Government of Sri Lanka’sgenocidal war on Tamils has:
• Killed more than 100,000Tamils;• Forced the internally displacement of more than500,000Tamils;• Massacred women and children through organizedviolence;• Made more than 1,500,000Tamils to flee Sri Lanka asrefugees;• Committed war-crimes in an unprecedented scale;• Killed four Members of Parliament;• Killed tens of Humanitarian workers, Media Personneland community leaders;• Destroyed schools, temples and churches, libraries,and otherTamil cultural infrastructures
Further, its genocidal campaignhas taken systemic roots andthrough the Sinhalese ethnicmajority dominated Parliamentsuccessive Governments of SriLanka have:
• Passed several legislations to undermine the principlesof equality and freedom of religion, language, andexpression;• Discriminated againstTamils in access to educationand employment;• Disenfranchised more than one millionTamils;
The Government of Sri Lankaalso continues to:
•
Use indiscriminate aerial bombing, artillery shelling, andInternationally-banned cluster munitions on civilians;
• Use rape of women and children as a weapon of warwith absolute impunity;• Attack civilian targets such as hospitals, refugeecamps, schools, and places of worship;• Engaged in forced disappearance ofTamil civilians• Enforce inhumane embargo on food, medicine, fueland other essential items;• Arbitrarily detain tens of thousands of youngTamilswith no recourse to justice;• Prevent both local and International Humanitarianworkers to access war-affected areas;• Prohibit independent news reporting from the war-affectedTamil areas.Sincetheceasefireagreementof2002,3541Tamilcivilianshavebeenkilledorhavebecomedisappearedandcount-less numbers of Tamils have been injured. However, theunilateralabrogationoftheceasefireagreementbytheSriLankangovernmenthasledtoatrocitiesunforeseeninthepast. In 2008 alone, more than 1200 Tamil civilians havebeenkilledorforcefullydisappearedbyGovernmentofSriLanka, 977 have been severely injured, and 4772 havebeen arbitrarily detained. A case in point was that be-tween January 20-23, 2009 alone, nearly 100 Tamil civil-ians have been killed by Sri Lankan government aerialbombardmentandartillerybarrageofahospitalandothersafe zones declared by warring parties as a safe zone
And as a result, Sri Lanka hasbeen:
• Listed among the top eight“red alert”countries byindependent panels of experts organized by the NewYork based Genocide Prevention Project• Voted off the United Nations Human Rights Council in2008;• Listed by
UnitedNationsWorkingGrouponEnforcedor InvoluntaryDisappearances as
secondonly to Iraq innumber of disappearances;• Censured by Humanitarian agencies such asWorldFood Program for its“Somalia like conditions”; and• Sri Lanka has been ranked 165
th
on the press freedomlist of ReportersWithout Borders, which makes SriLanka one of the most dangerous places for the mediain theWorld.
Yet, the Government of SriLanka continues to:
• Engage in a vicious human and cultural Genocide;• Disregard all Human rights and Humanitarian rightsconventions and agreements that it is signatory to;and• Violate all International norms and practices withregards to civilians.
But, its genocidal war is alsodirectly or indirectly assisted byseveral World nations, includingCanada.
• It receives about $1 Billion from Iran, $900 million fromJapan, $600 million from China, and $250 million fromIndia, per year.• European Union’s GSP+ tariff benefits on trade aloneannually amounts to more than $1 billion.• Canadian Government provided over $56 million dol-lars in the year 2004 – 2005. As of April 2007, $64 mil-lion has been given to Government of Sri Lanka and toorganizations in Sri Lanka.“In an effort to coax civilians to leave, the governmentdropped leaflets throughout the region Wednesday an-nouncingtheestablishmentofa“safezone”ontheedgeof rebel-held territory that it would not attack.Butanhouraftertheleafletsweredropped,twoshellshitamakeshifthospitalinaschoolinVallipunam,avillagein-sidethe“safezone,”saidKandasamyTharmakulasingham,a health official. No one was wounded in that attack,he said.On Thursday morning, the hospital and a nearby villagewerehitagaininanattacksodevastatingthathealthoffi-cials had difficulty counting the bodies because many of them were dismembered, he said.”International HeraldTribune,www.iht.com, Jan. 22, 09“Inasceneofcarnageofuntoldproportiononciviliantar-getshitbyhundredsofSriLankaArmyfiredartilleryshells,
morethan300peoplehavediedandseveralhundredsare bleeding to death within the last 24 hours
, amidstpouring rain inside the ‘saftey zone’ declared by theColombo government. Houses and vehicles burn for astretch of three km between Va’l’lipunam Kaa’li templeand Moongkilaa’ru towards Paranthan road, reports fromVanni said on Monday. Unattended bodies and injuredpeople unable to move are lying around everywhere,while a remaining doctor fled and helpless ICRC officialsvirtually cried at the scene from their bunkers”TamilNet.com, January 26, 09Don’t we have the moral responsibility, as members of acivilized society, to put an end to this genocidal war?
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