Scale and Proportionality

Time for festivities in Sri Lanka. That long and bitter civil war between the Sinhalese majority, its government and the minority Tamils and their Liberation Army of Tigers has finally concluded. No more worries for the government of attacks by the Liberation Tigers, no more need for cease-fires that were respites while the Tigers re-armed and re-grouped, seeking recruits through the conscription of children from fearful families knowing they could not refuse.

"Our motherland has been completely liberated from separatist terrorism", crowed President Mahinda Rajapaksa, announcing the end of the 26-year-long civil war. The hero and leader and founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam killed, shot through the back of the head. Attempting to flee in an ambulance. Reminiscent of the way that Hezbollah used ambulances to ferry their members about during the Israel-Lebanon war.

"Today we have been able to liberate the entire country from the clutches of terrorism. We have been able to defeat one of the most heinous terrorist groups in the world", Sri Lanka's president announced joyfully, as people in Colombo embarked on a very public celebration in relief and release from fear of bloody terrorist attacks. The Tigers perfected suicide bombing and exported their expertise to the Middle East.

Head of the Liberation Tigers political wing and head of its "peace secretariat" were killed by their own troops, as they attempted to surrender to the government troops. Or, if the version told by one of the top members of the Tamil Tigers is to be believed, they were murdered by government troops while attempting surrender, holding up white flags. Having been invited to surrender, government troops pledging their safety.

White flags were used by Hezbollah too, to ensure their safety while travelling from one zone to another during the Israeli-Lebanon conflict; a clear contradiction of purpose and surely a breach of the Geneva Convention. While the government of Sri Lanka is jubilant over their success at eradicating the Tigers and their leader, the United Nations and aid agencies attempt to aid the hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians made refugees.

Sick, malnourished, and wounded, they languish without the essential humanitarian aid they require. Most are in government-operated internment camps named "welfare villages"; squalid refugee camps with inadequate assistance. Sri Lanka is not eager to grant access to these camps to aid agencies, not quite yet.

"These people have endured one of the cruelest military sieges of modern times; daily shelling over several months. They need urgent help", urged an international aid worker. No doubt they were in a difficult situation; held as human shields by the Tigers whose ostensible purpose was to defend them, and caught in the no-fire zone by shelling from government troops.

The ethnic Tamils who have always suffered degraded citizenship, oppression and discrimination, somehow find it difficult to suspend their fear of retribution by a government and a president for whom sensitivity to their needs has been forever absent.