With fresh reports emerging calls grow in support of war crime probe

Any government could defeat terrorism if it ignored the 1949 Geneva convention that aims to protect civilians; Washington officials in the Justice Department considering to seek criminal charges against Gotabaya Rajapaksa; clear signs of heavy artillery shelling, no-fire zones were not spared; concern growing for the displaced people, Emily Wax reports in Washington Post.

Emily Wax writing on Washington Post says that there were clear signs of heavy artillery shelling on the strip of beach where tens of thousands of civilians huddled during the conflict between Sri Lankan government forces Tamil rebels. This observation noted after helicopter inspection of the site by independent journalists, interviews with eyewitnesses, and specialists who have studied high-resolution satellite imagery from the war zone.

That evidence Emily says, contradicts government assertions that areas of heavy civilian populations were no-fire zones that were deliberately spared during the final weeks of military assault.

“We see a lot of images of destroyed structures and what look like circular shell craters and also, frankly, very large holes in the ground. If it was a shell, it must be a very large one to make 24-feet-wide craters,” said Lars Bromley, director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights project, which was asked by human rights groups to study the satellite images.

Washington Post quoted, Thiru Kumarni, an elementary school principal, who said that he and a dozen of his students were pinned down in the trenches as the shelling raged. In an interview, he has said he and the students held hands and fled from one trench to another for two weeks, trying to avoid the artillery rounds landing with sharp thuds in the soft, sandy ground.

“We didn’t think we would live. Some students were too afraid to move. We had to beg them. We were running out of water, Kumarni has said., his face gaunt as he spoke softly about his distress over three students he believed had died and six others who are missing. He hoped they were somewhere in the massive military-run refugee camp known as Manik Farms, where 220,000 civilians have taken shelter,” reports Washington Post.

The Sri Lankan government has dismissed criticism of its actions as absurd and maintains that it did not shell civilians and not a single civilian dropped blood during the conflict. Sri Lankan officials, in interviews, said they should be getting international praise, not punishment.

Sri Lanka’s leaders say they are among the few in the world who can say they have successfully vanquished three decades of terrorism by military means. They argue in government newspapers and on billboards across the country that if the United States has the right to fight terrorism, Sri Lankans do not need or want lectures about how to conduct a war against domestic insurgents.

Human rights leaders said any government could defeat terrorism if it ignored the 1949 Geneva convention that aims to protect civilians caught in war zones.

What precisely happened in the last weeks of the war is the subject of a growing number of international inquiries, even as Sri Lanka rejects those queries and continues to celebrate its victory.

The government’s decisive offensive against the rebels, conducted in an area strictly closed to reporters and other independent observers, Washington Post raises a questions about the rights of nations to take military action against their people beyond the view of the rest of the world.

U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday adopted a resolution commending Sri Lanka on its victory and rejected calls for an international investigation on alleged war crimes.

“Establishing the facts is crucial to set the record straight regarding the conduct of all parties in the conflict,” said Navi  Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights and former U.N. war crimes judge. “Victims and the survivors have a right to justice and remedies.”

According to the Washington Post report, officials in the Justice Department in Washington, are considering whether to seek criminal charges against Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s defense secretary and a U.S. citizen; and Sarath Fonseka, Sri Lanka’s army commander and a U.S. legal resident who holds a green card.

Bruce Fein, a former associate deputy attorney general and a lawyer who represents the group Tamils Against Genocide, has already filed a 1,000-page report with the attorney general’s office detailing alleged bombings, disappearances and other attacks.  Fein, in an interview, said his group hopes to win a legal ruling to deny Rajapaksa and Fonseka U.S. visas and freeze their assets. If Rajapaksa and Fonseka were indicted, Sri Lanka would be obliged to extradite them to the United States under the genocide convention of 1948, he said.

Diplomats and experts say it is likely that Sri Lanka will be able to skirt all inquiries, partly because of a shifting world order. Colombo has courted new friends, and billboards have sprung up across the country thanking China, Russia and Pakistan for their help in buying new weapons, including fighter jets and multi-barrel rocket launchers. At the United Nations, Sri Lanka has courted China, Russia, India and Pakistan and proposed a counter-resolution to stress the rights of states to act without outside intrusion.

Human rights groups have also raised questions about media reports that two senior Tamil Tiger rebels were killed while waving a white surrender flag. Government officials deny the allegation.

The writer says that concern is also growing for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people still living in temporary camps. There has been little independent scrutiny of conditions in the camps, and journalists have been allowed only a handful of heavily supervised visits.

Behind the coils of barbed wire at the government-run Manik Farms camp, Kumarni and his students said they wish they had been born in another country. They made it here but lack even the most basic supplies, such as soap and water. Others say they lack food in the camps. They have shown journalists ration cards showing they were fed only two meals in four days. They miss their families. They suffer from nightmares, Emily reports.

Refering to last weekend incident where government officials asked the children to sing a welcome song for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Emily said that some stood weakly in the hot sun trying to sing. Others just stared at the ground.