Indi: I’m sorry about the uncharacteristically strong (and rude) comments I made on this thread. I hope you’ll understand that this is an immensely stressful time for those of us who have loved ones missing in the conflict zone, and that tension just boils over sometimes. That doesn’t excuse letting it boil over at you.

I did Google it – and this is what I found on the Wikipedia page “The IRA only struck at targets in England”. Also, BBC carries a similar line “there have never been any attacks in Scotland or Wales”.

So where did you get the part about Wales?

Secondly, even if the IRA did bomb wales – your method of trying to compare GoSL v LTTE to the British response to the IRA’s (supposed) campaign in Wales, and to the Israel action in Gaza is clever, but irrelevant. All these wars have their own idiosyncrasies, historical foundations and path dependencies.

GoSL perceived it was facing an existential threat – which the British at no time ever did vs the IRA. Its a ludicrous comparison. – The only similarities are that armed militants in the north fought against a state actor in the south.

Israel is again another totally different situation. “How would you feel if Israel had, in the recent Gaza war, killed 2000 civilians in a month, forced all the rest to leave their homes, and tossed them into camps where they were confined under armed guard until the Hamas members were weeded out?” – well lets just see:

Gaza and West Bank have been repeatedly attacked by Israel, in a very unequal fight (in terms of weapons and funding), with Israel secure of US backing militarily and politically. The purpose of the attacks have a 100% objective to secure *Israel* – there are no secondary objectives to free territory, or to help the Palestinians. It is official Israeli policy to keep WB/Gaza blockaded for “security” reasons. If you have ever been to Israel, its very jarring to see the first-world infrastructure of Israel against the abject third-world poverty of the WB&Gaza. There is a massive wall, much larger & secure than anything in East Germany during the Cold War, which separates Israel from Gaza. – If you are talking about “open-air prisons”- Gaza is the largest of its kind. Israel sees Palestinian territories as foreign soil, and is occupying/blockading and stifling the economies of these territories for its own security.

W/o getting into the the merits of whether Israel is justified or not (we already have one situation on our hands here) – How does this compare to GoSL v LTTE? – Security is primary objective yes in the push to defeat the LTTE, but so too is liberating territory, and removing the local population from the grasp of the LTTE. Nor, AFAIK, are there plans to perpetually keep the northern tamils as in some kind of destitute servitude. There are no plans, physically or economically, to build a wall from Chilaw to Vavu to Trinco.

Indi was not trying to say “the west shouldn’t condemn Sri Lanka because they’d never had to deal with terrorists on their own soil”. There are “terrorists” and there are “terrorists”. His point is that the US & EU have not had to face a situation like Sri Lanka’s. IRA, Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades, Al Queda are very different to the Sri Lankan situation.

Indi is actually trying to help people, he is doing a lot more than most, including perhaps a number of commentators here, myself included.

There seems to be huge problem and funds are in short supply.

Maybe what is needed is dialogue between the local outfits helping the IDP’s and the international agencies, so that some funds can be channeled through local units? Also perhaps some dialogue with them embassies of a few countries, again with a view to sending some aid via local organisations?

Properly sold, to the right people, it may work.

Well, they haven’t had to deal with terrorism at home on the scale we have had to. The PIRA never occupied any territory in the British isles. Neither did AQ in the USA. When they had to face actual guerrilla forces, they met them with force, be it France in Algeria, or the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even against the PIRA, Britain never hesitated to use hit squads to perform extra-judicial killings — remember the PIRA trio killed in Gibraltar? I think there’s a difference between criticism and condemnation, no?

Why is everyone being so polarized in their opinions? Why must it be condemnation or sucking up — is there no middle ground? No one’s asking anyone to suck up. Just cooperate to achieve a common goal — resettling and normalizing the NE.

You may not trust the GoSL to do many things — very few people do, I think. But there’s stuff we all want done — and I think getting it done is important. Throwing stones won’t achieve anything. The west’s practically given up on Burma and N Korea. There’s only so far you can push a country before you lose all leverage. We were hoping that some of the muscle being flexed at us now would’ve been used against the Tigers when it was needed. A lot of lives could’ve been saved in the last year. But the western media and the bodies like the UN did bugger all. It was very disappointing for us who consider ourselves moderates, who don’t necessarily agree with everything the GoSL does. And now it’s almost as if the western media is being vindictive (which they aren’t) and I find even people like myself being polarized.

It’s not a case of “don’t criticize”. It’s a case of getting the job done. Right now I feel that there’s gotta be a balance.

Working with the GoSL will at least save some lives.
Working with the GoSL is essential, and unavoidable. Sucking up to the GoSL and blindly, unquestioningly toeing their line as Indi is saying we should be doing is not, and will be counter-productive. Not giving blind, unquestioning support doesn’t mean you want sanctions and prosecution for war crimes.

The SL police and security services don’t have the ability to weed out the Tigers from a population in its natural environs, so they gotta do it in the camps.
And this is why. I do not trust the government to do this fairly or properly. This mantra of “don’t criticise the government, don’t criticise the government, don’t criticise the government” grates. Just unconditionally accept everything the government does, and do nothing when you see abuses happen because if you say a word you’ll not be allowed to give aid?

Not giving Sri Lanka unconditional support does not equate to “being on the other side”.

Hmm, you mean like they did in Malaya, in the ’50s?

“How would you feel if Israel had, in the recent Gaza war, killed 2000 civilians in a month, forced all the rest to leave their homes, and tossed them into camps where they were confined under armed guard until the Hamas members were weeded out?”

Well, if Israel did that, maybe they could’ve got rid of Hamas. Sadly, the Israelis have forgotten how to win wars now that they have nukes.

Just to inject a bit of realism here. For both sides. If you think imposing sanctions and attempting to prosecute war crimes will somehow help the people in the IDP camps, go for it. It’ll take a few months to a few years from UN or EU tabling to actual implementation. By then, the GoSL would have resettled the IDPs and dismantled the camps. However, in the interim, many more civilians would have died of preventable causes. Working with the GoSL will at least save some lives. Sanctions will do nothing for the IDPs and, in fact, make things worse.

The GoSL isn’t the Khemer Rouge. It may be corrupt, paranoid, arrogant, and so many other things, but it’s a legit government with the infrastructure that can be used if worked right. Many of you wonder why the IDPs can’t just be turned loose. Well, despite what the GoSL and the media is saying, there are probably a lot of Tigers still out there. There are also a lot of landmines and unexploded ordnance, plus shitloads of weapons. Until a lot of this is cleared, no one’s going back in. The SL police and security services don’t have the ability to weed out the Tigers from a population in its natural environs, so they gotta do it in the camps.

The war crimes stuff will never happen. It just won’t. There is no case. If you can’t see the difference between conflicts like the former Jugolslavia, Sudan, and Rwanda on one side, and Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, and SL on the other, well, I guess you’re closing your eyes to reality. On one side it’s genocide, on the other it’s callous disregard, and however you wanna twist it, the latter just won’t make it to the Hague.

On the SL side, we need to chill too. For the above reasons. We need to finish screening the IDPs ASAP and start letting the world in. We need to stop being so paranoid and defensive. I think this’ll all happen in due course. It’s barely two weeks since we topped VP.

In any event, independent media access isn’t a priority. Independent aid worker access is. Whether the world knows about what’s happening isn’t as important as whether what’s happening is being fixed. I think we probably agree so far. Where we disagree is that I don’t think sucking up to the government will be productive in the long run, medium run or short run, because access that’s granted on the basis of sucking up is always conditional on continued sucking up, and I don’t think that’ll let aid workers do very much about fixing the problems that need fixing.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says that 926 civillians were killed by Israel in the Gaza War (See http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/list.pdf ). In contrast, your guys killed 6500 civilians in the three months to April this year (and that was before the last round of fighting). OK? And I’m talking about the recent conflict in Gaza, not 1948 (I’m not and idiot – what happened in 1948 there is on a totally different order of magnitude to what happened this year in Sri Lanka, so don’t make it look as if I’m linking the two). The 1948 “camps” in Gaza, which is what you’re linking to, were created and maintained by the Egyptians at a time when Gaza was part of Egypt. They’re not surrounded by barbed wire and people can come and go. They’re like the IDP camps where the Muslims forced out of Jaffna by the LTTE live or where the Tamils “displaced” by your HSZs live, not the camps where the GoSL is herding Tamils now. Horrible, but not comparable. You’re dodging my question quite well. How would you feel if Israel had, in the recent Gaza war, killed 2000 civilians in a month, forced all the rest to leave their homes, and tossed them into camps where they were confined under armed guard until the Hamas members were weeded out? Would you still be saying the international community should stop condemning Israel who were just scared that there are still Hamas cadre around?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gVoaDFmbCYS-Usz9ACDRIengj21QD98AJ9E00

And, um, the majority of Gaza is in refugee camps. About 500,000 people according to the UN. This is ongoing for years. This year Israel killed over 1000 people in the space of a month, and God knows how many over the whole occupation.

Really? So killing civilians, shelling hospitals, murdering surrendered combatants and generally butchering folks just coz is fine?

The UK had to deal with terrorism in places like Wales and in small towns around the UK for a couple of decades, actually. Google “IRA bombing campaign.” They dealt with it without bombing South Armagh to smithereens or herding the entire population of the area into welfare villages tastefully decorated with borders of barbed wire.

Sri Lanka is getting off lightly. Can you imagine the outcry there’d be if Israel killed 6000+ Palestinian civilians and tossed the entire population of Gaza into camps for a period they said would be up to two years?

How does

1) Being scared of LTTE cadres in camps
2) Fear of prosecution abroad (the HRC response is a joke anyway)

prevent independent media access?

Prosecution is not for the camps but for “war crimes” which may have or may have not occurred during the hostilities.

Why should we flatter a government for it to fulfill its own obligations to its people? If the government could spend millions/billions (i dunno the figure) winning the war. Can’t they spend half of that winning the peace? Access to deliver aid is there as you know Indi, not access to report conditions.

I’m afraid this is becoming an unstructured rant, but while I’m at it. As a Sri Lankan; congratulating the government for getting rid of the LTTE can be argued. But for killing my fellow brothers and sisters in the process is not defensible under any circumstances.

The government is acting like children, and are using the lives of 300,000 civilians as bargaining chips to get what they want from the international community.

I agree that politics should be kept aside for now to help those people, but the government has to come at least some of they way. No donor wants to give to an ungracious recipient, and the GoSL cannot on one hand demonize NGOs, the IC, the Tamil Diaspora, media and then expect them to treat them favourably back. Ideally, politicians would rise above such pettiness for the greater good… but they’re not really known for that, are they.

If the GoSL genuinely cared about the people in those camps, which are on the brink of major health disasters, there are small steps they can take, which will increase the trust of donors and make flows of aid more forthcoming. such as opening up the camps to international aid organisations, transferring control from the military to civil orgs. But this will mean sacrificing some of their pride, sovereignty, and/or control. Compromises have to be made BY ALL SIDES for the greater good.

http://www.passtheroti.com/posts/2053#comment-4834

but what you should consider is that the dominant political ideology among young people here, often called ‘progressivism,’ does not allow for political solutions which respect market realities. Much like the EU who persist in market-distorting import-duty loopholes like that which makes SL textiles at least 10% cheaper than their foreign competitors’ product.

As long as SL continues to think that it is a long-term player in the textiles biz, it should consider what will happen when that loophole is phased out and they are forced to compete under the same regulatory climate as kind/lovely/shining/beautiful China.

but of course, you may continue with your armchair quarterbacking of “the diaspora” as so may Singhalese, Burgher and Muslim bloggers and journalists STILL feel so comfortable in using as a proxy for doing actual reportorial work and finding, at the least, a values survey of this tamil diaspora that would substantiate assumptions made about popularly held opinions.

until then, there’s no debate. There’s just you insulting people you’ve never met and eliding over the most salient aspects of struggle in emigration to the West that you’ve apparently never had to deal with. That is why your call to the IC to ‘fuck off for 15 minutes’ doesn’t seem to translate (as regards the western press) as the authentic voice of a Singhalese dove but a crudely fitting piece of a puzzle depicting the stereotypical chauvinist.

Basically, I think they need at least 3 months to clear some of the camps, and then rather than boycotts the diaspora should call for more garment factories, etc in the North and East. And build some of them themselves.

It is disappointing when people are so quick to set aside human rights for security. That’s ultimately what this is about: security gained by once again abusing the Tamil minority.

Anyway, I’m sure complaints from the diaspora ring hollow.