AT the minimum 20,000 Tamil people were massacred on the Mullaitivu beach ‘no fire zone’ by Sri Lanka Army shelling, in the first 19 days of May. As this was happening, the Sri Lankan government was issuing denial after denial that anything of the sort was happening.
However, what was happening was clearly observable by military satellites which monitored the situation for the US–UK.
UN officials have made clear that the body count will increase rapidly as the UN investigation into the massacres continues.
Defence analysts have also poured scorn on the Sri Lankan government lie that the Tamil Tigers were shelling their own people.
On May 27th, the UN Human Rights Council gave its 100 per cent support to the Sri Lankan government massacre operation, congratulating it on ‘liberating’ the Tamil civilians that the Sri Lankan army was massacring. The Human Rights Council also condemned the Tamil Tigers for using the Tamil population as ‘human shields’, thereby giving their full support to the lie that was being peddled by the Sri Lankan government.
Hundreds of thousands of Tamils are now behind the barbed wire of the internment camps, where they are being kept against their will, for up to three years.
To the UN Human Rights Council, the organisation of these concentration camps is a good deed. The Council was ‘Encouraged by the provision of basic humanitarian assistance, in particular, safe drinking water, sanitation, food, and medical and health care services to the IDPs by the Government of Sri Lanka with the assistance of the United Nations agencies’.
The Council ‘Welcomes the continued commitment of Sri Lanka to the promotion and protection of all human rights and encourages it to continue to uphold its human rights obligations and the norms of international human rights law. . . .’
These sentiments constitute the heights of cynicism since Rajapakse’s war against the Tamil people has turned the whole of Sri Lanka into a military police state, complete with hundreds of arrests without charge or trial, the disappearances of journalists and others, with the dead bodies turning up later. Law and order is being maintained by armed killers in white vans, executing critics of the government from the Sinhalese, Muslim and Tamil communities.
There are no human rights in the Sri Lankan military police state.
This did not stop the UN Human Rights Council voting for the resolution 29-13 with six abstentions. Among those countries represented on the Council voting in favour were China, India, the Russian Federation, and South Africa.
Among those who voted against was the UK.
China, India and the Russian Federation, at the behest of the US and the UK, have supplied Sri Lanka with all of the weapons that it required.
The UK opposed the motion shedding crocodile tears, no doubt, seeking to pretend like Pontius Pilate that there was no blood on its hands. It was not only one of the architects of the war, it also sent its diplomats repeatedly to Sri Lanka, where they refused to reveal or stop the massacres of the Tamil people that they knew were happening.
This is perfidious Albion at work. It helped to organise the war. It refused to publicly demand that it be stopped. Now it is seeking to wash the blood off its hands, by a vote against, after over 20,000 people have been murdered.
There is no doubt that the struggle of the Tamil people for the right to self-determination will continue.
They will win their right to self-determination by uniting with the oppressed of the island, the Sinhalese and Muslim workers, to organise a socialist revolution to bring down the blood soaked Rajapakse regime, and bring in a workers and small farmers government.
This will create the conditions where the Tamil people can exercise their rights, including the right to self-determination.
