SRI LANKA: Kevin Rudd silent on the plight of the Tamils - 16 April 2011It is two years since the civil war ended in Sri Lanka between the majority Sinhalese government in Colombo and the Tamil minority struggling for autonomy in their north-east homeland.
 |
| Dead Tamil girl, killed in an air strike. |
The Tamils were crushed by overwhelming, undiscriminating firepower that rained down on them from the Sinhalese air force and ranks of artillery.
Only when the guns fell silent were civilians separated from soldiers. The former were herded into largely known concentration camps while the fate of the latter is still unknown.
The entire Tamil population of the north-east was caught up in the conflict. According to the Catholic bishop of Mannar, the Rt Revd Rayappu Joseph, almost 150,000 Tamil men, women and children remain unaccounted for - still missing after two years and feared dead - and almost all of them civilians.
This humanitarian disaster happened under the presidency and family rule of Mahinda Rajapakse in Colombo, while Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister of Australia.
Mr Rudd was, and remains, silent about these well-attested civilian atrocities in Sri Lanka, even though our two countries are fellow members of the Commonwealth and play cricket together. In the meantime, Rudd has developed a passion for civilians in Libya, to the extent of vociferously calling on the West to engage in military action to protect them from the brutalities of their dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.However, when Rajapakse was dropping cluster-bombs on Tamil civilians in 2008-09, Mr Rudd said nothing about Sri Lanka's flouting of United Nations rules of war.Full Story>>>
