Call For Immediate War Crimes Trials & Trade Embargoes Against Sri Lanka

By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –DECEMBER 4, 2020

Prof. Ratnajeevan Hoole

The position of our government is that no war crimes were committed by our forces at the end of the war. Contradicting that, last week (23 Nov.) I wrote of how we committed horrendous crimes on the battlefield in May 2009 and of how Australia has approached its own charges of war crimes. I commended its example for our government beginning trials, asking for forgiveness, and rescinding the medallions, promotions, and high offices given to our accused war criminals in uniform. There are mountains of evidence available against them. 

Subsequently today’s news is that Rear Admiral Dr. Sarath Weerasekera on taking oaths as Minister of Public Security has committed himself to protecting all peoples of Sri Lanka. If that is sincere and true, then to protect Tamils he must embark on punishing all war criminals – for example those from the Navy who killed the Trinco 5. So long as he fails to do that the killers in uniform will be in our midst in high positions as they already are. Chilling! 

Yesterday (27.11) it was reported that those mourning their dead, who had not opened their shops to remember their murdered loved ones, were forced by the army presumably including these alleged killers to open their shops closed to commemorate their dead. Given this, it would appear that by “all communities” Dr. Weerasekera meant only the Sinhalese to whom he would offer protection. From abjuration of any responsibility to commitments on prosecuting war crimes, the government is totally mendacious.

Consider! When battles ended in May 2009, then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa issued statements that no war crime was committed and that his troops went into battle with human rights conventions in one hand and the gun in the other. Sinhalese drunk-with-hate might be expected to make and believe these claims.  But Tamils have difficulties understanding why Tamils, an MP in particular, would endorse such unbelievable claims. Subsequently, the government trotted out so-called IT experts from the Sinhalese community from Moratuwa University and in high positions abroad to say that, based on their scientific examination, the graphics in the UK’s Channel 4 documentary showing cold-blooded execution of LTTE-ers was doctored – i.e., photo-shopped). Most Sinhalese seemed to believe it. They do not realize that no one kills his baby to Fake a movie. (To see the photo click here)

In the course of time, Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Paranagama reported in 2015 as part of his government-appointed Commission’s findings that the charge that government troops engaged in war crimes was credible. The government did not like what the Paranagama Commission was finding so it restricted its funding. The Commission collapsed. 

As our demagogic Sri Lankan state thereby manipulates Sinhalese, the world sees us as naked like “The Emperor without Clothes.” Only we do not see our nudity and the incredulity with which the world watches us.

The commitments and scientific findings from the Sri Lankan state are just plumb incredible. The people forget all the untruths in which the government has been caught again and again. The government misleads a gullible population that forgets the past, and continues to vote to delay justice. What is sad is that even Tamils have poor memory. We vote for and celebrate alleged killers among us. We give them high offices in our political parties without an inquiry into the heinous accusations against them. But we insist on war crimes trials against Sinhalese. When a major Tamil party voted to deprive hill-country Tamils of their citizenship, many Tamils continued to vote for it. When that party had an internal fissure and one faction brought out how the main faction housed CID personnel in its Jaffna office this year helping them to monitor Tamils, that did not weaken the party’s support base. These people now fight each other to demonstrate who lights more candles on Maaveerar Day. Many people seem taken in.

Whatever Sinhalese communalists and their Tamils supporters may say for holding on to power and state office, it is a certainty that large scale killings of civilians by our armed forces occurred in the last 5 months leading up to May 2009. What is uncertain is whether it was 40,000 as in the UN Report or well over 100,000 as estimated by many (vide my article last week). As noted in the article, the military confirmed that LTTE cadres had surrendered to the army and a Sri Lankan Army Court of Inquiry acknowledged that the military captured LTTE cadres and that 11,800 cadres had surrendered to the military. The BBC cites video evidence on the surrender it calls compelling. In a comical denouement to an RTI request, the Information Officer of the Sri Lanka Military, Brigadier Sumith Atapattu, stated, “LTTE members have not surrendered themselves to the Sri Lanka military during the last stages of the war and they have handed themselves over to the Sri Lankan government.” The world laughs at us, thanks to our government’s and people’s ignorance of how nude we are. To continue to delude ourselves like this, knowing that others know we are lying, is shameless. Our courts toss out one after the other the findings of previous cases. One, two – all right. But it is now almost every finding by the judiciary against members of the government and its supporters. By so reversing so many decisions, the courts are shooting themselves in the foot and proving the need for external oversight in war-crimes tribunals under UNHRC 30/1. Where the courts found persons, military personnel, and violent monks guilty, the President has pardoned the convicted criminals. This even makes the case for an outside agency to take over the process so that those convicted cannot be pardoned and are held in outside prisons.

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