka – a few dozen miles off the coast of south east India.
Utilising its own interpretation of the “war on terror” the Sri Lankan government is determined to crush the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who are better known as the Tamil Tigers.
In the process the military has effectively declared that all Tamil civilians are “terrorists”, hemming them into a strip of coastal land, the Jaffna Peninsula, while repeatedly bombing their schools, hospitals and shelters.
According to a recent United Nations report, up to 190,000 civilians have been sealed into this tiny area.
Last week the army’s guns targeted a makeshift hospital in the village of Putumattalan, killing dozens of the sick and injured. Countries in the West, including Britain, the island’s former colonial master, have supplied the weapons for this offensive.
On the rare occasions that the media cover the conflict it is presented as an unfathomable and ancient religious-ethnic rivalry, with the Buddhist Sinhalese government on one side, and the Hindu Tamils on the other.
But rather than an age-old clash between clearly defined groups, the civil war reflects the way that rival bands among the ruling class, and the middle classes that stand beneath them, have sought to use ethnic nationalism to further their own positions.
Just over 20 million people live in Sri Lanka, on an island about a quarter the size of Britain. The majority describe themselves as Buddhists and speak Sinhalese, but there are significant minorities of differing religions and languages.
Tamils in Sri Lanka, despite speaking a common language, are not a homogenous ethnic or religious group.
Sri Lankan Tamils, who make up around 4 percent of the population, have lived on the island for more than 600 years, and have, at various times, been represented in the upper echelons of society.
Indian Tamils were shipped into what was then British-controlled Ceylon in the middle of the 19th century. They were put to work on the tea plantations, and largely remain poor. The majority of Tamils are Hindu, but there are significant religious minorities among them.
Repeated and violent conflicts among the Sinhalese majority prove that it is also wrong to regard them as a single identity.
The British regime helped to lay the foundations for today’s conflict by using divide and rule to aid in its exploitation of the mass of the population.
It favoured the Tamil minority in order to encourage their loyalty. They were given preferences for lucrative jobs in government and were disproportionately represented in the island’s universities.
Nevertheless, there were few signs of animosity between Tamil and Sinhalese speakers prior to 1948, when Ceylon obtained its freedom from the British Empire.
As in so many countries, the collapse of the exiting authority led to a mass scramble for power among those who wanted to become the new elite.
To win elections, and divert attention from the acute class divisions on the island, politicians of all backgrounds attempted to cultivate support by appealing to people as ethnic and religious groups.
In Sri Lanka the key method of division was language. At the time of independence, English was the country’s official language.
The election of a new government on a ticket of replacing English with Sinhalese was a covert attack on the Sri Lankan Tamil middle class, who generally spoke English and Tamil.
The new government also proposed to deport hundreds of thousands of Indian Tamils back to India, while depriving those who remained of their right to vote.
This was an explicit attack on the left and the trade unions, which had successfully organised heavily among Indian Tamil plantation workers.
These acts marked the creation of a new and distinct Sinhalese identity.
In an effort to present a united response to the state’s discrimination, middle class Tamil speakers attempted to create an all-embracing Tamil identity. Both groups utilised and transformed religious symbols and legends to lend justification to their project. Initially there was little evidence of a mass following for these newly-constructed ethnicities.
For most people, the growing conflict remained a quarrel within the establishment. But within a few years the battle that began over language became the basis of a civil war.
Following a landslide election victory in 1956 the Sri Lanka Freedom Party made good on its promise to make Sinhalese the sole official language – a modest amendment to allow the “reasonable use of Tamil” led to a violent demonstration by Buddhist monks.
The new law brought a decline in the number of Tamil speakers in public employment. In the civil service Tamils went from being around 30 percent of all employees in 1948 to just 6 percent by 1970.
Many upper and middle class Sri Lankan Tamils now found themselves excluded from decent jobs, while their children stood little chance of getting a university education.
There were widespread anti-Tamil riots in 1958. Three years later, during a general strike by Tamils against discrimination, the government declared a state of emergency and sent troops into the Tamil heartlands in the central highlands and the north of the island.
Tamils became legitimate targets for pogroms and repression by the state.
The left in Sri Lanka should have been able to undercut the wave of ethnic tension unleashed by the government. Ordinary Sinhalese speaking workers and peasants had nothing to gain from the chauvinism of the ruling class.
The strongest socialist party on the island, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), was a Trotskyist party with a mass membership among all linguistic groups. For a time it was the country’s main opposition party.
But rather that appealing to working class unity, the LSSP, together with the Communist Party, joined the government and declared itself to be the authentic voice of nationalism.
In 1970 a new government made up of the UNP opposition party, in alliance with the left and a number of Tamil parties, took power promising an end to the conflict.
It planned a degree of regional autonomy in which Tamils would be given some power. Soon after coming to office the government faced a rebellion by educated Sinhalese youth demanding an end to Buddhist caste discrimination that excluded them from jobs. Some 10,000 people were killed in the fighting and state of emergency that followed.
The fragility of the ruling class was sharply exposed. The government’s response was to increase its vilification of Tamils in the hope of diverting attention away from its record.
At roughly the same time, younger Tamils, angered by the lack of change and the compromises made by their mainstream parties, started to take up arms against the state.
They formed a variety of groups, the Tamil Tigers chief among them, to demand a separate state in the north of the island. Within a few years they controlled much of the territory.
Sri Lankan authorities launched a crackdown in which thousands of Tamils were jailed and tortured. The Tigers responded with kidnappings and bombings. So began a spiral of violence that engulfed much of the country.
Rebellion
Rather than seeing possibilities in the rebellion sweeping the south, the Tigers characterised all Sinhalese speakers as complicit in their oppression.
Having neither mass support across the country nor enough firepower to defeat the state, the Tigers looked to India for backing. But the Indian state was to play a duplicitous role.
Having initially helped to arm the Tigers from bases in the Indian city of Madras, the Indian government later helped broker a peace deal that involved the sending of 75,000 “peacekeeping” troops to the island.
India feared that the collapse of the state in Sri Lanka could spread instability across the region and instructed its forces to disarm the Tigers. This resulted in fierce fighting and the scattering of Tamil refugees across the world.
Since the 1980s successive governments have used a mix of diplomacy and military offensives in an effort to break the Tigers.
Meanwhile, neoliberal economics and the 2004 Tsunami have laid waste to the livelihoods of millions of the island’s poor – regardless of their religion or language.
The government was recently forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund for a £1.3 billion loan, which is demanding austerity measures and privatisation in return.
The military defeat of the Tigers, far from bring a new era of peace and prosperity, looks certain to usher in a new era of attacks on the working class.
Rather than massive spending on the military, the country desperately needs health workers, engineers, and teachers. There needs to be a massive programme of public works to house, feed and tend to all those displaced by the conflict and environmental chaos. These are among the demands of the left in Sri Lanka.
We should demand that our governments condemn the military action and halt all arms sales to Sri Lanka.
Halting the Sri Lankan assault and winning vital improvements for the poor requires a united fight. But only a movement that is prepared to challenge the discrimination of the state, and the culture of chauvinism that has been encouraged by it, is capable of winning this struggle.
The following should be read alongside this article:
» Sri Lanka map
» Massive Tamil demonstration in central London demands Sri Lanka ceasefire
» Photos of Tamil demonstration in London, Saturday 11 April 2009
© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.
Desmond Tutu demands Gaza war crimes inquiry
March 16, 2009Leading human rights figures including Archbishop Desmund Tutu have called for the United Nations to launch a war crimes inquiry into the conduct of both Israel and Hamas in the recent fighting in Gaza.
By Dina Kraft in Tel Aviv | Telegraph.co.uk
Last Updated: 2:12AM GMT 16 Mar 2009
The letter, supported by Amnesty International, called for “a prompt, independent and impartial investigation”.
It said: “We have seen at first hand the importance of investigating the truth and delivering justice for the victims of conflict and believe it is a precondition to move forward and achieve peace in the Middle East.”
It is signed by 16 judges and investigators into human rights crimes committed in conflicts around the world including the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Darfur and Rwanda.
Since a three-week massive Israeli assault against Hamas militants in Gaza ended in mid-January there have been questions about the nature of the fighting that occurred on the ground.
Israel launched the operation, officials said, in response to ongoing cross-border rocket fire into southern Israel by Hamas and other militant groups but the assault in small, densely populated Gaza where there was nowhere to escape the warplanes and tanks, took a heavily civilian toll.
Some 1,300 Palestinians were killed, and officials say at least half of them were civilians. Thirteen Israelis were killed, among them three civilians from rocket-fire.
“We urge world leaders to send an unfaltering signal that the targeting of civilians during conflict is unacceptable by any party on any count,” said the letter.
The Israeli foreign ministry said the call for an enquiry sounded one-sided.
“Only an NGO like Amnesty International that has no political responsibility has allowed itself to make such allegations based on very partial enquiries and to launch a call to the UN on the basis of partial testimonies and newspaper clippings is totally irresponsible,” said Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman.
Israeli officials said repeatedly that troops did their upmost to limit civilian casualties and complained that Hamas fighters hid among civilians on purpose.
SRI LANKA: U.N. Urged to Intervene to Protect Civilians
February 28, 2009By Haider Rizvi | Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 (IPS) – The fast deteriorating humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka – caused by the lingering armed conflict between the government and rebel forces – demands immediate action on the part of the U.N., a leading international human rights organisation said Friday.
The call for U.N. help comes as tens of thousands of civilians in Sri Lanka’s northern region have been caught up in a fresh round of fighting between Sinhalese majority-led armed forces and minority Tamil militants seeking freedom from the centre.
“The escalating humanitarian situation there needs an urgent Security Council response,” said Anna Neistat of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, which works closely with U.N. rights bodies.
During a recent two-week trip to the conflict zone in the north of Sri Lanka, Neistat observed that many civilians were forced to flee areas controlled by Tamil fighters, only to get trapped in military camps run by the government.
Her statement came just a few hours after the top U.N. humanitarian official, John Holmes, briefed the 15-member U.N. Security Council about how much pain and suffering the Sri Lankan civilians were enduring as a result of the armed conflict.
In his visit to the north, Holmes urged combatants on both sides to make greater efforts to stop the rising toll of civilian casualties and to protect the people trapped in areas held by rebel fighters.
According to U.N. reports, thousands of Sri Lankans are fleeing Vanni, where government forces are in the midst of a fierce armed offensive against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The U.N. emergency relief fund has targeted 10 million dollars to assist civilians who have fallen victim to the fresh round of fighting between the army and the LTTE militants.
“I am desperately concerned about this humanitarian situation,” said Holmes at the end of his three-day visit to Sri Lanka to assess the humanitarian situation.
According to the U.N., due to the conflict tens of thousands of people in the north have been deprived of food and medical assistance. During his visit, Holmes urged rebels to let civilians move freely and pressed the government to ensure a “peaceful, orderly and humane end” to the conflict.
Sri Lanka has been mired in ethnic violence between the Sinhalese-dominated national army and the LTTE rebels for more than three decades. The armed conflict has taken tens of thousands of lives, and is considered one of the deadliest in the world.
Last month, government forces captured a major stronghold of the Tamil rebels. President Mahinda Rajapakse called it an unparalleled victory and said he wanted the rebels to surrender.
A ceasefire between the government and the rebel forces in late 2002 raised hopes for a lasting settlement. But peace talks stalled and monitors reported open violations of the truce by the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.
The current round of fighting, which started last December, has trapped some 250,000 civilians in the conflict zone, with more than 30,000 already seeking shelter outside their native towns and villages.
Holmes said during his visit he found that most of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) were mentally and physically exhausted after weeks of sheltering in makeshift bunkers, but that their basic needs were met.
HRW and other human rights organisations say they want the U.N. Security Council to address the situation in Sri Lanka in accordance with international humanitarian law “without any delay.”
“People who flee abuses by the Tamil Tigers should not have to fear abuses by the government forces,” said Neistat. “But so long as international agencies are kept away from the screening process, they will have reason to be afraid.”
Considering the fact that a number of journalists have been killed in recent weeks and months, she may be right. The London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International claims that at least 10 media workers have been killed in Sri Lanka since 2006. Many of the killings have been linked by observers to the military and other law-enforcement agencies in Colombo.
In its annual press freedom index last year, the media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders) ranked Sri Lanka 165 out of 173 countries.
Some reports from the region suggest that the Indian government is trying to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to end its military operations in Tamil-dominated area, but whether it will be successful remains unclear.
Diplomatic observers who are knowledgeable about Sri Lanka’s internal conflict say that, at the moment, they do not expect that the U.N. Security Council is ready to send a peacekeeping force to that country.
Tamil conflict ‘killing 40 civilians a day’
February 14, 2009A SRI Lankan health official said on Friday that fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels was killing around 40 civilians a day.
Aid groups have estimated that more than 200,000 civilians are trapped in a tiny strip of land still controlled by the rebels along the north-eastern coast.
Mullaittivu district health officer Dr Thurairajah Varatharajah said that artillery barrages were routinely hitting civilian areas in the region.
He added that the makeshift hospital that he was running in a school in the coastal town of Putumattalan was overwhelmed by casualties.
Dr Varatharajah said that the facility was badly understaffed since most of the doctors and nurses had either fled the war zone or had stopped coming to work and that the hospital was running out of some essential antibiotics and anaesthetics.
He added that civilians in the area had been suffering heavy casualties for three to four weeks as the military pushed the Tamil Tigers into the area, estimating that more than 100 wounded civilians were coming to the hospital every day, most of them with injuries from artillery shells.
Patients and medical staff were forced to evacuate the hospital in the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu last week after it came under heavy shelling for days. The staff, with the help of the Red Cross, set up a makeshift hospital in Putumattalan.
Dr Varatharajah claimed that the area around the hospital had been shelled on Monday, killing 22 people.
The artillery fire appeared to have stopped on Friday after the government declared a 7.5-mile coastal strip that included the hospital a “safe zone” and pledged not to attack it, he said.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for minority Tamils. More than 70,000 people have been killed.
The Sri Lankan government rejected Britain’s decision to appoint a special envoy to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation and help resolve the country’s ethnic conflict.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown named former defence secretary Des Browne as his special envoy for Sri Lanka on Thursday, but President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his cabinet called the unilateral decision by Sri Lanka’s former colonial ruler “unhelpful,” noting that London had failed to consult with Colombo before announcing Mr Browne’s appointment.
Peace and Justice Post 
Pakistani army flattening villages as it battles Taliban
May 5, 2009By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers, ay 4, 2009
CHINGLAI, Pakistan — The Pakistani army’s assault against Islamic militants in Buner, in northwest Pakistan, is flattening villages, killing civilians and sending thousands of farmers and villagers fleeing from their homes, residents escaping the fighting said Monday.
“We didn’t see any Taliban; they are up in the mountains, yet the army flattens our villages,” Zaroon Mohammad, 45, told McClatchy as he walked with about a dozen scrawny cattle and the male members of his family in the relative safety of Chinglai village in southern Buner. “Our house has been badly damaged. These cows are now our total possessions.”
Mohammad’s and other residents’ accounts of the fighting contradict those from the Pakistani military and suggest that the government of President Asif Ali Zardari is rapidly losing the support of those it had set out to protect.
The heavy-handed tactics are ringing alarm bells in Washington, where the Obama administration is struggling to devise a strategy to halt the militants’ advances. Officials Monday talked about the need to train the Pakistani military, which has long been fixated on fighting armored battles with India, in counterinsurgency warfare, but it may be too late for that.
Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Monday that the Pakistani army in recent years has undertaken “bursts of fighting and engagement” fighting insurgents, but that its operations were “not sustained” by follow-up measures.
The army is now using force, but it also must hold and rebuild the area it conquers, he said. “There’s a military piece” to the operation, he said, “but there also needs to be a hold and build aspect of it.”
Another U.S. official, who closely tracks Pakistan developments, said the Pakistan army is “just destroying stuff. They have zero ability to deliver (aid) services.”
“They hold villages completely accountable for the actions of a few, and that kind of operation produces a lot of (internally displaced persons) and a lot of angst,” said a senior defense official. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
In Buner, the Pakistani military appears to be losing public support in a stridently anti-Taliban district whose residents had raised their own militia to defend themselves against the militants, who last month seized control of the district about 60 miles from Islamabad, the capital.
Mohammad, who’d walked for two days with his cattle to escape the offensive against the Taliban, and other farmers accused the military of using poorly directed artillery and air power to pound civilian areas.
“They shouldn’t use the army in this (indiscriminate) way. They should be targeted at the Taliban,” said Saed Afsar Khan, who was leaving Buner with 18 members of his family and two cows. He estimated that the army had destroyed 80 of the 400 houses in his village of Kawga, near the key battlefield of Ambela.
“I don’t think they’ve killed even one Taliban,” he said. “Only ordinary people.”
As the fighting raged in Buner, a bigger battle appears likely to erupt in neighboring Swat. Late Monday, fierce gun battles broke out between the army and Taliban in the streets of Mingora, the district’s main town, and a controversial three-month-old peace deal between the government and the Taliban in Swat is disintegrating.
The Taliban were reported to have surrounded 46 police officers at the local electrical grid station. Earlier in the day, they ambushed a military convoy in Swat, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
The Pakistani army waited some 25 days after the Taliban stormed into Buner from Swat before launching their response, which television pictures show involves tanks and helicopter gunships.
“Why did they not nip the evil in the bud? This is criminal negligence,” said Sahibzada, a college teacher, who goes by one name, in Palodand village, just south of Buner, where he helps organize relief to those fleeing from the fighting.
“They have caused huge financial losses for those who’ve been forced to flee and caused hatred among those people for their government.”
Locals said that a key grievance was an order given by the government commissioner for the Malakand area, which includes Buner, to disband the anti-Taliban militia soon after the insurgents entered Buner.
The delay in moving the armed forces against the extremists in Buner may have allowed them to entrench themselves and mass sufficient weapons and men to put up stiff resistance. The Taliban have managed to take hostage some 2,000 villagers in the Pir Baba area in the north of Buner, the army confirmed Monday.
The Pakistan army wouldn’t confirm civilian casualties or damage to civilian villages.
“There are no reports I have of any civilian casualties,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the army’s chief spokesman. “Or any collateral damage. We have made maximum efforts to avoid it.”
One reason why civilian casualties are likely is that government officials gave no instructions to ordinary people about how to leave the district, and many were confused about the timing of the curfew, those fleeing said. A cause of further frustration was that little or no preparation was made to accommodate those who’d inevitably be displaced by the fighting.
In southern Buner, in the Khudokhel area, on the road out to the nearest town of Swabi, there was no sign of any government-sponsored relief effort. Residents of villages along the road turned out instead, offering food and drink to weary travelers, and help with transportation onward. Those with spare rooms or buildings offered them to the displaced. Villagers in Chinglai, about an hour’s drive into Buner from Swabi, are housing 20 families.
There are no reliable figures so far for how many people have fled Buner. Evacuees describe the district, which had a population of some 500,000, as having practically been emptied.
According to the al Khidmat Foundation, an Islamic charity, more than 150,000 people have taken the road south to Swabi alone. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the refugee arm of the United Nations, has registered around 18,000 people, but counting is tricky because almost none of the displaced have gone into the camps that are being set up for them outside Buner.
(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent. Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.)
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Tags:civilians, Islamic militants, NWF province, Pakistan, Pakistani army
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