Big Trouble for Sri Lanka: UN Has Cluster Bomb Evidence from Northern Province

Discovery is further proof of war crimes committed against Tamil civilians in 2009.

Majinda Rajapaksa. Special thanks to sagennext.com

(SALEM) - You have to wonder about the life span of a lie - they all have one after all. Dead men tell no tales, but living witnesses, photo and video evidence, and actual battlefield remnants of war crimes... have plenty to say. Those elements when combined, can lead to the sound of prison bars slamming shut.

A government's use of inhumane weapons on civilian populations is a dishonorable and illegal act; investigations armed with the evidence now mounting against Sri Lanka, generally expose government scoundrels who have no business leading anyone, and their lies make the process of ushering in the truth an even uglier task. Defiance over war crimes is nothing new, but Sri Lanka's has been nearly unprecedented, by anything in modern history.

Colombo's Rajapakse regime went way too far, they have refused to be accountable for what took place: the slaughter of what may have been well over 100,000 Tamils. Now, United Nations inspectors have pinned the tail on the donkey, one might say, locating evidence of cluster bomb use, something Sri Lanka has repeatedly, vehemently denied, even though it was reported at the time, as further indicated below.

Of course SL denies the use of illegal weapons, and they deny killing civilians, they denied routing those civilians into smaller and smaller areas in order to pound them with all types of munitions; they basically deny everything. Then of course is the fact that after the bombing ended, government forces entered the remaining refugee areas and slaughtered civilians ruthlessly with guns, machetes, and other weapons.

Photo and Video Evidence

One photo shows a woman with a rocket that literally pierced her lower half, but failed to explode. These are heinous images that the government of SL did everything to prevent being seen, but they had no such power. Even well-planned lies leak visions of truth very early.

In fact it is all very perverse, as shown by the fact that the soldiers recorded themselves on video, gloating over the silenced victims of sexual abuse, as their thrashed bodies; young, stripped of clothing and dignity; raped, dead and dying, are thrown carelessly into the back of a truck. These men of the Sri Lanka army regarded the women as Tamil 'terrorists', implying this gave them a license to get away with rape and murder.

Indeed, it is their own doing, as the outing of that crucial evidence shown by Channel-4 in their pair of documentaries, the series 'Sri Lanka's Killing Fields', seemed to be among the elements that tipped the scales and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sri Lanka was itself guilty of terrible crimes against humanity.

The lies that have accompanied their story from day one, make the emergence of the truth a labor-intensive birth; it hurts more and is far more dangerous to the real health of this country than the Sinhalese Buddhist majority had possibly anticipated, as they conducted their bloodbath of Tamil people; civilians, just children in cases, so much grief, so many tears, and all of Sri Lanka's officials denied every part of it, and accused human rights groups and one particular London television station, of being blatant liars, as they have stated about all parties who refuse to be silent about this.

Cluster Bomb Evidence

The AP and many other sources, have reported that unexploded cluster munitions were located in the Puthukudiyiruppu area of northern Sri Lanka. This appears to confirm, for the first time, that these illegal weapons were in fact used in Sri Lanka's long running civil war.

The news agency speculates that this new finding will increase existing calls for a thorough, international investigation into possible war crimes connected to the last months of the fighting that ended in May 2009. It has been widely reported, that the government of Sri Lanka has exclusively denied all allegations of having used cluster munitions during the final months of fighting.

The Associated Press wrote:

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Cluster munitions are packed with small "bomblets" that scatter indiscriminately and often harm civilians. Those that fail to detonate often kill civilians long after fighting ends. They are banned under an international treaty adopted by more than 60 nations that took effect in August 2010, after the Sri Lankan war. The nations that haven't adopted the treaty include Sri Lanka, China, Russia, India, Pakistan and the U.S., which says the bombs are a valid weapon of war when used properly. The Associated Press obtained a copy Thursday of an email written by a U.N. land mine expert that said unexploded cluster bomblets were discovered in the Puthukudiyiruppu area of northern Sri Lanka, where a boy was killed last month and his sister injured as they tried to pry apart an explosive device they had found to sell for scrap metal. The email was written by Allan Poston, the technical adviser for the U.N. Development Program's mine action group in Sri Lanka. "After reviewing additional photographs from the investigation teams, I have determined that there are cluster sub-munitions in the area where the children were collecting scrap metal and in the house where the accident occurred. This is the first time that there has been confirmed unexploded sub-munitions found in Sri Lanka," the email said. During the final weeks of the war, tens of thousands of civilians and Tamil Tiger rebel fighters were trapped in a tiny section of Puthukudiyiruppu as attacking government forces closed in on them. Lakshman Hulugalla, a Sri Lankan government spokesman on security matters, said the military had not used cluster munitions in the war. "We are denying that information," he said. The U.N. did not immediately respond to anAP request for comment. Read Full Article

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