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rfmcdonaldThings like this really disturb me.
It should go without saying that militarized ultranationalist governments waging merciless war against an ethnic minority's terrorist organization--and, inadvertantly or otherwise, against the ethnic minority itself--aren't capable of settling said ethnic conflicts, at all.
In the past three weeks over 20,000 civilians have escaped the battlefield. Another 7,500 sick and wounded, and their close relatives, have been evacuated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which reckons there may still be 150,000 on the beach. The Tigers will not let them leave. A few would-be fugitives have been shot dead. Many more may be loth to put themselves into government hands, because of ties to the rebels. And the army has not done much to allay their fears. It has tried to ensure safe passage to the escapees; yet, to return the Tigers’ fire, it has allegedly shelled the “no-fire zone”. Most of the evacuees, taken off the beach aboard small fishing-boats, have been wounded by shellfire. The UN’s human-rights chief, Navi Pillay, has suggested both sides may be guilty of war crimes. The UN, as well as India, America and other countries, has for weeks urged the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to hold fire until the civilians are removed.
In fear and loathing of Mr Prabhakaran, a practised escapologist and manipulator of international opinion, the government has largely ignored them. Amid a surge of ethnic nationalism among the Sinhalese majority, which it has stirred, such calls are taken as proof of Western countries’ inveterate bullying and support for the terrorist Tigers. Trapped on a battlefield, with water from just a few brackish wells and little food for weeks, the refugees have received scant sympathy in the Sinhalese press. But nor does the government, in the war’s twilight weeks, wish to commit a massacre.
Having reached the no-fire zone, the army claims to have stopped firing, and to be plotting a massive “rescue operation”. This is not entirely comforting. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the defence secretary and one of three presidential brothers in the government, recently told foreign diplomats how much he admired Russia’s efforts in 2004 in the North Ossetian town of Beslan—where more than 300 hostages held in a school were killed in the rescue effort.
It should go without saying that militarized ultranationalist governments waging merciless war against an ethnic minority's terrorist organization--and, inadvertantly or otherwise, against the ethnic minority itself--aren't capable of settling said ethnic conflicts, at all.
