Friday, September 30, 2011

The Unknown Killing Fields: Looking into the Sri Lankan Civil War

impactmagazine

header imageSummary executions, bodies of raped women, and families hiding from bombs in hastily dug trenches. The images shown in a recent Channel Four documentary bring back memories of tragedies such as the killing fields in Cambodia and the genocide in former Yugoslavia. But these massacres occurred just two years ago in Sri Lanka, at the bloody end of a conflict that had been going on for more than twenty-five years. Despite suggestions from the United Nations, the Red Cross and Amnesty International that war crimes and crimes against humanity had possibly been committed, there has not been an international inquiry. Why is it that Sri Lanka does not seem to be able to keep the international community’s attention?