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TNA MP urges global community`s awareness on Sri Lanka`s use of cluster munitions and bombs
Wednesday, 3 December 2008 - 9:00 PM SL Time
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Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian S. Gajendran, who represents Ki`linochchi district (Jaffna electorate), Wednesday urged the global community to `unreservedly condemn` the Sri Lankan government for deploying cluster munitions against civilians in Vanni in its air strikes and artillery attacks. Appreciating the Norwegian initiative which has led to the landmark treaty on baning the cluster munitions, the TNA parliamentarian said the Sri Lankan forces were deploying cluster munitions against civilians after expelling the international witnesses and blocking foreign journalists from entering Vanni.
Stating that civilians from his electorate who fled Paranthan on 17 Novmeber, had described him that there were series of smaller explosions, which emerged from artillery shells during an intense artillery barrage, the MP also urged human rights watchdogs and media to be alert in monitoring such attacks and bring out the facts to the global community.
`Sri Lanka should commit itself to the proliferation of cluster munitions. This would only be possible if countries that provide assistance to Sri Lankan government make it a condition,` said Gajendran MP, who is currently in France in a visit to Europe to meet the diplomatic community.
Many of the civilians who fled Paranthan area after the artillery barrage in which cluster munitions were used by the SLA, again became the victims of the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) cluster bombardment on the IDP camp at Uzhavanoor in the early hours of Saturday, the MP further said.
Cluster bombs disperse a large number of bomblets that scatter over a wide area when the larger bomb is detonated.
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Daisy
Joined: Aug 2008
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 3 Dec 2008 15:04:50 GMT Report for Abuse
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| Can we have a similar thing on the use of 'suicide' bombs too????? |
yarlan
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 3 Dec 2008 15:05:34 GMT Report for Abuse
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This is reposting of what I wrote last week, for the benefit of those who didn t have a chance to read it ( I have added more details this time):
I am ready to bury the past and move forward. Because, the fundamental problem afflicting the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka is their continued obsession of the past, at the risk of ignoring what the future can bring. Easier said than done? My parents lost everything they had in July 1983, except for two suitcases of clothes. My father was very lucky to escape the mob that wanted to kill him. All he had was the just the clothes he wore that fateful day. Some of his friends weren t so lucky. They were hacked to death went they went to inspect their houses (visiting from a refugee camp set up in Colombo). The fact that my father was fluent in Sinhala and also a senior government servant didn t matter. The Sinhala police inspector at a Dehiwala police station basically told my father that he couldn t do anything. My family ended up as refugees in the very school I studied in Bambalapitia. The irony of the whole affair was that, thanks to one of my uncle s friends in the army, the three of us (myself, ammah and my sister) were escorted in an army truck to the refugee camp from the safe house we were hiding in. The refugee camp itself was guarded by armed soldiers. I still remember vividly the violent scenes on the roads where the Sinhala mobs were trashing the store fronts and setting fire to the roofs of these stores. But, I saw them, peering from the crowded back of a 3-wheeler driven by a Sinhala driver. He took us around the by-ways from our house in Dehiwala to a safe house in Bambalapitia a Sinhala family s house. Thanks to that anonymous Sinhala driver and a neighbor who hid my father from a murderous mob, our family survived the Black July of 1983. In 1977, the house my father was building was also burned. Thankfully, we didn t lose all of our possessions then. Then, there is more.
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yarlan
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3 Dec 2008 15:06:16 GMT Report for Abuse
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| As refugees, like countless other Tamil families, we were sent back to our ancestral lands in the North for our own safety, in the belly of cargo ships. Temporarily relocated to the northern coastal areas of Jaffna Peninsula, where my grandparents house was located, I saw what the army was doing to retaliate against a faceless enemy (land mine attacks). Shops were burned, fishing boats were gutted, and houses were ransacked. Occasionally in the night time, there will be naval shelling into the interior. You didn t know where it lands or which house got hit. And then the SLA set up a mini-camp literally inside the perimeter of my school. This whole experience should have left me very angry. Like countless other Tamil youths, I was. What many Sinhalese also don t know are the horrific atrocities the IPKF committed in the Jaffna Peninsula. The Jaffna Teaching Hospital incident is the most famous. But, there were many episodes like that, in addition to summary executions, rapes, and torture. One particular incident worth mentioning happened in Polikandy (located between Pt. Pedro and Valvettithurai), involving the Sri Lanka Army: after an ambush on their patrol, the army men herded close to 50 people into a small library building and then blew it up. (This particular incident took place after I left the country I am mentioning it because one of the victims was one of my wife s uncles whom I didn t know in Sri Lanka at that time). Neither did I know the wife of my future brother-in-law who was a witness in her early teens to see people being hacked to death by members of the Sri Lanka Navy as they crossed the Kilaly Lagoon in small boats. Neither did I know a cousin of my wife s whose leg had to be amputated after getting hit in an air strike while her whole extended family was on the run as refugees from Jaffna Peninsula to Mannar. |
yarlan
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3 Dec 2008 15:06:57 GMT Report for Abuse
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| After I left Sri Lanka in 1985, it took another 10 years for me to realize that the war doesn t solve problems. During this time, one of my second cousins died in front his mother when a shell fired by the Sri Lanka navy landed in the front yard of the house. Not only that, this was a temporary residence at a relative s, after their own house was partially destroyed in artillery fire from the IPKF! What do you think his brothers wanted to do after that? After this incident, one of his younger brothers joined the LTTE and later died in combat. The eldest son in the family had already passed away while on sentry duty in 1987, again for the LTTE. There are many families like this where you have the parents see their sons and daughters dying at a very young age in the war while others meet unnatural death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. War only worsens the problems and takes a life of its own. And in its wake, it leaves even more innocent victims. Even my wife, whose family had to hide in a makeshift bunker behind her parents house to escape artillery attacks from the IPKF and later Sri Lanka Air Force bombardments, believes that both sides should work together to establish permanent peace. Like me, her parents also lost everything in the Black July of 1983. The story of how they escaped the riots is very similar to mine. The Sinhala people, who elect people like Mahinda Rajapakse as the President of Sri Lanka, need to understand what has given strength to the LTTE. And why Prabakaran can always count on thousands of supporters in the Tamil Diaspora. If they can t or don t have the capacity to even comprehend the kind of terror the Tamil people have been subjected to since July 1983, then, they shouldn t be surprised at a phenomena such as the LTTE and its modus operandi. Just imagine what the people of Vakarai or all the towns and villages in the north that came under air strikes, artillery bombardments, and MBRL fire went through. |
AntiKoti
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3 Dec 2008 15:15:24 GMT Report for Abuse
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| What about child soldiers and the sucide bombers used by the LTTE. |
Marksman
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 3 Dec 2008 15:18:48 GMT Report for Abuse
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| There is no proof that SLDF uses cluster bombs! :))) |
ananda95
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 3 Dec 2008 15:21:37 GMT Report for Abuse
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Yarlan, it is sad to hear the story, obviously it is not the only one of that kind and you could hear similar experiences from both sides.
As you mentioned, for the war, VP gets his support and MR also has the backing due to very similar reasons. I know we could drag this conversation to the point of no agreement by putting this down, but I should say I do not believe VP ever came to the negotiation table in good faith.
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Spetsnaz1
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3 Dec 2008 15:29:23 GMT Report for Abuse
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'Sri Lanka should commit itself to the proliferation of cluster munitions. This would only be possible if countries that provide assistance to Sri Lankan government make it a condition,' said Gajendran MP, who is currently in France in a visit to Europe to meet the diplomatic community.
I seriously dont think clusters are used on civilians.even that LTTE should know better to not hold civilians as hostages or human shields.either the SLDF use cluster bombs or not, but if it is on LTTE terrorists I hope the TNA MP is not asking to use Chinese fire crackers on the LTTE.. in anyway GOSL is being soft on LTTE terrorists... I dont care if the SLDF uses MOABS on the LTTE as long as they are wiped out... |
Marksman
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3 Dec 2008 15:31:32 GMT Report for Abuse
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I dont care if the SLDF uses MOABS on the LTTE as long as they are wiped out...
Amen!!!
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AnuD
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 3 Dec 2008 15:32:04 GMT Report for Abuse
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This may be a Trick by the Expelled Norwegian NGO.
I heard Some NGOs use civilians in the areas for anti-govt protests. They have done that kind of protests else where in the world for the benefit of the NGO.
some Western Corporations Backed NGOS had done that in Phillipines in order to facilitate their exploitation of mineral resources there.
IF INGOs are involved in those kind of activities GOSL should discuss those things with the country responsible in order to inform what NGOs are doing.
Edited By - AnuD - 3 Dec 2008 15:37:05 GMT |
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