By Shivanthi Ranasinghe Courtesy Ceylon Today

The Geneva Resolution is our immediate threat and should be countered first, argues journalist Shamindra Ferdinando. In his weekly column in ‘The Island’, he repeatedly highlights that the last phase of the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was not a war without witnesses. He regularly challenges these charges.

Allegations against the government are:
Ordering the United Nations and the International Non-Governmental Organizations in September 2008, out of Kilinochchi, to get rid of the witnesses.
The allegation has not taken into account the UN’s underhand dealings with the LTTE. Even after the LTTE imprisoned Tamil UN workers for aiding civilians to escape, the Colombo-based UN mission continued its secret dealings – keeping the UN Headquarters ignorant of the developments. Though the threat that civilians would be held hostage had been real since 2007, the UN refused to act.

Internal review

Their own internal review, headed by Charles Petrie, “Report on Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel on UN Actions in Sri Lanka”, concludes that “events in Sri Lanka mark a great failure of the UN to adequately respond to early warning and to the evolving situations during the final stages of the conflict and its aftermath, to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of civilians and in contraction with the principles and responsibilities of the UN. The elements of what was a systematic failure can be distilled into the following:
A UN system that lacked an adequate and shared sense of responsibility for human rights violations.

An incoherent internal UN crisis-management structure which failed to conceive and execute a coherent strategy in response to early warnings and subsequent international human rights and humanitarian law violations against civilians.

Furthermore, this discounts the presence of the ICRC and the Indian medical team stationed in Pulmuddai, North of Trincomalee. While the ICRC assisted evacuating the wounded along with a ‘helper’ – often a family member, the Indian team remained until the war ended.
The hostages themselves are witnesses. General Daya Ratnayaka highlights, “We rescued 290,000 civilians. There were approximately 2,000 UN employees, thousands of government employees, including the GA, and hundreds of Hindu and Christian clergy.”
The Vanni population was denied essentials.

Ferdinando writes that this should be “probed against the backdrop of supplies made available to Puthumathalan, until the week before the war ended in May 2009. India and ICRC, too, should be requested to explain their roles in the operation.”

Former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, explains, “If a terrorist organization takes control of some area, the government can no longer take responsibility for those civilians. Can our Police or military go to those areas? Can our officials go and distribute anything? Who was in control there? It was the LTTE. So, it becomes their responsibility.

“Though we knew terrorists confiscated everything we sent and civilians only got what’s left over, we still sent essentials and other needful to those areas.
“Mahinda Samarasinghe, Cabinet Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, headed the Coordinating Committee for Humanitarian Assistance. All the UN organization heads, American, British, Japanese and Norwegian Ambassadors as the co-chair members and government secretaries made up the committee.
“The minutes of the meeting show discussions were on things like not enough cement, aluminum utensils, and tin sheets. Now, if there was an issue with food and medicines, will they be talking about cement?

“A very efficient Bangladeshi from the World Food Programme – a UN organization – coordinated everything. Suddenly he was transferred to Japan. If the UN thought the situation in Sri Lanka was very serious, would they have transferred him? I asked his reasons for leaving. He was also puzzled and said, “I don’t know what’s important in Japan right now”.

“Week before he left, he visited me and said, “I have stockpiled food items for six months in Kilinochchi and Mulathew areas.”
Firing heavy artillery into the no fire zones massacring 40,000 trapped civilians.

Ferdinando notes various organizations have published varying numbers as the civilian casualty figure. “British Labour Party MP Siobhan McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden-Labour) told the House of Commons, in September 2011 that 60,000 LTTE cadres and 40,000 Tamils perished during January-May 2009. She made the only specific reference to the number of LTTE cadres killed during a certain period.” However, neither the MP nor the British High Commission substantiated this figure.
AI Report

“Special Amnesty International report titled “When will they get justice: Failures of Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission”, also released in September, 2011, estimated the number of civilian deaths at 10,000,” writes Ferdinando. “A confidential UN report placed the number of dead and the wounded, including LTTE combatants, at 7,721 and 18,479, respectively. The report dealt with the situation in the Vanni, from August, 2008 to 13 May 2009. The war ended a week after the UN stopped collecting data due to the intensity of fighting.

“The vast majority of the wounded civilians were evacuated by the ICRC. The Indian medical team, tasked with receiving them, should be able to explain specific measures taken by India to assist the wounded. The UN is yet to release the report though it was made available to Darusman.
“That UN report had been based on information provided by those who were trapped in the war zone and even today further verification can be made as the identities of those who had provided information are known to the UN.

Contradiction

“Darusman refused to accept the report as it contradicted his own claim,” of 40,000 as reflected in the Geneva Resolution.
The then Norwegian Ambassador in Colombo, Tore Hattrem wrote to the then presidential advisor, Basil Rajapaksa: “The proposal to the LTTE on how to release the civilian population, now trapped in the LTTE controlled area, has been transmitted to the LTTE, through several channels. So far there has regrettably been no response from the LTTE and it does not seem to be likely that the LTTE will agree to this in the near future.”

Prof. Michael Newton, an expert on war crime issues, explains, “The LTTE refused to permit some 330,000 Tamils to flee towards safer areas away from the zone of conflict, and used them as human shields to deter offensive operations by the Sri Lankan Army. The government declared a NFZ in order to protect the civilians. The LTTE embedded its heavy artillery within the NFZ and intentionally shelled military positions from the midst of the civilian population.
“This is roughly comparable to the war crime of perfidy because the LTTE sought to use the government’s compliance with the laws and customs of warfare in order to gain an unwarranted military advantage.

“As reported by the US Embassy, the Sri Lankan Military expressly took ‘the utmost care’ to avoid intentional warping of its operational environmental by the LTTE. No military commander should accept a legal premise that military forces must suffer the lethal force of the enemy while under a legal obligation not to respond using lawful force in self defence.

“Participants in an armed conflict must ensure that in the conduct of military operations, constant care should be taken to spare civilians. Thus, the LTTE bears the responsibility for civilian deaths because their own conduct was the casual factor in such deaths.”
A Wikileaks leaked cable highlights Ferdinando, “reveals a discussion Geneva-based US Ambassador Clint Williamson had with ICRC Head for Operations for South Asia Jacques de Maio. The US envoy declared on 15 July 2009 that the Army actually could have won the battle faster with higher civilian casualties, yet chose a slower approach which led to a greater number of Sri Lankan military deaths”. Thus, “The Army lost nearly 2,500 officers and men during January-19 May 2009. Thousands suffered injuries.”

Rape used as a war tactic

On 30 September 2009 Hillary Clinton chaired the UN Security Council session as it adapted Resolution 1888 that dealt with conflict-related sexual violence. There, she read from a prepared text, “We’ve seen rape used as a tactic of war before in Bosnia, Burma, Sri Lanka and elsewhere”. When pressed for specific allegations against the Sri Lankan Army, a senior aide to Clinton admitted that statement had not been properly “vetted”.

Clinton helped topple governments in Asia, Africa and South America, supported sanctions against Iraq killing half a million Iraqi children, threatened Iran with nuclear weapons and gloated when Colonel Gaddafi was killed, jittered over tendering an apology. The government received a backdoor explanation of sorts – not a retraction, not an apology and that too not from Clinton. UN repeated the allegation in 2014, again without evidence. Major General Shavendra Silva asserted these baseless allegations are to justify the demand to remove the Army from the Northern Province.

Prof. Newton categorically states, “There is no evidence in the record to suggest that the government used inherently indiscriminate weapons such as barrel bombs or Grad rockets.”

Maxwell Paranagama, who chaired the Presidential Commission to investigate missing persons, states, “There’s no credible evidence that the Army used cluster munitions during the war. The Darusman Report had alleged, without including the sources. When the Army denied the allegation, UN accepted it, which means there was no evidence to contradict that denial.

“The Cluster Munitions Convention banning the use of such weapons only became operational on 1 August 2010. Even if there had been a need for the SLA to use cluster munitions because of military necessity, it was not illegal at the time.” Killing surrendering terrorists including those carrying white flags.

Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera explains the extraordinary situation that developed with the LTTE taking over 300,000 civilians as a human shield. “Last days before Prabhakaran was killed, he was confined to Nandikadal. He surrounded himself with 200-300 civilians, including children and pregnant women. They dug trenches right around and planted anti-personnel mines. We couldn’t use heavy artillery, without harming those civilians. So, about 300 soldiers went over those trenches, fully aware of the danger. Many died or are now without limbs.”

“As people were coming to our side, we got intelligence that a suicide bomber disguised as a pregnant woman might come as well. But how can we identify? Still, we allowed them to come. When the bomb blasted, about 30 died”.

“Soosai made many of our women widows. But when we caught his wife and children trying to escape around 11 p.m. we brought them safely back and now they are living normal lives among the Sinhalese.”

Escaping civilians

General Ratnayaka too rejects the allegation. “Small teams broke through and stood like a wall between the firing terrorists and the escaping civilians. As these civilians came rushing, it wasn’t possible to shoot some groups and rescue others.”

The statements were attested by the then Colombo-based US Defence Attache, Lt. Colonel Lawrence Smith in June 2011. At a seminar organized by the Army, “Defeating Terrorism: The Sri Lanka Experience”, he stated, “I’ve been the Defecse Attache here, at the US Embassy, since June 2008. Regarding the various versions of events, that came out in the final hours and days of the conflict – from what I was privileged to hear and to see – the offers to surrender, that I am aware of, seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE, Nadesan, KP, people who weren’t and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE.”

“So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content, hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were, in fact, real.” The US State Department only asserted that he had not been at the Defence Seminar on an official capacity. They disputed his right to make that observation, but never contradicted the statement. The Geneva Resolution is based on the Darusman Report. Every aspect of the report translates into an issue. Its initiation violates the UN mandate. Its panel has proven to be biased. Its findings are without foundation. The Parangama Report with input from specialists of international repute slams the Darusman Report and offers our best defence to face the oncoming Geneva Resolution.

ranasingheshivanthi@gmail.com