Posts Tagged ‘Humanitarian Aid Sri Lanka’
The Brewing Humanitarian Crisis In Sri Lanka
This is the video shot by Channel Four News from the United Kingdom that apparently warranted their expulsion from Sri Lanka. They talked about children being separated from their families, reported sexual abuse, food and fresh water shortages among other challenges. Watch the interviews they took with individuals within the camp. Listen to their stories. Then watch the government’s response and wonder how dangerous this situation is moving forward.
The Tamil people of Sri Lanka have been undeniably been subjected to a whole host of human rights abuses at the hands of their government. Having innocent civilians imprisoned in camps like these is an extremely dangerous situation and risks the lives of everyone who is imprisoned.
My concern for innocent civilians stuck in the war zone has seen me accused by Sinhalese persons of being a ‘terrorist sympathizer’. What has become clear to me, in reading the responses I’ve received from pro-Sinhalese folks is that there is a huge issue in separating the condition and treatment of the Tamil people, from that of the LTTE. It seems concern about humanitarian disaster, and possible genocide against Tamil civilians, at least to them is the same as supporting or sympathizing with the LTTE. If this is the mind set, and the government supporters are unable to separate the plight of the people from the LTTE and recognize that those are two very different issues as I have, how can any responsible person believe that these civilians are safe under these conditions?
The BBC, New York Times, CNN and other very legitimate media sources are being denied access to the war zone and the vulnerable populations in these camps, and the world is left to rely on the word of the Sri Lankan Government. This is a government that attacks virtually all international media sources, claims that they’re all in bed with the LTTE, refers to Human Rights Watch, a respected Human Rights organization ‘War on Sri Lanka’.
I think all Canadians need to recognize that there is a humanitarian crisis impacting hundreds of thousands of people who have had nothing to do with the conflict and whose lives are now at grave risk. We need to understand you can be sympathetic and concerned about the lives of Tamil people without being supportive of the LTTE or terrorism. We can’t allow internment camps to house an ethnic minority group for a period of up to three years, especially after what has been such a long and divisive civil war. Especially without journalists, and international aid workers and peacekeepers present to ensure their safety.
Sinhalese people in Colombo or anywhere else in the world can continue to call me whatever they’d like, but the fact remains, the situation on the ground in Sri Lanka has all the ingredients for disaster, and it is incumbent on the international community to ensure civilians are protected from violence, mass killings and the other realities that the world has come to know happen when folks are singled out by ethnicity and interned in camps.
We have to recognize internment camps have absolutely nothing to do with the LTTE whatsoever and that this is a decision the Sri Lankan government has made on it’s own. Government’s need to be held to a higher standard. It’s easier for the world to step in right now to address the humanitarian issues, than it will be later on.
Let’s get this right for once as an international community, and step in and solve a problem before it gets anymore out of hand.
4 Comments »The World Needs to Tell Sri Lanka 'No Internment Camps'
I have great difficulty understanding why in 2009 anyone could think this kind of treatment of an ethnic minority is OK? Wasn’t the lesson we were supposed to take from past atrocities of ethnic minorities ‘never again’? Didn’t the world dedicate itself to the protection of civilians in times of war, and from government sanctioned violence and despair? Hasn’t that pledge been made again and again?
How is it we can allow a government that has been accused by Human Rights Watch of ‘disappearing’ (read: carrying out mass murders) of 18 000 Tamil civilians to block UN, Red Cross, NGO and media access to some 300 000 internally displaced people they have decided to intern in concentration camps. There have been numerous reports of parents being separated from children, rapes, and chronic shortages of the most basic necessities to sustain human life. They are refusing aid for those they’ve interned. They are not protecting the lives of their captives.
The 300 000 Tamils the Sri Lankan government has interned in these camps have lost virtually all of their rights and their basic dignity is under constant attack daily. They are not free to leave and return home. Stuck behind barbed wire fences, guarded by machine gun wielding soldiers, they’ve lost any rights one would expect citizens to have in a country with any claim to be free or democratic.
Such treatment makes reconciliation impossible, and is bound to lead to massive loss of human life, through either deliberate genocidal acts or humanitarian crisis brought about through irresponsible government action. That is bound to lead to more violence.
Below is yet another video, from yet another news organization about the plight of Tamils in these government run concentration camps.
It’s 2009. We’ve seen this show before. Never have concentration camps been used for good. Never has an ethnic minority group been well served by being detained without rights, media access or the basic necessities to sustain life. We know the outcome of these situations. We need to stop this one before it gets any worse.
The international community needs to give Sri Lanka a final warning. Tell the Sri Lankan government to open up, let the UN in, allow the Red Cross and NGOs to save lives, and the media to tell the story and be there to witness the treatment of these civilians. Should they choose not to once again, then it is incumbent on the United Nations to invoke ‘right to protect’ and step in – against the government’s will and protect the lives of these 300 000 civilians.
1 Comment »A UN Mandated Force Needs to be on the Ground in Sri Lanka
When has a minority group ever been interned in camps run by the dominant opposing side in a military conflict, and it ended with those people walking out alive? When have internment or concentration camps without independent media or Red Cross access ever not resulted in mass killings of minorities? Simply put, the fox can never be trusted to guard the hen house. Why haven’t we learned to respond immediately?
Sri Lanka has been engaged in civil war for well over two decades. The Tamil people have suffered systemic racism in Sri Lanka for decades, and well before the start of this war. With the government of Sri Lanka bombing Tamil civilians, denying humanitarian access, or the mobility of independent media – how can the world sit by and just hope that somehow the Sri Lankan government won’t go even further, especially when the UN is saying they’ve likely already committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Pro-Sinhalese folks will say, that the LTTE are terrorists, that’s not a claim I am going to dispute, but the LTTE are not holding over 200 000 members of an ethnic group they’ve been indiscriminately bombing, denying basic medial and food aid to and forbidding the media from witnessing. The Sri Lanka government is. They are also not denying the over 200 000 minorities they are holding in guarded camps, surrounded by barbed wire, the right to leave the camps. The journalists who tried to report on the severity of the camps was deported from Sri Lanka for ‘damaging the countries image’.
The world community needs to get their act together and invoke the ‘responsibility to protect’ and prevent what could be an undisputed genocide if the world community fails to step in. The reason Tamil Canadians are in the streets of Toronto daily is to push for our government to protect their loved ones back home. It isn’t an unreasonable request to ask Canada to stand up and use it’s presence on the international stage to protect innocent civilians from further harm.
I was very young when the Srebrenica massacre happened. I am too young to remember it, but it is a topic I’ve certainly learned about in university and read about on my own. I was shocked that such a large scale mass murder of innocent people could take place in ‘safe zones’ while the UN stood by and watched. It demonstrated the atrocities of Rwanda had not served as a lesson in managing ethnic conflict. The resulting decade of discussion about the UN’s effectiveness has seen Darfur virtually ignored by the international community, and now Sri Lanka setting the stage for the latest moment when the world community has a choice to make.
The United Nations Security Council has a responsibility to protect innocent civilians. They have a responsibility to ensure that innocent civilians are protected from armed conflict. The reports that are getting out of Sri Lanka make it clear that isn’t happening. Whether you believe the government figures of 378 deaths from the Sri Lankan government shelling a hospital, or the Tamil community’s figure of 3000 – there is no room for moral relativism when it comes to the deaths of innocent civilians. One is too many. 300 or 3000 is totally without explanation. Simply put, governments never have the right to kill their people, and the world community always has an obligation to act when it is clear a government either has, is or soon will kill innocent civilians.
The silence of Canada’s government has been deafening on this issue. The Canadian government should act at the United Nations to pressure members of the Security Council to pass a resolution invoking the ‘responsibility to protect’ and sending in an international force that can protect Tamil civilians from violence, and develop a framework to a sustainable peace and security for both the Tamil and Sinhalese populations of Sri Lanka.
A UN mandated force could open the country up to foreign journalists, keep the peace and allow for humanitarian aid to flow in hopes of alleviating the current humanitarian crisis and preventing further humanitarian crises and acts of genocide. This force could also stabilize the situation and prevent future outbreaks of violence.
If you haven’t already, write to the Prime Minister of Canada (pm@pm.gc.ca) and your Member of Parliament
to tell them that you believe Canada must act to prevent further crimes against humanity from being committed in Sri Lanka.
These protests we’ve seen every day have been about raising awareness and getting people to pressure the government. If you agree with the Tamil community, or even if you just want the protests to stop, remind Stephen Harper that his Government has a moral obligation to pursue peace in the world and that the UN has a responsibility to protect. Call on him to do his part to ensure that happens.
Below are some links to stories about the chaos brewing in the internment camps the Sri Lankan government has forced over 200 000 Tamils into.
Children Separated From Parents in Chaotic Sri Lankan Camps – Save the Children, May 16 2009
Sri Lankan Government Denies Entry to Aid Groups, Raising Humanitarian Law Questions, May 15 2009
The banality of evil in Sri Lanka – UPI Asia, May 15 2009
Sri Lankan shelters stretched to ‘breaking point’, May 12 2009
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