Hundreds dead, over a quarter of a million refugees, UN compounds shelled

[maradona]

Sound familar? Only its not Gaza this time it is Sri Lanka where for the last few weeks the Sri Lankan army and airforce have been carrying out an offensive against the Tamil Tigers, which has so far involved military operations in heavily populated areas and the Tamil Tigers preventing injured civilians from moving to safer areas or accessing medical care so they can use them as human shields. Hundreds have died and many more injured. There are allegations that UN safe havens have come under fire and nearly 300'000 refugees are stuck in the middle of the fighting who are experiencing severe shortages of humanitarian aid, food, shelter and medical care. There has been no food convoys reached these refugee's for nearly 2 weeks.

See http://www.amnesty.org/en/asiaandpacific/southasia/srilanka for some more details.

There has been a bit a disparity in terms of the media coverage with what happened / is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Sri Lanka. There has also been a distinct absence of protest marches around the world for the Sri Lankan people caught up in the crossfire, politicians telling the Sri Lankan government their actions are disproportionate, the UN having special sessions on the crisis along with special fundraising campaigns to alleviate the problems face, no sit ins on university campus', no calls for a boycott of Sri Lankan goods and no conspiracy theories about how the Sri Lankan diaspora has control of the media and foreign policy of a country like the US

[Silver10]

Gawd, its always somewhere:(
Sorry... maybe I'll be able to offer more later.

[raven]

I found this on the BBC website. It's a couple of years old but the argument about BBC bias regarding the Sri Lankan conflict is almost an exact replica of the current argument about bias and Gaza and Israel

Sri Lanka: Truth, bias and the BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4986748.stm

It also points out that the BBC is the only international broadcaster with a permanent presence there - and the BBC have been covering, if somewhat sketchily current events but I can't find reference anywhere else. If it's not in the news how are people going to know, care, protest?
I've been reading Flat Earth News ... which gets on my nerves in parts but generally his point is that the news is being constricted by and large cos the channels through which it comes through are increasingly restricted to the big news agencies like the Press Association and then amended/adapted/expanded on by the papers .... which explains why you get all the same stories whatever you read/watch but maybe also explains why some 'news' stories never make the news ... the information isn't coming through. It's too time consuming, expensive etc...
Think that's what happened with that case of the BNP party member who was arrested for having a house stuffed full of explosive materials ... if that rings any bells? It was mentioned a little here and there but ignored by the main press not cos they didn't want to stir up tensions but cos the story didn't make it out to them as they rely more on what the Press Agency gets hold of than they do on journalists based out and about, court reports etc. Which was interesting cos it demonstrated that the media isn't necessarily ignoring say Sri Lanka on purpose and in contrast to Gaza ... could be it just isn't being that arsed to find out, so to speak

[*lisa simpson*]

i read a bit about this and thought i'm glad i'm not there - i was there last new year (i hated it, as it goes) but even while i was there there was an assassination in colombo - at the time there was a low terror warning there but mainly for the north of the island and i was in the south. although there's been a pretty constant level of violence there, particularly in the north which is the (most) disputed bit, it does look like it's escalating. i hope they find a way around it but this is another long-term territory dispute, involving ethnic (if not religious) divisions, so i think a proper solution is probably some way off.

There has been a bit a disparity in terms of the media coverage with what happened / is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Sri Lanka.

our great nation and the US have no vested interests there, though, do they? and it has no impact on a wider conflict that we and the us are heavily involved in and that is about crucial resources.

[live to fall asleep]

random: My friends aunt used to work out there as an aid worker until about 2 years ago, where they were all pulled out as it was too dangerous for them to be there.

I think this has been going on for some time, but as *LS* says, the lack of impact that it is having on any other world politics makes for little news stories over here :(

[Lone Architect]

This just shows up everyone. The media for ignoring it, the protestors for being selective in what they care about (which is what annoys me sometimes about some protestors, although not all), the government...

Does it matter that no one involved is white? I know a lot of Israelis aren't western European/American in origin, but a fair few are, and that does sometimes seem to lend more interest in the media, whereas all Sri Lankans are non-white so the media cares less.

[starcrossed]

I've been working for a charity for the last 5 months that helps asylum seekers, we have had a massive increase in the number of Sri Lankan people whilst I've been working there. Whenever I discuss it with people outside of work they're shocked as they didn't know anything was happening there.

Like lone architect says - it's shocking how some conflicts seem to be ignored, it's pretty disgusting really.

[*lisa simpson*]

i was in a corner shop earlier, and the lady behind the counter was sri lankan and one of her customers clearly knew her quite well and they were discussing it. i kind of got into the convo as well a bit and they told me that there was a big march yesterday, they were expecting 100,000 marchers, and the shopkeeper was saying it hasn't been covered in a single newspaper (and she looked through them all).

[Classified Machine]

There has been a bit a disparity in terms of the media coverage with what happened / is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Sri Lanka. There has also been a distinct absence of protest marches around the world for the Sri Lankan people caught up in the crossfire, politicians telling the Sri Lankan government their actions are disproportionate, the UN having special sessions on the crisis along with special fundraising campaigns to alleviate the problems face, no sit ins on university campus', no calls for a boycott of Sri Lankan goods and no conspiracy theories about how the Sri Lankan diaspora has control of the media and foreign policy of a country like the US

Oh dear. Truly the last refuge of the Israeli apologist: 'Look over there! It's much worse!'

[*lisa simpson*]

do you honestly think that's what maradona's point was?!

[Classified Machine]

do you honestly think that's what maradona's point was?!

Probably. I mean, what is the point then? You've already said it yourself on the difference in media coverage, protests etc. The same goes for the Congo and Darfur, which I've also seen brought up time and time again in the last few weeks. It is at best misguided and at worst outright apologism for what Israel has been up to.

Why else do these conflicts all of a sudden get a mention when the IDF are doing/have just finished doing their worst? And in this instance it's been explicitly compared with Gaza.

[Lone Architect]

I'd assume the Sri Lankan case is being mentioned as this is a fresh and ingoing new offensive which has only mentioned (in the few cases it has been mentioned) since it began, not since the Gaza crisis began.

Maradona makes a good point without being pro-Israel.

[*lisa simpson*]

Probably. I mean, what is the point then? You've already said it yourself on the difference in media coverage, protests etc. The same goes for the Congo and Darfur, which I've also seen brought up time and time again in the last few weeks. It is at best misguided and at worst outright apologism for what Israel has been up to. Why else do these conflicts all of a sudden get a mention when the IDF are doing/have just finished doing their worst? And in this instance it's been explicitly compared with Gaza.

actually i think the reason they're getting mentioned now is more because people are shocked that a conflict in which western nations have such a vested interest is getting massive media and political coverage while these conflicts, many of which have been going on for some time (especially in the case of darfur and sri lanka) have been ignored for so long. in my experience it's the left wing press and the more radical elements of hte press that are bringing them up - not to apologise for israel (and i really doubt that was maradona's intention, judging from his previous posts here and on the old OF but obviously i can't speak for him) but to say how sad it is that conflicts only get coverage when western interests are at stake.

also, it's worth remembering it was the national holocaust memorial day on tuesday so darfur specifically may well have been mentioned in context of that, which just happened to coincide, and i know it was mentioned in the israel/gaza conflict coverage as well, largely in a way that put israel in a bad light.

i've mentioned these various conflicts on fd before and believe me, i'm no apologist for israel - i think what they have done is wrong, i think putting other humans inside what is essentially a ghetto, is something they, of all people, should know better than to do.

[Classified Machine]

but to say how sad it is that conflicts only get coverage when western interests are at stake.

Maybe but it wasn't just the media coverage that was mentioned.

also, it's worth remembering it was the national holocaust memorial day on tuesday so darfur specifically may well have been mentioned in context of that, which just happened to coincide, and i know it was mentioned in the israel/gaza conflict coverage as well, largely in a way that put israel in a bad light.

It may well have been but it was also extensively used in the way I describe and right in the midst of the 'war'. The underlying suggestion is nearly always that opponents of what Israel are doing aren't concerned about the other conflicts and focus on what Israel is doing because they're closet anti-semities. Just take this piece by Efraim Karsh, who no one would deny is ouright apologist for Israel and what it has done to Gaza: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=283&PID=1845&IID=2824

Echoed by the international media's blanket coverage of Israel's response in Gaza, but not Hamas' murderous ideology and actions, this chorus of disapproval over the Jewish state's "disproportionate" use of force is in stark contrast to the utter indifference to far bloodier conflicts that have been going on around the world, from the long-running genocide in Darfur, with its estimated 400,000 dead and at least 2.5 million refugees, to war in the Congo, with over 4 million dead or driven from their homes, to Chechnya, where an estimated 150,000-200,000 have died and up to a third of the population has been displaced at the hands of the Russian military. None of these tragedies saw protesters flock into the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Oslo, Dublin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Washington, and Fort Lauderdale (to give a brief list), as has been the case during the Gaza crisis.

Media? Protesters? Sounds familar. Then just head to the last three paragraphs for the predictable conclusion. There are numerous other examples of this. Some leave the accusation of anti-semitism hanging in the air unsaid or attempt to present themselves as 'seeing both sides' and 'condemning violence on both sides'. At best they're misguided apologists who aren't aware of the facts.

[*lisa simpson*]

:up: i'd not read that article and in that case in particular i do see your point. but i'd be quite surprised if people posting in this thread were apologists, or that they were mentioning other conflicts just to draw attention away for instance. i thought most of this thread WAS about the media coverage, as well :S unless you meant the protest marches that maradona mentioned - there was one in london but it got no media coverage.

also, i think it's a bit harsh to say that anyone mentioning a different conflict while another one is going on is trying to be apologist for the first conflict - the fact is a lot of these conflicts are going on, and i think it's pretty harsh of the press and politicians to single out one just because the west has a vested interest in that area. it's also shocking how far many of these conflicts are ignored almost completely, unless there's a flare up of activity as there has been in sri lanka this week.

on the whole i think FDers have a pretty strong sense of conflict around the world being wrong, i don't think anyone would use one to apologise for another. i think there is a genuine sense of injustice that one in particular gets the limelight while others are neatly sidetracked.

[maradona]

Oh dear. Truly the last refuge of the Israeli apologist: 'Look over there! It's much worse!'

I didn't say it was worse. I mentioned it because of the similarities in two conflicts happening at roughly the same time - one which has had a great deal of attention while the other has been mostly ignored.

This thread itself sort of illustrates the point about that lack of interest in certain conflicts. You haven't mentioned anything about what is happening in Sri Lanka instead you focus on the subject in terms of it being used as an excuse for Israeli crimes and you mention Congo and Darfur along the same terms!

[Takk]

I've been reading about this for a while - the bbc seem to cover it semi regularly. I guess it's just a sad fact that there are a lot of civil conflicts/rebel wars going in the world, and they aren't all going to get high profile coverage. Its understandable, if not necessarily forgivable that the US and Western Europe are more focused on the Israel/Palestine situation than some relatively small (from our pov) conflict in Sri Lanka.

[Lone Architect]

Perhaps the other conflicts get mentioned because the more media prominent Israel/Gaza case has focused people's minds on international conflicts so those who are aware of them consider it a good time to strike whilst the iron's hot.

[*lisa simpson*]

i think there's a lot to be said for that - if a government is bemoaning the wrongs of a particular conflict it is worth pointing out to them other instances, lest they forget about them.

[maradona]

The conflict is still ongoing in Sri Lanka with nearly 3000 civilians killed in the last 2 months.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7942051.stm

[*lisa simpson*]

yeah, loads of the local shops here have signs in the window showing support and a collection at the till. i drive over parliament square (well, around really) 3 nights a week and recently there've been loads of protestors there. one time it was so busy the entire garden area of the square and all the pedestrian crossings were rammed. loooots of police tho, which seemed a shame given that all they were doing was exercising their democratic right to protest - but that's for another thread ;)

[harrijack]

This sadly, is nothing new. If it's not in western interest to publicise something, it won't be publicised. I read a lot about the regime in Indonesia from 1966, when Suharto came to power (helped hugely by the US). He murdered from 500,000 to over a million 'suspected' communist sympathisers in the process but the media weren't particularly interested in that either. By the end of his regime he had also massacred something like 200,000 East Timorese. For the twenty or so years he was in power the world media had lots of pictures of Suharto shaking hands with western politicians, Margaret Thatcher and the like, all of them praising his reformed country and immaculate politics. Funnily enough the pictures of the landfills of human bodies weren't so newsworthy.

[*lisa simpson*]

:up: yep. i have no more to say on that really. [/informative and analytical post]

[maradona]

good article in the guardian a couple of days ago by Romesh Gunesekera


A long, slow descent into hell

The decades of bitter fighting between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil rebels has left a beautiful country bereft and thousands caught in the crossfire. Novelist Romesh Gunesekera mourns his island's fate

Twenty six years ago, I was writing the earliest of the stories that would end up in my first book, in which a man called CK dreams about opening a guest house on the east coast of Sri Lanka. If one tries to pin his dream down on a map, I guess it would be just a few miles from the so-called "no-fire zone" today, a place where Tigers are said to be shooting Tamil hostages who do not want to be human shields, and the government of Sri Lanka is accused of bombing civilians; the strip of land where the BBC says the endgame of this long civil war is being played out, and from where 160,000 men, women and children have fled in the last couple of weeks. The heart-wrenching images of those refugees are superimposed for me on CK's dream and an idyllic sepia photograph, in a family album, of the small town of Mullaitivu, where an uncle and aunt lived 60 years ago.

Between my first draft of CK's story in the spring of 1983 and the second in the summer of that year, Sri Lanka went into freefall. Tension had been building up for some years in Sri Lankan politics. Many Tamils felt heavily discriminated against in the increasingly Sinhala-focused agenda of successive nationalist governments in Sri Lanka, whereas many in the majority Sinhala population saw the government's changes as redressing imbalances instituted under British rule. These tensions burst into sporadic militant attacks in the north through the 1970s and an increasing government military presence in the area.

Then, in 1981, in an act of incomprehensible malice, the revered Jaffna public library was set alight by a policeman.

Although there had been a precursor in the serious communal riots of 1958 (in part flowing out of the controversy over the national language issue), 1983 was a horrific watershed. In July that year, the ambush of 13 soldiers in the north sparked anti-Tamil riots all around the country, especially in the capital, Colombo. Hundreds, some estimate 2,000, ordinary Tamils were killed, and many tens of thousands were made homeless.

The fledgling militant group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), formed in 1976 and commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, gained massive support at home and abroad and grew quickly to become a formidable guerrilla force. Very soon it was engaging in conventional warfare with the Sri Lankan army to establish an independent homeland.

Over the next few years, the fighting in the north of the island and the invective between partisans around the world intensified. My small story finally found its shape and a publisher. The editors of Stand magazine wrote to me and said: "We want to print it, but the office is divided on the coda. The final paragraph on the violence politicises the text. Half of us want it in, half of us want it out because maybe the story does not need it." I said it could not be left out; the war had invaded even that little page.

By the time the story became the core of a book, Monkfish Moon, in 1992, the earlier lines had expanded: "... the east coast, like the north, would become a blazing battleground. Mined and strafed and bombed and pulverised, CK's beach, the dry-zone scrub land - disputed mother earth - would be dug up, exploded and exhumed. The carnage in Colombo, massacres in Vavuniya, the battle of Elephant Pass, were all to come. But that day ... in the middle of May, we knew none of that."

Today, we do know all of that, and more. We know that in the 26 years since 1983 at least 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Another 6,500 have died in the last three months, as reported by the UN. Large numbers of both government soldiers and Tigers who had not even been born at the time the story was written are dead. Their lives, as well as the foreshortened lives of thousands of ordinary people, had never known anything but the war. Tanks have rolled, fighter jets have roared, and suicide belts and trucks have exploded.

Sri Lankans of every kind, overwhelmingly the poorest, have been bombed by one side or the other for decades. Many MPs and ministers, too - Sinhala and Tamil, hawks and moderates - have been murdered in this conflict.

For 26 years the main story in Sri Lanka has changed little: bombs, bullets, carnage and suffering. LTTE suicide bombs on buses, at train stations, suicide trucks at the Temple of the Tooth, the Central Bank, the assassination of one president, the wounding of another, and government military campaigns with increasing firepower and increasing casualties, terrifying air strikes and massive bombardment. Sadly, there have been other spikes of horror in the country with tens of thousands of dead - the 2004 tsunami, floods, the 80s insurrection in the south, disappearances, abductions - but the war has gone on relentlessly, in one area of the north or another, with only short periods of truce in which the Tigers and the government each gathered strength for the next round.

In those 26 years the great map of the 20th century was transformed: the Berlin wall came crashing down, Germany was reunified, the Soviet Union disappeared, China became the factory of the world and India boomed. But in Sri Lanka, the story remained the same.

A country that was once an admirable model of democracy, leading the way in agrarian reform, quality of life indices, and health and education services, got stuck as the prototype for suicide bombers on the one hand, and the new benchmark for "shock and awe" tactics with unbridled military muscle on the other. I find it difficult to believe that it was allowed to happen.

Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry. Even those who plant landmines, blow up innocents, destroy villages or ravage the jungle, still love the place. They love the sight of it, the sound of it, the smell of it, the taste of it, the memory of it, the dream of it. Whether they carry coconuts or grenades, poems or bombs, cyanide or charms, there is a deep affection for the place which is an unbreakable common bond. Every Sri Lankan, and almost every visitor to Sri Lanka, carries a longing for the place in some small form - hiraeth, the Welsh call it - wherever they go and whatever their background. It binds them however much the war and politics might try to divide them. In recent years, despite the escalating violence, I found it bubbling up in so many places in Sri Lanka: in ethnically mixed children's peace camps, in young writers' imaginations, Sinhala and Tamil, in cricket crowds that brought everyone together. Only a few months ago, an armed soldier I spoke to on the street put it very simply: "There is no country like Sri Lanka anywhere in the world, is there? That is why everyone wants to come here, no?"

Today, watching video clips on the web of the grim situation on the east coast, the demonstrations around the world, the half-reports, the exhortations, the accusations, the propaganda, the excuses, I don't know what to make of the future. Is there anyone now who "can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not"?

Under a pile of newspapers, I find a copy of the old tragedy from which I filched that quote. I open it and find Macbeth in the second act, speaking after he had killed the men he wished to pin Duncan's murder on. His cunning excuse sounds familiar: "Who can be wise, amazed, temp'rate and furious,/loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man./The expedition of my violent love/ outrun the pauser, reason." It doesn't tell us much about how to live, but we can certainly see how not to live. Disturbing, traumatic events do not reduce the relevance of poetry and fiction. For me, they make imaginative writing all the more urgent and necessary.

I have been back to Sri Lanka twice in the last six months, trying hard to find something of the optimism I felt writing my last book, The Match. I started writing it when peace had unexpectedly broken out in 2002. The novel was going to be like a bookend to the story I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, to celebrate a new beginning. But soon after it was published in 2006, the peace talks floundered. A few months later, the war entered a new and more fearful phase.

Wherever I went on these last two visits, no one - Sinhala or Tamil - wanted to talk about the war. They were fed up with the war. It had gone on too long, cost too many lives, hurt too many families. They all wanted it over one way or another. Taxi drivers, waiters, businessmen, writers, journalists, cobblers, farmers, and even soldiers. No one wanted to talk because no one believed it was nearing an end. No one believed anything about the war in the news. Too many journalists had been intimidated.

A famous editor had just been killed by yet unidentified gunmen. The concern I heard was about corruption and censorship.

Even when government forces finally took Kilinochchi, the LTTE administrative headquarters for years, my trishaw driver did not believe it. Now, it seems, there is a growing belief that the war, at least the one of tanks and planes and artillery bombing, will soon be over. The government is determined to completely destroy the military capability of the LTTE under its present leadership, and is unlikely to deviate from that mission. It has made single-mindedness one of its core characteristics and an electoral attraction. The paradigm has shifted.

What comes next? Some fear a dangerous mix of triumphalism and chauvinism; entrenchment of resentments; internment, radicalisation and insurgency. Others see an opportunity for reconciliation, reconstruction, and a slow, painstaking path towards real respect. The compassionate and exemplary treatment of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people would be the first step.

The other night, in London's Nehru Centre, I heard the Bengali poet Sunil Gangopadhyay recite a powerful poem against the warped beliefs we use to excuse our sometimes atrocious behaviour. It made me think: what should I believe in now? What can I believe in? What must I believe in?

So, here is a list to start with:

- I must believe that the fighting will be over tomorrow and there will be no more killing, indiscriminate or discriminate.

- I must believe that those who have the power will ensure that future generations will not be brought to this point of suffering again.

- I must believe that everyone believes murder is wrong.

- I must believe that aid will flow into the country and that it will go wholly and directly to those who have suffered most.

- I must believe that money for war will be converted into money for peace and reconstruction, wherever it may come from.

- I must believe that a military victory will not lead to triumphant jingoism.

- I must believe that all those who have been trained only to fight will be found gainful civilian employment.

- I must believe that the ambitions of the military will not grow ever larger.

- I must believe that a just and democratic society nurtures and protects all its people and treats them equally.

- I must believe that dissent will not be punished.

- I must believe that the press and media will be free and fair and brave.

- I must believe that journalists will not be intimidated.

- I must believe that good will is stronger than ill will.

- I must believe that good leaders are honourable people who will always place the interests of their people before the interests of themselves.

- I must believe that the young will learn from the mistakes of the elders.

- I must believe that we will not be fooled again, wherever we are and whoever we are.

- I must believe in the human capacity for compassion and reconciliation.

- I must believe all wrongs will be righted.

- I must believe that in words we will find what in fury we cannot.

But must I also believe - as leaders on all sides seem to - that the end justifies the means? Does it, really?