Genocide: The Slaughter of the Tamils in Sri Lanka - Genocide Process

இலங்கை இனப்படுகொலையை தோலுரித்து காட்டும் அர்ஜென்டினா ஊடகம்

Nearly 160,000 Tamil people ceased to exist after the Sri Lanka government Genocide which lasted for years.

(COLOMBO) - The only foreign aid Sri Lanka's government allowed through during the blockade years was medical assistance and equipment to hospitals. In pre-existing traditional facilities similar to MASH (Mobile Army Field Hospital) erected by the Red Cross to the emergency caused by the Tsunami of December 26, 2004, civilians started to suffer famine, this was increasing by September 2005.

By this time, the battered population began to receive supplies from the government, sent by the World Food Organization, United Nations, and a degree of relief was felt among the people in this most vulnerable population: pregnant women, elderly, children and above all, patients.

Little did many realize and they suffered the effects of the tsunami still in December 2005, that the countdown to the start of Genocide, was just around the corner, almost ten weeks until the beginning of the end of humanity, at least in northern and northeastern Sri Lanka, Tamil Eelam enclave.

While a large number of specialized physicians and volunteers of different international organizations, NGOs and Red Cross staff had been present in that territory toiling in alleviating the humanitarian tragedy which occurred by the tsunami and the conflict that the Tamils ​​held with central government. 23 December 2005 was the onset of the 'open fire' strategy, according to well-documented facts, to give a 'final solution'-something like the 'final solution' of the Nazis with the Jews, the sake of killing and destination 'end' of the Tamil minority of Sri Lanka.

Because in a way perhaps even more raw and brutal, the beginning of the massacres of civilians ceased to be selective, in the sense that government propaganda machine had convinced the Sinhala majority south in the belief that the hundreds civilian casualties were fighters of the Tamil Tigers of LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).

Now the first voices of Sinhalese Buddhists in the south had begun to question what happened there in the far north of Eelam. On the other hand, in an exclusive interview with this correspondent, former Tiger fighters of Eelam, the LTTE, recognized that his army never exceeded more than 20,000 troops.

If so, the figures do not add up, not in December 2005, with more than 60,000 dead and missing among a population accounting for only about 3 million people. Although this figure could in time be considered in some areas of NGOs as 'inflated', however, and beyond the Tigers of the LTTE and its entire propaganda apparatus, according to the most current statistics, is now seen as modest when the final count of the catastrophe and holocaust of May 18, 2009.

2005 is the key to begin decoding the strategy of genocide. During the impasse that occurred with the ceasefire agreement of 2002, the abstention to the massacres committed by the former President Chandrika Kumaratunga (November 1994 to November 2005) was reversed by the hard-line Sinhala ultranationalist the new president, Mahinda Rajapakse, who after the elections of November 2005 took over the presidency. and began the extermination strategy of Tamils.

During Christmas Eve of that year, held by the Christian Tamils ​​on 23 December, after the Tigers detonated a mine destroying a vehicle in the Navy housing complex (Argentine affordable housing) known as 'Plan of the Hundred Houses' (the one hundred scheeme houses) in the area of ​​Pesalai, Marine reinforcements entered the neighborhood and opened fire indiscriminately on small and precarious buildings, while people fled in terror.

One particular fact well documented by the Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR) happened at the home of a Christian family named Cruz. The report was published in the book, Massacres of Tamils ​​by Manitham (www.manitham.net)

According to numerous testimonies:

'... the teenage children of the Cruz family were not in the house. They had gone to watch TV at the house of some friends. As a result, concerned relatives did not flee as did other residents of the complex. Another family of four: the Fernando family, were escaping with the rest. However, being asthmatic, the mother, named Therese, could not keep running with a three-year old boy. Seeing the Cruz family standing in the doorway of their house, she told her husband to continue running with the boy who was five-years old, and she ran into the home of the Cruz family with the smaller boy. Navy troops arrived at the house and burned alive all of the people. When they removed their bodies. the burned arm of a three-year old child was pulled from the ashes, along with the portfolio of the mother, which was also found among the ashes.

The air attack on the diocese of San Pedro de Navaly proved something to the many Catholics workin against Tamils due to pressure from Buddhist singalies segracionistas. They would later show evidence, according to they and countless organizations, that the strategy of extermination was not limited the Tamils ​​Hindus, but extended to the entire religious spectrum of this minority culture.

2 January 2006, saw the second slaughter under the strategy pursued by President Mahinda Rajapakse and the armed forces that kept him in power, according to spokesmen for the Tamil Forum in London. It happened on the seafront in Trincomalee, at Gandhi Memorial, a social site for university students, when a paramilitary threw a hand grenade, seriously wounding several young. While the rest were attending the wounded, the Navy arrived and opened fire indiscriminately, killing five students and seriously injuring five more.

Then, through 2 January 2007, there were 23 massacres, almost one per day.

But the most alarming, both for UNICEF, NGOs and the Red Cross was not only the intensification of these attacks on civilians, but the shift that became reprisal actions of annihilation, since so many bombings of air force and army artillery concentrated on targets of mass destruction, such as civilian refugee centers where thousands were displaced by conflict or indeed leave their land, small towns with high population density, rehabilitation and education centers. There were centers of assistance for victims of the Tsunami and other institutions.

In this regard, it is worth mentioning two events of that long list of atrocities committed by the armed forces of Sri Lanka.

One occurred on 17 June 2006, after Coast fishermen and their families had taken refuge in the Pesalai Catholic Church diocese. The navy proceeded to strafe the entrance at close range, apparently in retaliation for the defeat of the navy in the naval battle with the Tigers off the coast Pesalai.

The other is a fact that is beyond comprehension. On 5 August 2006, in the months when the conflict led to a war between the armed forces of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers, the army entered the Mathur offices of the international non-governmental organization Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Famine), headquartered in France, shooting 17 of employees. This sparked an international claim against the government of Sri Lanka, especially by the French-and resulted in another trial that ended in another farce in 2008.

In 2007, under international pressure, including the Vatican, massacres attacks decreased but the air force and artillery did not cease to push for maximum results in the killing of Tamils, also causing demoralization and plenty of sleep deprivation.

Again, of the seven attacks committed by both air force and army artillery, one exemplifies how the government practiced maneuver exercises, preparing the Holocaust that would come in May 2009. This one occurred on 2 January 2007, when the air force bombed the small fishing community in Padahuththurai in the Mannar District, composed of forty extended families who were displaced from Jaffna in 1995.

Beyond the killing of these people in a remote and isolated location away from the theater of conflict include the testimony of one of the survivors NESOHOR. Verbatim transcript of that file:

'Some of the men had gone to sea early this morning and saw their homes on fire. He immediately knew what had happened and quickly returned. Sahayarasa-witness says he did: "I was at sea and listen to a K-fir (fighter-bomber of the Air Force of Sri Lanka). Listen saw the bomb explode and our homes in flames. I got off the boat and started walking home. I could not get away because things were flying, referring to the falling debris from the air. I met my wife and two children near the coast, all wounded. I ran to my house. My mother was sitting with her ​​head resting against a tree. She was dead. Lift your head. My baby was in her lap. His head blown off. We had to put his body in a bag. My sister was dead, all her children were dead. All their bodies bloody."

There were 12 massacres in 2008, all told. The air force bombings and army artillery shelling were targeted attacks by special forces, known as 'deep penetration'. But the beginning of the end began with the floods caused by typhoon of November 25, 2008.

This article, La masacre de los Tamils en Sri Lanka , originally published by Diario La Tarde, was translated by Muthamizh Vendhan in Chennai, India, and edited by Tim King, Salem-News.com.