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Website: www.sluna.org
E-mail: sluna@idirect.com
Media Release May 8, 2009
IDPs held by Tamil Tigers, Meddlesome INGO-NGO-UN Agencies and Media
Trapped
IDPs numbering about 15,000 forming a human shield for the remaining Tamil
Tiger terrorist cadres in the Puthumattalan area confined to nearly 3 sq. km.
are expected to be rescued by the Sri Lankan
Army (SLA) who have succeeded in gaining control of the fourth and final
earth bund strewn with mines and booby traps, in the next few days. The troops using light arms are confronting
the cowardly Tiger terrorists firing artillery guns, mortars and other heavy
weapons as they hide behind the civilians forced to form a shield. The SLA is confident of rescuing the
displaced civilians just as they earlier helped over a 100,000 IDPs to flee the
Tiger hell, despite suicide bombers and firing being directed at them by the
LTTE.
Meanwhile,
the Government of Sri Lanka continues to provide food, water, medicine and all
other essentials with the assistance of the WFP and the ICRC to the displaced
civilians including the LTTE terrorists who have conducted an armed
insurrection including suicide terrorism for the past three decades. The World Food Program has reported on May 4,
2009 that adequate stocks of essentials have been provided to this region, vide
http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20090505_04. Any artificial shortage if any, is one
orchestrated by the LTTE to gain international sympathy, while it has been
revealed that the Tigers were using bags of rice to fortify their bunkers in
place of sand.
Meddlesome
INGO, NGO and UN Agencies are trotting out bogus statistics taken from the Tamilnet which
is a propaganda arm of the LTTE well known for its distortion and doctored
news, even though such
data has not been verified or confirmed through any
reliable source. The most repeated tale
is the one which claims that 6500 civilians had been killed and a further
13,800 injured in air and artillery strikes carried out by the Sri Lankan
forces in the government declared safe zone in the last three months, to which
area the LTTE withdrew with all of their heavy weapons. The government has denied targeting civilians
but has defended the right to attack all combatants who may be underage
children or unwilling adults pressed into battle at the front lines by the
Tiger terrorists to replace their fallen cadres. A LTTE video which recently came to the possession
for the advancing SLA clearly shows their fighting cadres manning heavy guns
and other weapons dressed in civilian attire, which is their strategy of
misleading the international community about large scale civilian casualties. Even this cannot account for the exaggerated
number obviously invented purely for sensationalism and international attention
by the LTTE.
One
Phillip Alston and a few other so called UN experts continue to repeat these
bogus and unverified data and speak of the need to establish an international
commission of inquiry without providing one scrap of evidence other than
Tamilnet propaganda picked up the resident UN representative who does not have
any observers in the conflict area. The incontrovertible
fact is that the UN Agencies, INGO such as Norwegian Peoples Aid, the Danish
Refugee Forum and others including foreign funded NGO which operated in the
Vanni for the past two decades for the specific purpose of assisting the
resident civilian population had almost totally neglected the civilians, and
only collaborated with the Tamil Tigers helping the latter to bolster their
offensive and defensive military capabilities whilst they enjoyed their high
salaries, risk pay and other luxuries offered to them by the LTTE. Sri Lanka should ensure that a full inquiry
is conducted into the activities of these foreign do-gooders who have worked
hand in glove with the Tamil Tiger terrorists, as much evidence of their
perfidy has come to light in the LTTE camps overrun by the forces.
The
much disputed denial of access to foreign journalists in the conflict zone is one
that is being touted by various foreign governments, AI, HRW, UN Agencies and
various INGO including even the LTTE which forced the civilian population in
the Vanni region numbering over 200,000 to move with their retreating forces
from the north western coast to the narrow strip in the east to serve them as a
human shield. Unlike other theatres of
war, there were no resident civilians, hotels or guest houses, private or
public transport, and terrain varying from jungle strips to marshy belts, to
flooded areas and heavily forested land, where foreign journalists could have
operated without becoming a burden on the Sri Lankan security forces to ferry
them, feed them and provide necessary care in the midst of fighting the most
brutal terrorist movement in the world.
Another factor is that the SLA too had to advance across heavily mined
and booby trapped terrain to get to where they are taking a large number of
casualties as well.
A
veteran journalist who has covered Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq working for a
leading media organization in Canada was asked how he went about covering the
war situations in such danger zones? His reply was that he would rent a home to
be shared with other journalists or by himself, hire a local person who could
speak English as a guide and security agent, arrange a vehicle through his
local employee and go about making his observations of the war and its
impact. These essential facilities would
have been lacking if he were to have covered the military action in the Vanni,
and he could have got into serious difficulty in covering the war front. Thankfully, Sri Lanka did not entertain
foreign journalists, veteran or otherwise, other than embedded local
journalists, as otherwise, the forces would have been unduly taxed to care for
another army of journalists who did not have the local facilities needed to
support their stay. Now that the end
game is on, Sri Lanka could allow the
foreign media in, even provide transport, accommodation, etc. to enable them to
study what has taken place, meet the rescued civilians, LTTE fighters who have
since surrendered, interview both local and foreign personnel, and arrive at
their own conclusions without depending on the propaganda rag sheet of the LTTE
as the sole source of their information.
Welfare
villages providing care for nearly 200,000 displaced Tamil civilians who fled the Tamil Tiger
Hell are functioning satisfactorily within the means available to the state,
with improvements being made as needed to meet the requirements of this large
population that was rescued in the last little while. Several leading officers of the UN, foreign
diplomats, foreign journalists, ICRC, WFP, and other INGO have visited these
welfare villages or camps, and undertaken to provide assistance on an urgent
basis. The Sinhalese people have readily
rallied to assist their long suffering brothers and sisters from the Tamil community
by contributing cash and essential merchandise for their use, which the foreign
media has so far failed to report. The
Muslim community too has since joined in this humanitarian task, whilst the
Tamil community has been slow to respond.
The pro-LTTE diaspora which has been shedding crocodile tears for these
civilians have been more concerned with pressuring the jurisdictions in the
countries where they live to find an exit or lifeline for the terrorist leader
Prabhakaran who is wanted by Interpol and the other cadres to find a safe
sanctuary, from where they could resume their terrorism to destabilize Sri
Lanka which they succeeded in doing for the past 30 years with diaspora
funds. The terror leaders will have to
answer for their crimes whilst lower level cadres will be rehabilitated over
time and integrated into the society.
Yours very truly
Mahinda Gunasekera
Honorary President