“We are not going to give up till all those people involved in genocide are brought to justice,” said India's former Foreign Minister and a top leader of the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) Yashwant Sinha Friday, questioning the motives behind New Delhi’s silence on the UN Chief’s expert panel report that found credible evidences for the wide-spread allegations of war-crime committed by the Sri Lankan troops. According to media reports from India, leaders of various mainstream political parties, including the BJP, on Friday have expressed solidarity with Eezham Tamils, saying that they would continue to raise their voice until everyone responsible for the “genocide” there were brought to justice.
At a protest rally organised in New Delhi by MDMK chief Vaiko to protest the Centre's “silence” on the UN report, BJP's Yashwant Sinha and Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan have criticised the Congress-led Indian government for citing China's growing influence as a reason for India's engagement with Sri Lanka. Full story >>
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Reminding the Kurdish nation of 'the case of Tamil'f
Saturday, 13 August 2011,
The Kurdish Globe
Mehmed Sabri Akgönül- Istanbul
The Iranian attacks against Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) are followed closely by Turkish officials, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).
It has been mentioned by both Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) members that Turkey is in search of new ways for the war with the PKK. The use of the police and special forces in the struggle against the PKK started to be argued after the conflict in Silvan, a province of Diyarbakir. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) great blow last year in Sri Lanka, which had witnessed one of the bloodiest civil wars in recent history, has led pro-AKP writers, from time to time, to bring to the agenda the idea of whether PKK could be eradicated like the LTTE. The current Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek, made a comparison between PKK and LTTE last year and put forth some ideas about what the government of Sri Lanka did to Tamils could be a model for Turkey in its struggle against the PKK. Recently, Fehmi Koru who is known for being close to AKP, in his article in which he evaluated the military operations carried out by Iran against the PJAK, illustrated that the model of Sri Lanka could be discussed in Turkey. Full Story>>>==============================================
Friday, August 12, 2011
’What happened was predictable’
12 August 2011In his recently published book ‘The Cage’ former United Nations spokesman Gordon Weiss is critical of the UN and points to evidence of the government of Sri Lanka committing war crimes.
Could you give a brief account of what happened with the UN in the last phase of the war?
As the last phase of the war gathered pace, and as air attacks began on the nominal capital of the Tamil Tigers (Kilinochchi) in 2008, the government warned the UN that it should pull its staff out of the north. There were government air strikes and those came dangerously close to UN positions in Kilinochchi. Our staff were spending time hiding in bomb shelters. They were unable to effectively carry out their duties, which were largely to distribute humanitarian aid. So the UN complied with the government request and pulled out. From that point onwards there was effectively no international independent presence inside the northern region, except for the International Red Cross. They have a history of not talking about the things that they see when they’re working behind the lines. But the UN was certainly no longer there and no longer capable of making judgements on what was going on. Thereafter it had to rely on the government, and the government alone for access to Tamil areas to deliver humanitarian aid. Whether the UN ought to have stayed, despite the attacks is a moot point and something that an accountability investigation needs to answer rather than me. Full Story>>