Published On Thu Jun 23 2011
An image from the documentary 'Sri Lanka's Killing Fields.'
The harrowing film provides evidence of war crimes and crimes
against humanity.
Channel 4
— the title echoes the Cambodian genocide — is a documentary that was
aired by Britain’s Channel 4 Television earlier this month. It
describes the final weeks of the brutal civil war between the Sri
Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in
2009. This was also around the time when thousands of Tamil Canadians
demonstrated in Ottawa and Toronto to pressure the Canadian government
to ask its Sri Lankan counterpart for a ceasefire.
Some
of the scenes in the documentary are so gruesome that it was shown
after 11 p.m. Channel 4 has made it available for viewing worldwide for
a few more days (and it has been uploaded on several websites already).
Having seen it, I can tell you that it is not for the faint-hearted.
In
particular, it provides authenticated evidence of war crimes and crimes
against humanity committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces, which have
been vehemently denied by the Sri Lankan government. More important,
this documentary is another tragic reminder of the realities of war
faced by innocent civilians caught in conflict zones — and the
international community’s failure to protect them.
In
the early part of the documentary, we see the few UN workers who were
based in Kilinochchi, the LTTE’s political capital, leaving in late
2008 (despite the pleas of the Tamil civilians not to do so) after
being told by the Sri Lankan government that their safety could no
longer be guaranteed. Gordon Weiss, a former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka
who appears in the documentary, describes this as a deliberate attempt
on the part of the Sri Lankan government to prevent international
witnesses from reporting on what happened next.
However,
thanks to modern technology, and similar to what has happened in the
ongoing Arab uprising, the documentary features graphic video footage
captured on cellphones by Tamils under attack and Sri Lankan government
soldiers collecting trophy videos. Among the footage shown in the film,
one can see the aftermath of targeted shelling of field hospitals and
civilians by the Sri Lankan army; LTTE prisoners being shot in the back
of the head by soldiers; and female Tamil fighters who have been
abused, raped and murdered being dumped into trucks by soldiers making
lewd comments about them.
Ironically,
many of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had been relocated
in the so-called government-designated “no-fire” zones in the final
stages of the war were also killed by shelling and airstrikes. This is
not to say that the LTTE were innocent, as the documentary clearly
shows. The Tigers are also blamed in the film for using civilians as
human shields and killing those who tried to escape.
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields thus largely confirms the findings of the UN “
Report of the Secretary General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka”
released in April of this year. As in the case of the documentary, the
UN findings were equally denied by the Sri Lankan government, which
also refused to let the panel visit Sri Lanka and urged the UN not to
publish its report. In particular, the report mentions “a wide range of
serious violations of international humanitarian law and international
rights law was committed both by the government of Sri Lanka and the
LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against
humanity.”
The
UN report says that most civilian casualties in the final phases of the
war were the result of government shelling, which also targeted food
distribution lines and took place near Red Cross ships that were trying
to rescue the wounded and their relatives. It blamed UN political
organs and bodies, as well as international officials, for not
protecting civilians and not publishing casualty numbers to illustrate
the extent of the war. It called for an international investigation,
especially in light of the fact that the
Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), set up by the government of Sri Lanka, does not meet international standards of independence and impartiality.
It
is unlikely that the LLRC will investigate whether violations took
place, since its main objective is to reflect on what happened between
the ceasefire agreement of 2002 and the end of the war in May 2009.
Only time will tell what the commission delivers but three well-known
international NGOs (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the
International Crisis Group) have already refused to testify before what
they consider a flawed process.
Going forward,
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields
represents a powerful case for the international community to follow
the recommendation of the UN report and conduct a thorough independent
international inquiry into what happened during the final weeks of the
26-year civil war. Although UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has
indicated that he does not have the authority to act upon the
recommendations of his own panel of experts to launch an international
investigation, the UN Security Council or the UN Human Rights Council
could certainly do so.
Two
years have passed since the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka and it is
time for the international community to act to ensure that the victims
receive justice. The brutal tactics of the Tigers, which included the
recruitment of child soldiers and use of suicide bombers, cannot be
used as justification for what happened during the final stages of the
war.
Reconciliation and lasting peace in a post-conflict environment cannot be achieved without truth and accountability.
Yiagadeesen Samy
is associate professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson
School of International Affairs, Carleton University and research
associate at the North-South Institute.
