Photo of graves in Vavuniya, January 2009. Via NYTimes. Presumably natural causes.
Major General Shavendra Silva recently said that ‘not a single LTTE cadre or civilian was killed during the Vanni humanitarian operation’ (government run Daily News). This is a lie, and a somewhat obvious one. Off the top of my head, Nadesan the LTTE police chief was killed, and er, everybody in between? Then Army Commander Sarath Fonseka said that 12,000 LTTE cadres were killed (Government news portal). I also personally saw a bunch of people without limbs and spoke to IDPs who had lost family members. I say this not as a political judgment, but simply to say that Major General Silva is not really telling the truth here. Cadres and civilians did die. That’s how the war finally ended.
The media in Sri Lanka is like a battered wife that now justifies her husband to somehow keep the marriage together. They went crazy over Frederica Jansz’s testimony over what Sarath Fonseka told her but pay zero attention to the actual issues at hand. (Note: Frederica Jansz is my Editor at The Sunday Leader). This is not to say that the reporting of the facts was stellar or that Fonseka’s information is necessarily accurate, but the Sunday Times ran a big headline saying ‘Editor made mistake‘ when she got a random reporters last name wrong. I wonder what they’re going to run on this testimony which unburies thousands of people I’m pretty sure are dead?
This trial of Sarath Fonseka is essentially a way of involving the entire country in a conspiracy to say that no actual war happened during the war like, you know, killing. But it did happen. This is not to say that it didn’t happen for the greater good, or that those deaths were not in vain. But those deaths were. People did die and the least we can do is acknowledge their existence. That is the real issue at hand here, not the contents of a reporters notebook, not who told what to who. People did die. I’ve met their relatives, I’ve seen the casualties and we all followed plenty of reports on the news.
You are poking at a live honeycomb.
Your freedom is controlled by how much freedom the Govt. lets you have.
Even Pakistan, of all states, has a robust press. Why, heck, China is way better than you guys!
He was probably just refering to that river of released hostages that poured in along with some cadres in the last stages, some of them would have been carrying flags just to make sure. They were unarmed, obviously suffering, and we all saw the news footage. The Daily News must have misquoted.
Nadesan and crowd died in Vellamullivaikkal which is another story. That was war.
Would agree that it was a misquote. He probably meant to say no civilians were killed, which sounds, at best, optimistic.
Is that all you noticed about her?
If we used the word ‘collateral damage’ we’d be done for, unlike the Americans.
You mean there’s more?
There is a difference between “civilians were killed” and “civilians died”. I think the government and Maj Gen Silva is trying to say is that they didn’t intentionally kill civilians or surrendering carders. And they are making a mess by using wrong terminology.
I don’t think there is a 100% truth in it. I am sure the members of the armed forces may not have taken full precautions to avoid civilian deaths, and there may have shot some surrendering carders. But if one says that the war systematically targeted civilians with genocidal intentions, that is outright wrong.
Accepting the “collateral damage” apologizing while outright denying purposeful killing would be the way to move forward.
he ment the people who surrendered dumbo, no wonder u work for the rag leader!
Correct. This is Silva’s full quote from the Daily News:
“Not a single LTTE cadre or civilian was killed during the Vanni humanitarian operation. The Army received them as Sri Lankan citizens, Major General Shavendra Silva said giving evidence before the Trial-at-Bar hearing Sarath Fonseka’s white flag issue yesterday. ”
The second sentence makes it clear he’s talking about people who were surrendering or fleeing the Tigers. So making this out to be some sort of holocaust denial is a bit much, no, Indi?
All tabloids have balls — it’s the brain department that needs beefing up.
It’s called quote mining, david. The ‘sunday leader’ is good at that.
This is the second bullshit article indi has written recently, the other being the ‘paan’ fiasco
The other way to square this is to say, as has been said several times before, that there were no civilians, therefore none were killed.
All who were killed were Tigers or their sympathisers, which to some is the same thing. Also fits in with the post war strategy.
The Sunday Leader is such a trashy “newspaper”
Nice to see you back, Dodo. Was afraid you’d left in a huff.
Only the other day, Lefroy was claiming to be one of the only two radical feminists in the land. I was just idly wondering if he would say something similar about a businessminded guy who liked the limelight and was less than perfect physically.
they have the brains as well. they know what sells better. It’s the general public that has neither balls or brains
Oh look, it’s captain dosa. I know what you mean though, indi quote mining hardly amounts to ‘robust media’
hullu mallung, how the hell u been dudoo?
Indi has CENSORED my earlier 2 comments, and the numerous replies they got.
So let’s see whether this works.
Frederica Jansz, that beautiful young lady, whose breasts Byron wouldn’t write poems about.
Jansz is a joke.
Shavendra is a liar. He actually owned and operated a security service whilst still in uniform, which is clearly in violation of army regulations. ‘Course he won’t be cashiered, seeing as he sucks the correct cocks.