Beslan school siege inspires Sri Lankan Defense Secretary

[Berkut]

This just sounds like the same old garbage of acting like illegal terrorist groups have just as much legitimacy, if not far more, than governments do to use force.  Hell it is the legitimate governments fault if the terrorists use human shields not the terrorists.  In fact the rest of the Tamils will react to being used this way by the Tigers by joining the fucking Tigers.

Fuck it is Hamas and Hezbollah all over again.  The terrorists can do no wrong and opposing them only makes people mad.  What a bunch of ridiculous nonsense.

If being a Humanitarian means allowing every illegal band of thugs raise hell for decades on end I think every thinking person should aspire to be otherwise.

I wasn't saying it made sense and I'm not supporting them. What I'm saying is the general public's going to play the blame game if that many civilians become casualties, and whether it's rational or not, if there's discontent in the region, there's at least an even chance that the government will actually become the scapegoat.

Sounds like you are making a strong argument for the government censorship of the media that is ongoing.

[DontSayBanana]

Sounds like you are making a strong argument for the government censorship of the media that is ongoing.

*chagrine* I'm not arguing  for the censorship, I'm arguing against the excessive use of force, and saying that the censorship is making the government position look disingenuous.

[Lucidor]

Have they already taken out the Königstigers? They'll need more than light arms, I'm afraid.

[Berkut]

Sounds like you are making a strong argument for the government censorship of the media that is ongoing.

*chagrine* I'm not arguing  for the censorship, I'm arguing against the excessive use of force, and saying that the censorship is making the government position look disingenuous.

Right, but you said

the general public's going to play the blame game if that many civilians become casualties, and whether it's rational or not, if there's discontent in the region, there's at least an even chance that the government will actually become the scapegoat.

Given that civlians casualties are liekly inevitable given the common terrorist tactic of using civilians as shield and killing them, it seems like the government will be blamed by the media irrationally. If that is the case, then their best move is to censor the press while they do what has to be done.

This takes away one the terrorists primary weapons - the certainty that the press will give them a free pass under the guise of "well, we don't expect anything more from them" while excoriating the government for killing all those people, whether they were responsible or not.

Of course, the flip side to that is that if the government IS using excessive force, then they will want to censor for that very reason as well, and how do you tell the difference?

The typical lack of journalistic integrity when it comes to reporting government activity is really too bad.

[Pat]

Sacrificing civilians to defeat the Tamils in the field is certainly not to save lives in the long run.

The bloodshed will not end if the Tamil Tigers are without territory. They will simply resort to even more guerilla warfare and terrorism.

[DontSayBanana]

Given that civlians casualties are liekly inevitable given the common terrorist tactic of using civilians as shield and killing them, it seems like the government will be blamed by the media irrationally. If that is the case, then their best move is to censor the press while they do what has to be done.

This takes away one the terrorists primary weapons - the certainty that the press will give them a free pass under the guise of "well, we don't expect anything more from them" while excoriating the government for killing all those people, whether they were responsible or not.

Of course, the flip side to that is that if the government IS using excessive force, then they will want to censor for that very reason as well, and how do you tell the difference?

The typical lack of journalistic integrity when it comes to reporting government activity is really too bad.

You're still missing the focus of my argument. The press is one venue of accountability, which the Sri Lankan government seems to be scoffing in all venues. Whether the press has journalistic integrity or not, Sri Lanka has scoffed international oversight with the paranoid claim that even diplomats secretly serve the Tamil Tigers. With the existence of that kind of institutional paranoia, and without any kind of independent verification, there's an extremely high risk that the government forces are simply executing first and asking questions later, and without oversight, there's nothing to stop them claiming that a civilian executed by a soldier was a human shield for the Tigers.

[jimmy olsen]

And as feared the government goes overboard.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30664810/

'Bloodbath' in Sri Lanka barrage, U.N. says
Doctor says 1,000 Tamil civilians likely slain in shelling over the weekend

updated 5:31 a.m. ET, Mon., May 11, 2009

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Two days of shelling across Sri Lanka's northern war zone killed at least 430 ethnic Tamil civilians — and likely as many as 1,000 — a government doctor in the area said Monday. The United Nations branded the attacks a "bloodbath."

With the civilian death toll skyrocketing in the civil war, a coalition of international human rights groups called for the U.N. Security Council to urgently hold talks on the conflict.

A rebel-linked Web site blamed the attacks on the government, while the military accused the beleaguered Tamil Tigers of shelling their own territory to gain international sympathy and force a cease-fire.
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The first barrage struck the tiny sliver of northeast coast still held by the rebels Saturday evening and lasted through the night, health officials said.

'Safe zone' fired on
About 6 p.m. Sunday, a new round of shelling — less intense than the first — pounded a newly demarcated "safe zone" where the government had urged civilians to gather, according to Dr. V. Shanmugarajah, who works at a makeshift hospital in the war zone.

A total of 393 people were either brought to the hospital for burial or died at the facility Sunday, while another 37 bodies were brought in Monday morning, he said. More than 1,300 wounded civilians came to the hospital as well, he said.

However, the death toll was likely far higher, he said. Many of the dead were buried in the bunkers where they had taken refuge and then were killed, and many of the wounded never made it to the hospital for treatment, he said.

"There were many who died without medical attention," Shanmugarajah said. "Seeing the number of wounded and from what the people tell me, I estimate the death toll to be around 1,000."

Volunteers dug mass graves in the marshland near the hospital, putting 50 to 60 bodies in each pit, he said. One of the hospital's nurses was killed along with his family in a trench that was then filled with soil and turned into their grave, he said.

Reports difficult to verify
Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government bars journalists and aid workers from the war zone. The attacks marked the bloodiest assault on ethnic Tamil civilians since the civil war flared again more than three years ago.

"The U.N. has consistently warned against the bloodbath scenario as we've watched the steady increase in civilian deaths over the last few months," U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said Monday. "The large-scale killing of civilians over the weekend, including the deaths of more than 100 children, shows that that bloodbath has become a reality."

U.N. figures compiled last month showed that nearly 6,500 civilians had been killed in three months of fighting this year as the government drove the rebels out of their strongholds in the north and vowed to end the war.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other rights groups called on Japan, the largest international donor to Sri Lanka, to press the U.N. to urgently address the civil war here.

"Formal meetings of the Security Council must be held urgently so that the council can take the necessary measures to address the humanitarian and human rights crisis," the groups said in a letter to Japan's prime minister.

About 50,000 civilians are crowded into a 2.4 mile-long strip of coast along with the separatists, who have been fighting for 25 years for a homeland for minority Tamils.

Calls for truce ignored
The government has brushed off international calls for a humanitarian truce, saying any pause in the fighting would give the rebels time to regroup.

Shanmugarajah said the hospital was so short-staffed that many of those wounded in the first barrage late Saturday had still not been treated Monday morning. "The hospital death rate is increasing, but we are helpless," he said.

People were begging the doctors to send them away on a Red Cross ship that comes every few days to evacuate the wounded, saying they could not bear the shelling anymore.
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The rebel-linked TamilNet Web site blamed the attack on Sri Lankan forces. Rights groups have accused them of bombing and shelling the war zone despite pledges to stop using heavy weapons.

The Sri Lankan military denied firing the artillery and said they witnessed rebels firing mortar shells from one corner of the coastal strip into another section heavily populated with civilians for one hour Sunday morning.

"I think the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is now trying to use these people as their last weapon to show the world that the army is firing indiscriminately and stop this offensive," military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Human rights groups have accused the rebels of holding the civilians as human shields and shooting some who tried to flee.

Journalists deported
On Sunday, Sri Lanka deported three journalists for London-based Channel 4 television news who had been arrested on charges of tarnishing the image of the security forces after running a report about alleged sexual abuse in displacement camps.

Lakshman Hulugalle, a government spokesman, said the journalists admitted they had "done something wrong" and would not be allowed to come back to Sri Lanka.

However, Nick Paton-Walsh, the channel's Asia correspondent, denied giving a statement to police or admitting wrongdoing.

"This is complete rubbish," he told The Associated Press from Singapore after his deportation.

© 2009 The Associated Press.

[HisMajestyBOB]

The Tigers will be back in some form or another. With the strong nationalists in the current Sri Lankan gov't, I don't expect them to do anything more than treat the Tamil minority like shit once again, and in 10-20 years they'll be right back where they started.

Could've ended the conflict permanently this year, I bet.

[DontSayBanana]

The Tigers will be back in some form or another. With the strong nationalists in the current Sri Lankan gov't, I don't expect them to do anything more than treat the Tamil minority like shit once again, and in 10-20 years they'll be right back where they started.

Could've ended the conflict permanently this year, I bet.

Thugs fighting state-sanctioned thugs, that's all. This is just going to keep going round and round until a third party intervenes; it's pretty clear by now that the government is BS'ing as much as, if not more than, the Tigers.

[jimmy olsen]

Ceylon should have been given to India. 

[Valmy]

Ceylon should have been given to India. 

Yeah because if there is something India needs it is another terrorist group blowing shit up in their cities.

[Slargos]

I think destroying the Tigers is well worth the sacrifice of some civilians.  It will, in the long run, save far more lives then may have to be sacrificed in the short term.

I am pretty disgusted with the idea of lengthening the civil war in Sri Lanka for humanitarian reasons.  What sort of fucked up logic is that?

Spectacular.

You support the murder of innocent civilians in order to further what you perceive to be a just cause?

[DisturbedPervert]

Ceylon should have been given to India. 

Yeah because if there is something India needs it is another terrorist group blowing shit up in their cities.

There are already 60 million Tamils in India that aren't blowing stuff up, maybe it would have worked out better.

[Valmy]

Spectacular.

You support the murder of innocent civilians in order to further what you perceive to be a just cause?

Yes that is exactly what I am saying.  All civilians should die bloody deaths.

[jimmy olsen]

Spectacular.

You support the murder of innocent civilians in order to further what you perceive to be a just cause?

Yes that is exactly what I am saying.  All civilians should die bloody deaths.

You monster!