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Truth about Sri Lanka's Victims of War
“
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love hasalways won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invinciblebut in the end, they always fall
 – 
think of it, ALWAYS
.” – 
Mahatma Gandhi
Executive Summary
 
This latest report from the University Teacher for Human Rights (Jaffna) documents the
final chapter of Sri Lanka‟s war 26
-year war. Drawing on individual eyewitness accounts,it chronicles the relentless violence experienced by survivors of the conflict between theSri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam between September2008 and May 2009, when the Sri Lankan government ultimately crushed the LTTEleadership and declared victory.
What these survivors‟
stories make clear is that for bothparties, the key to military dominance lay not in brilliant strategies, but in an utter
disregard for the lives of civilians and combatants alike, driven by their leaders‟
single-minded pursuit of personal power.Both sides treated truth as an enemy. Outsiders who could bear witness to these eventswere kept out or silenced; dissent on either side was crushed; the poor and powerlesswere treated as cannon fodder and in the case of Tamil civilians, ultimately locked up toprevent them from revealing what they had experienced. As the report notes, Sri
Lanka‟s
 
“war against truth has grave implications for the future of democracy.”
 But this report is more than a catalogue of war-time atrocities; it provides an analysis of the social and political underpinnings of the conflict that made atrocities possible, andthat have historically shielded the people who committed such crimes from justice.This report is a call to Sri Lankans of all communities to examine their history and takecontrol of their present; to acknowledge the degeneration of the country and itsdemocratic institutions, to demand justice for the crimes that have been committed in the
name of fighting terrorism or securing Eelam, and to declare “never again.”
 ~~~It was bloody war and international norms were breached by both sides, which bytrapping people in the conflict zone wrought large scale death and destruction.The State systematically marginalised and restricted the operation of internationalorganisations, subverting their efforts to humanise the conduct of the war and securereduced casualties. It convinced the majority of people in the country (and many outside),that utter annihilation was only way to deal with the forces like LTTE. At the same timethe Government blatantly lied about the real number of civilians trapped in the zone, and
 
2the number killed by their disproportionate use of force in the form of intense shellingand bombing.The LTTE
‟
s callous attitude towards the civilians, its forced conscription and the violentand coercive methods it used to prevent people from fleeing for their lives, further helpedthe government to successfully neutralise any criticism against their modes of operation.
Perpetrators must be brought to account.
It is also imperative for international human rights activists and organisations to gobeyond mere condemnation of the way in which this war was conducted and recognisewhat it has shown us about the limitations of the present broader architecture of international Human Rights and Humanitarian mechanisms and institutions, which failedutterly to avert this disaster.Social and political forces with narrow ethnic or religious ideological trappings continueto undermine democracy in most of the developing nations. These are not newphenomena; the world had seen many major religious crusades to wars between nationswhich in the modern era led to the creation of international institutions, conventions andtreaties. The unequal economic and military power structures operating at a global levelcontinue to undermine these institutions while allowing local actors to blame the externalpowers for their own failures.In Sri Lanka, the political elite continues to fail the people, and whatever potential thecountry had to move towards a healthier path of development and prosperity has beencontinuously undermined by narrow electoral politics. The country is at acrossroads. Improvement will not be achieved by relying on the political elite in thebelief that they will have at last to moderate self interest and address the many underlyingsocial and economic issues which caused the war.
The callousness of Sri Lanka‟s powerful towards their own people has been clearly
shown in the persistent undermining of state institutions, the deterioration of which hasbeen met with major armed resistance again and again. Today politicians continue to usethis war, this monumental tragedy, for political capital in their narrow power game in theSouth, while the removed and insensitive Tamil Diaspora tries to further polarise peoplein their home country with their meaningless rhetoric and slogans of Transnationalgovernment.There is only one way forward. An initiative to forge a broad multi-ethnic and multi-religious movement that challenges these narrow ethnic and religious agendas and Sri
Lanka‟s climate of impunity;
that demands accountability for the grave and systematicviolation of human rights that has for so long prevented Sri Lanka from progressing. Thisshould be the priority for all those who desire to fight for social justice and human rights.
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