Australia must condemn Sri Lankan Government slaughter! End the silence!
Rally Monday April 20th, 4.30pm
State Parliament, George Street, City (outside QUT Gardens Point)
On Tuesday night the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) commenced the slaughter of Tamils in the so-called “safe zone”, directing massive firepower towards civilians. Independent witnesses have confirmed the SLA’s use of chemical weapons, with Phosgene and Triethanolamine being found on the dead.
According to Human Rights Watch: “Sri Lanka’s so-called ‘no-fire zone’ is now one of the most dangerous places in the world,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Security Council has quibbled over protocol when it should be acting to bring an end to this ghastly loss of life.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned of “an impending humanitarian catastrophe”. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported on March 3 that 200,000 civilians were “living under desperate conditions”.
The civilian death toll from army’s assault is greater even than that during Israel’s recent assault on Gaza. According to Tamil sources, 2018 civilians were killed by the army in January and February, including 728 children. Human Rights Watch has corroborated these figures. The figures now are unknown but reports state that a “Mass human tragedy possible any moment in the ‘safety zone’”.
As at Wednesday, three young Australian Tamil hunger strikers had gone for 106 hours without food or water, and their conditions are becoming critical, with one approaching kidney failure (http://fastuntoaction.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/four-demands/). Urgent calls are currently underway for Greens Senators to meet with the strikers. PM Rudd continues to ignore their plight.
The hunger strikers are demanding that the Australian government to use its diplomatic powers to push the Sri Lankan government:
* to allow food, medicine and aid into the conflict zone;
* to allow medical and other vital services into the conflict zone; and
* allow the Tamil People, both in the conflict zone and those indefinitely detained in concentration camps in government-held areas, to decide independently where they wish to reside
Internationally, hunger strikers’ conditions are rapidly deteriorating.
The silence around the ongoing racist slaughter, the genocide, of the Tamil ethnic minority in Sri Lanka is deafening. With attacks on news outlets and assassinations of journalists in Sri Lanka part of Sri Lankan Government strategy, almost no reporting is emerging. A statement by 23 international journalists’ associations and trade unions can be found at http://www.freemediasrilanka.org/English/news.php?id=1179§ion=news
More than 6000 people rallied against the Sri Lankan government’s war on the Tamil people in Sydney on March 28. The protests must grow and continue.
The world must act now to stop this genocide. Join the global protests.
BACKGROUND:
Since January 2009, more than 2,000 Tamils have been killed and 7,000 wounded by Sri Lankan troops. More than 200,000 are trapped inside a barren and shadeless 12-kilometre strip of land, without drinking water. Food and medicines are not allowed in. Forced hysterectomies and abortions of Tamil women make the genocidal aim of the Sri Lankan government’s offensive unmistakable. This is another Gaza, but concealed from world view.
For the past half century, the Sri Lankan state has persecuted the Tamil people, and over the past 25 years has carried out a military campaign to drive them from their homeland, Tamil Eelam, in the country’s north and east. Because of the area’s strategic importance, global and regional powers — including the United States, Israel, Pakistan and India — have backed this brutal offensive. In an effort to demonise and isolate the Tamils’ just resistance, the U.S. and European Union listed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a terrorist organisation.
A detailed background to the genocide can be found at http://www.genocide.org.uk/genocide/
OTHER RESOURCES:
The Guardian – Arundhati Roy on the genocide in Sri Lanka: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/01/sri-lanka-india-tamil-tigers
Green Left Weekly – Sri Lanka: Genocide against Tamils – http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/779/40161
http://www.warwithoutwitness.com/
Sponsored by the Tamil Coordination Committee
Info call Ewan 0401 234 610
EMERGENCY MARCH 5pm Friday: Stop the Slaughter in Sri Lanka! State Parliament
An opportunity for cross-solidarity between Palestine and Tamil campaign?
ASSEMBLE FRIDAY 5.15PM FOR 5.30PM MARCH, STATE PARLIAMENT (George St, City)
All those who stand for basic justice and equality are urged to join and support Brisbane’s Tamil community as they march this Friday as part a global campaign to STOP THE RACIST GENOCIDAL SLAUGHTER OF THE TAMIL PEOPLE IN SRI LANKA
Rwanda, Sudan, and now Sri Lanka – again the world stands still in the face of genocide. Never again!
MARCH COMMENCES 5.30PM STATE PARLIAMENT, George St, City (outside QUT Gardens Point)
Please read the international appeal below.
Also see http://www.tamilnet.com/
SLA fired 5,600 shells within 15 hours
Unprecedented carnage unfolds in Vanni
US, UN & International Community facilitate genocide
April 24, 2009, Sri Lanka
An appeal to the international civil society to act immediately to prevent further destruction in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka is in a dire situation that begs for the attention of the world community focused on it and for urgent action immediately followed to avoid further destruction.
Sri Lanka government backed by the Sinhala supremacist oppressors, has almost crushed the struggle of the Tamils for their rights, in order to retain the structure the Lankan state as a Sinhala chauvinist regime. For as much as a half a century, the Sinhala supremacist governments have repeatedly avoided granting the political rights of the national minorities within the post-colonial state structure. Instead, they pushed the Tamil minority to the wall through repeated pogroms and terror actions to repress latter’s non-violent struggles to win their rights. Eventually this caused the upsurge of a ferocious armed struggle.
The government of Lanka manipulates the conceptual definition of
terrorism to legitimize repression of minority rights and to muster support of the global powers to crush the struggles for rights. In 2008, the government unilaterally revoked the cease fire and moved away from the peace process brokered under the patronage of the Co-chairs of the donor-community. In the process of total annihilation of the struggle of the Tamils for their democratic rights, the government banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and declared war against Tamil radicalism. The media access to the conflict zone was effectively blocked and later the government, ordered the humanitarian organizations as well to evacuate their offices, and expelled the international staff. At the peak of the siege, the state ordered the government health staff too to vacate the hospitals. All these measures were taken while carrying on a massive military onslaught via land, sea and air targeting the traditional dwellings of the Tamil people in Northern Province of Lanka.
People were uprooted from their dwellings and made internally displaced in multiple times.
Their houses were shelled and bombed, cultivations and other property were devastated and the entire environmental topography was demolished beyond repair. At the culmination of this military onslaught, the state urged the people to move into a government-designated no-fire zone in a small patch of land in an area where basic amenities were so scarce for such a massive population.
Later, the government repeatedly shelled and carpet bombed parts of the no-fire zone too in the guise of hunting terrorists. Now they have advanced into the no-fire zone naming the operation a ‘hostage rescue mission’ killing and miming thousands of civilians.
There are allegations that the government is using chemical weapons as well against the Tamil Tiger rebels disregarding the impact on the civilians huddled in the small area.
This warfare is totally against the accepted norms of war and the international law. Sri Lanka government denies these charges stating that the allegations are mere propaganda of the Tamil Tigers. Independent verification is impossible since free media and humanitarian organizations sans ICRC are blocked entry into the conflict zone.
The government has detained thousands of internally displaced civilians in heavily guarded concentration-styled camps in an environment of thoroughly restricted mobility. They call these places as ‘welfare centers’. Even the UN agency staff members that have moved out of the no-fire zone are held in these camps in the guise of screening terrorists.
Several months back, the government submitted a proposal to embassies in Colombo seeking financial assistance to set up semi-permanent camps for 200,000 civilians for three years.
Thus this is not the first time. The government, in the recent past, during operations in the east, retained an area named Sampur in the Eastern Province without allowing the residents to resettle. Now the discussions are underway to set up a coal power plant in the lands of those residents without compensating them. Thus, there is a racially-oriented ploy to change the demography behind the devastation of the traditional lands of Tamils while holding them for a long period in concentration camps.
-We, representing the civil society of the island, extend our deepest regrets over the inaction and the silent approval given to Lankan regime by the international good governance systems like UN amidst these unfathomed crimes of Lankan rulers and their allies.
-We urge the international community, especially the international civil society not to allow Sri Lankan government, to manipulate the so-called fight against terrorism to win support of the UN and other authorities, and to continue with chauvinist state terrorism on the minority Tamil community.
-International community should urge authorities like UN and the donor forum of Sri Lanka to compel the government to stop war immediately and begin an internationally monitored peace process aimed at a sustainable solution to the dragging national problem of the country.
-The right of people to their traditional villages should be defended. Compensation should be paid for the damages done to their life and property and help must be given to reconstruct their lives.
-Immediately unblock the access of the media and the humanitarian organizations into the areas of the internally displaced and war affected people live, and guarantee their freedom of expression.
Signed by,
Dr. Vickramabahu Karunarathne
Prof. Sucharitha Gamlath
Prof. Jayantha Senewirathne
Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri
Dr. Terence Purasinghe
Chandrapala Kumarage (attorney at Law)
Servant Yohan Devananda
Patrick Fernando