Sri Lanka admits that civilians may have been killed.
Posted on August 3rd, 2011
Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . Canada
ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ The Editor (Letters)
THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Sir:
“Sri Lanka on Monday admitted for the first time that civilians may have been killed during its military push against Tamil Tigers rebels in 2009 that has been dogged by allegations of war crimes”, you said.
ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It was silly of Sri Lanka not to own up in the first place that there may have been civilians killed during the last phase of the war, as it would have been easily explained in American parlance as it was “collateral damage” as in the civilian casualties in their engagement in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Iraq where several hundreds of civilians had been killed by American forces.
ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Wars are nasty and we should never go to war if it could be avoided. But unfortunately the Government of Sri Lanka was forced to it by the Tamil Tigers who haemorrhaged this island nation for 30 long years. When the cowardly Tamil Tiger leadership blanketted itself with civilians as human shields, casualties were bound to result, but I am certain that the Sri Lankan armed forces took the greatest care to avoid such casualties. Whizzing bullets can not tell the difference between combatans, sometime in civilian clothes and civilian used as human shields.
ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Asoka Weerasinghe
August 3rd, 2011 at 7:34 pm
LTTE were terrorists and was not a conventional army. Only some senior cadres had ranks specific uniforms. Eventhose ranks were wearing Bata slippers. There are so many photos even in the web which show that civilians getting weapons training, carrying weapons and wearing ammunition betls etc. Even there are some UTube clips which show that seeminly civilians, in civilians cloths, riding motor bikes at the battle scean, but, he carriesa T-56 on his back.
So, how can we differentiate whether actual civilians got killed or LTTE cadres got killed.
August 3rd, 2011 at 11:18 pm
But no where SL said these civilians died from SLDF attacks.
They were all killed by the LTTE.
How many suicide bombs went off in 2009? I can recall at least 2. Target was civilians.