Dude you should cut the bull shit, seriously. 75,000 people didn’t die and you don’t have a shred of demonstrable evidence to support that claim. Firstly, it’s funny how despite the completely lack of any new evidence the supposed death toll has gone from 7000 to 10000 to 15000 to 40000 and now it’s 75000. that is bloody hilarious. are you guys goldfish? Secondly, if you seriously think the war about getting one person you need to seek some professional help.

That’s war, Myil. If you don’t want to kill or die, play cricket. 60,000 before we got Wijeweera. Hundreds of thousands and still counting to get Saddam. Millions before they got Hitler. The whole problem was that Eelam became one man. And to idiots like you, it’s still about that one man. The question is, really, how many more Tamils would you have sacrificed for that one despot?

Dear David Blacker,
Can’t leave the brusque remarks out, can you?

I agree with your point about deaths in wars. But the GoSL did not take precautions in the final stages to prevent Tamil civilians deaths. In fact, the very fact that they were Tamil made it easy to bomb them. The GoSL siding with their ethnicity created this problem, as I’ve said before, GoSL is the cause and LTTE the symptom.

I hold nothing for prabha, his strategy of empowering the sinhala extremists while taking out the moderate Tamil leaders has left the Tamil community in a challenging position. You should stop thinking like that.

Eelam is not about one man. Hijacking the cause was one man. All this could have been settled amicably if GoSL leadership was willing to be flexible.

I wouldn’t have sacrificed anyone. But for the cause there were those who were willing to stand up. It was a rightful cause started by nonviolent agitation, which was responded with state terror.

Dear The Way of the Dodo,

you said:
“Dude you should cut the bull shit, seriously. 75,000 people didn’t die and you don’t have a shred of demonstrable evidence to support that claim”.
My response:
It’s not BS. There is evidence. Video clip showing soldiers killing Tamils, etc. The International Crisis Group(ICG) came out with a report that says 75,000 people are unaccounted for. Former UN spokesman, Gordon Weiss, claims 40,000 or more. Why would ICG lie? what is in it for them to lie? Other sources of evidence is the fact that the GoSL did not allow any reporters into the area. What do they have to hide? What’s the cover up for? The other evidence, the GA of Mullaithivu said around 375,000 people in the Vanni but only 300,000 came out. I’d believe the ICG more than the GoSL. Do I have to start on why I don’t trust the GoSL? Isn’t it pretty obvious.

You said:
Firstly, it’s funny how despite the completely lack of any new evidence the supposed death toll has gone from 7000 to 10000 to 15000 to 40000 and now it’s 75000. that is bloody hilarious. are you guys goldfish?
My response:
The 7000 figure was a conservative estimate at the early stages and later on there were more attacks but it was hard to document because media was not allowed. Anyway, 75,000 people are now unaccounted for. Where did they go? Should we presume aelian abduction? Videos showing Tamils being executed by the armed forces, which was proved authentic. The president says not even one civilian was killed. Prof. Rajiva Wijesinghe said around 5,000 civilians were killed. These once again show the lack of tact and articulation in lying by the GoSL bigwigs.

You said:
Secondly, if you seriously think the war about getting one person you need to seek some professional help.
My response:
It was about getting prabhakaran because the LTTE was a one man show. The war was over on the 16th of May but the news of Prabhakaran’s death came May 18th, which sent the president ecstatic and as well as sinhala people. People were getting ready to celebrate but when they saw prabakaran’s body there was extra joy for president as well as sinhala people. Prabhakaran has been the defining feature of this war he’s been there since the beginning.

Myil is the world really that black and white for you. Either the ICG or GOSL nothing in between, Lol. But really where in the ICG report does it say 75,000 people died. The only mention of 75,000 is the pathetic bit of creative calculus they present in page 6 to show how 75,000 people could have possibly disappeared. Apparently 35,000 people lived in the IDP camps before May 2009, they claim to know that 330,000 were living in the 2nd no fire zone but provide no references to back up this claim. Then say that the maximum number of people in IDP camp was 290,000. The deficit comes to 75,000(35000+330000-290000=75000) so obviously the government killed 75,000. ? Cognitive bias and outright incredulity is glaring in this lazy bit of analysis. If I were to present this as part of a term paper to any of my profs I’d probably get a D for it. How the hell did these people get the 330,000 figure? And no, you can’t simply assume that just because 375,000 lived in Vanni all of them ended up in the no fire zone. Also there seems to be no provisions for people who managed to escape to India or didn’t get rounded up by the Army. And what about the people the people who were held separately as possible LTTE carders. None of this has been taken into account.

7000 figure isn’t a conservative estimate. it is actually a highly optimistic one, in more than one sense of the word. Even some of the UN staff admitted that the creative extrapolation some of these buffoons have used to concoct these figures is unacceptable. For example, in one ‘study’ the death toll was put at 15000. how they achieved this 15K is hilarious. They took the number of deaths reported to the hospital on one particular day and then multiplied that by a number by 5 and then multiplied again by the number of days the battle took place. The actually documented number of deaths is far lower than 7000. And even then some the claims made by aid workers have been clearly debunked as outright lying. Several of the supposed heavily shelled locations appeared to be untouched according the subsequent satellite imagery, so much for the genuine intentions of the NGO community. You can find this bit in the US congressional report on the war.

This of course brings us to the most interesting part of these allegations, where the fuck are all these bodies? The final no fire zone, where the supposed massacre of 75,000 took place, was less than 4 Km^2. With 75,000 people dying in their bodies should be littered everywhere. Why was this not the case? There are at least a dozen spy satellites flying over sri lanka several times a day, there is no way on earth those satellites couldn’t have picked up the bodies. They should have also pick up images of the government hastily trying to bury 75,000 there is no photographic evidence of this as well. Why is that so?

Dear The Way of the Dodo,

Thanks for your informative engagement.

The thing about a war situation is this – nothing can be 100% sure unless a proper investigation is allowed. That’s one reason why I support an independent investigation.
There are satellite images for example by U.S. satellites but they aren’t so willing to just provide them. Because then the U.S. would he held responsible to do an investigation or move to initiate some sort of investigation. So if the UN comes up with an investigation the U.S. might provide the satellite pictures or if they are doing their own investigation.

75,000 figure is mainly from the middle of January till the end of the war. But could also include those who died in the early phases of the war in vanni.

Anyway, my question is, if the GoSL didn’t kill anyone then why not allow an investigation to remove all doubt?
What is the GoSL hiding? If there is nothing to hide then why all the fuss with the int’l media being banned from the war zone, etc? GoSL could use the evidence to raise its international profile and get more tourists. Instead they keep evading.

The 75,000 bodies would have been burnt and all evidence covered up. That’s why no one was allowed into the war zone until the military cleaned up it’s dirty work.

The GoSL got the doctors from the Vanni to lie to the media about casualties. But ICRC evacuated around 13,000 people with shrapnel wounds and shell attack wounds. how do you explain that?

The president says not one civilian died. Can we really believe this? While Prof. Rajiva Wijesingha says about 5,000 died.

The GoSL’s contradictory statements it self shows the GoSL is being dishonest.

75,000 people are unaccounted for, where are they? Their relatives want to know

Please refer to the following web pages to see how areas where IDP shelters were were bombed and other related issues
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6337805.ece
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/asia/satellite-imagery-offers-glimpse-on-sri-lankan-war-zone/

Ha ha, so Myil, you come up with all these figures, then when the Dodo shows you how insubstantial they are, you claim that since no one knows what happened, ANYTHING could happen. Yes, MAYBE their are green men on Mars, and until a UN panel is allowed up there, anything is possible. Dude, it’s because of this absolute laziness on the part of lobbyists to even attempt to prove these allegations that makes any attempts fall flat.

You’re grasping at straws: the US won’t provide the satellite pics. Who told you this, an uncle in DC? The Tamils in SL won’t talk because they’re scared. How convenient for you Tamils outside SL to talk instead. You say that 13,000 wounded were evacced, but how does that tot up to your 75,000? All you have is pure conjecture, assumptions, and really bad arithmetic.

You say that the GoSL didn’t take adequate measures to protect the civilians, and yes, you’re right, but that is not a war crime. That is callousness, and unfortunately war is not a place for gentle babies. Nor did I see any attempt by the LTTE to adequately protect civilians during terrorist attacks. It was a tough and dirty war and, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, “So it goes.”

You say that the civilians were easier to kill because they were Tamils. Well, let me tell you that both races die pretty much the same. Didn’t you notice the 60,000 killed between ’87-’89? They didn’t need to be Tamil. Don’t let your unreasoning racism and hatred of this government disrupt your intellect.

This administration is very opaque, paranoid, and corrupt, but that doesn’t mean that they’re hiding war crimes. You’re just assuming it. For years, Saddam Hussein refused to cooperate with UN WMD inspectors, and the west assumed that this meant he was hiding something. Millions of deaths later, and billions of dollars later, we know the US was wrong. Don’t assume anything. There isn’t a shred of evidence of genocide or any serious war crimes. Never mind controversial evidence, never mind circumstantial evidence; there isn’t a shred of ANY evidence. Cooking up this huge conspiracy in which everyone from the US to India to China is ganging up together to save the Rajapakses is just plain foolish.

You ask why the GoSL won’t allow an independent inquiry. My question is why should they? Will the US allow one in Iraq or Afghanistan or at Abu Ghraib or at Guantanamo? Will India allow one in J&K? Will ANY sovereign western nation allow a UN investigation into any domestic issue? So why must a small third world nation allow this?

Even the most basic of police searches of private property requires a search warrant. And the latter requires evidence of probable cause at the very least. So Myil, come with your search warrant and we’ll let you in. The Security Council denied Ban a warrant, so he set up his own panel.

You say that Mahinda is lying when he says that not one civilian died, you say that the GoSL statements are contradictory. Well, no shit, Sherlock, politicians are liars. They all are. From Mahinda to Ban Ki Moon to Obama. The only thing that keeps them honest is the likelihood of getting caught. but it doesn’t make them war criminals.

The media is full of talk of the ‘SL Model’, that this sort of counter-terror war will be taken to J&K and Burma and Pakistan and Israel. Well, guess what, that’s rubbish. The only part of this ‘model’ that will be used is the media component — in other words, NO media. Well do you think we invented this? We modified it from Israel who borrowed it from China who learned it from Russia who saw it in Spain. That’s all the media cares about — media freedom — and all they fear is the lack of it.

The fact of the matter, Myil, is that the western governments don’t care. All this agitation is by lobbyists and the media. In the end, this is just an advisory panel. It has no power. And it can only advice Ban. In the end Ban cannot force the Security Council to act, and there’ll be no sanctions without them. That’s what makes all this bullshit protests by Wimal and His Traveling Dance Troupe so ridiculous. Much ado about nothing.