Foolishness or cunning
Indiscriminate allegations about civilian deaths:
Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
We are told that the UN claims that about 7,000 civilians have been
killed in fighting between the Sri Lankan Forces and the LTTE over the
last few months. It is also claimed that 16,700 have been
wounded,’according to a UN document given to the Associated Press by a
senior diplomat’.
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Security Forces personnel assisting a
sick civilian |
This leak is the third in a series which has led to a state of denial
by the UN. They claim that they are not responsible for any leaks,
though they have still not reported to us on an investigation that was
promised into the reports.
More pertinently they have gone on record as saying that they know
their figures are not reliable. Certainly, when this process first
began, we sat down with the head of security in Colombo who had produced
the figures and found that many of them were based on extrapolation that
had no rational basis.
The process began with a figure in February of around 2,000 killed
and over 4,000 wounded. Then, in March, when the High Commissioner for
Human Rights got into the ring, it was 2,800 killed and more than 7,000
injured.
By April it was nearly 6,500 civilians killed and 14,000 wounded, The
latest figure then suggests agreement on a ratio of just over two to one
with regard to wounded and killed, which makes sense in such conflict
situations even if the figures themselves are suspect.
Implicit in all this bandying about of figures is the assumption that
the Sri Lankan Government is responsible for all these deaths and also
the injuries.
Yet, obviously, there are three things that need to be verified
before we can start the process of apportioning blame, blame that will
stick given the small size of Sri Lanka, as opposed to blame that wafts
away on a breezy apology, which we have seen in more brutal conflicts in
recent days.
First, are the figures of dead and injured accurate?
Second, are they all attributable to the Sri Lankan Forces, or might
some of them at least have been inflicted by the LTTE?
Third, are all those who died or were injured civilians?
In dealing with these questions we see a remarkable lack of logic and
of thought on the part of those determined to jump on a bandwagon to
bash the Sri Lankan State. Let me try then to introduce some basic
rationality into the discussion.
As we have seen, there were more than twice as many injured as died
through this year. However there seems to be no trace of the large
figure now alleged for the last four months of 16,700.
The ICRC brought off several shiploads of injured from the conflict
zone from the beginning of February until the beginning of May, but of
the 13,826 they conveyed only 5,499 were patients. Obviously the ICRC
would not have brought out over 8,000 bystanders if there were injured
waiting to come out. This suggests that the total number of deaths would
in fact have been about 2,500, possibly 3,000 at most.
Second, we have heard evidence of the LTTE both firing deliberately
on civilians and also not caring much about collateral damage. It is now
forgotten that, in the last seven months of 2008, when the Forces swept
through half the North, and took Kilinochchi too after bitter battles,
the total of civilian deaths alleged even by Tamilnet was just 78.
It was only after that, when the LTTE had achieved its aim of
corralling civilians together, that wanton destruction of civilians
began. Before that, clearly, as had happened in the liberation of the
East, the Government had been able to ensure maintenance of its
principle of minimal civilian casualties.
The first date on which massive numbers of civilian deaths was
alleged was January 26, just after the Government declared the first
Safe Zone. Though initially when firing into the zone started the UN
thought Government was responsible, UN Resident Coordinator Neil Buhne
sent a text message at the end of the day to say that he believed most
of the firing came from the LTTE.
There is also the testimony of the Bishop of Jaffna who, while asking
the Government to extend the Safe Zone (which he would scarce have done
if he believed the Government were firing into it), said that he would
also ask the LTTE to withdraw from the zone its own heavy weapons that
were endangering the people.
Apart from such collateral damage there were many occasions on which
the LTTE fired on civilians trying to get away, using heavy weapons too
as was seen in the pictures of the tank being deployed desperately on
April 20 when the first large exodus began. And of course there is the
testimony of so many in the camps, mentioned so often to visitors,
forgotten by the sensationalist media.
Finally, it must be clear to any thinking person that a great number
of those who died would be LTTE fighters. After all, when TamilNet
propagated claims of civilian deaths, they never gave numbers of cadres
who had died.
Nor did they give numbers of cadres who were wounded. Yet, obviously,
many of those who engaged the forces for so long, especially in the area
around Puthukudiyirippu, would have been hardcore combatants.
And to the number of those we have to add combatants who had been
recently recruited. UNICEF has reported on these, UNDP has complained
that the children of its staff were recruited, but no one has
extrapolated from this the obvious fact that many civilians were forced
to bear arms, and therefore were legitimate targets for the offensives
of the Armed Forces.
This had been made clear from early on, when the Army Commander
explained why the LTTE still continued to fight ferociously even though
it had lost so many people in battle in 2008 - youngsters in civilian
clothes, obviously scarcely trained but carrying weapons, were found in
profusion in bunkers along with regular cadres.
This indeed heightens the guilt of those international agencies who
refused, almost till the end of 2008, to condemn the LTTE for holding
people hostage - they knew, as they had known for years, about forced
conscription, but there was no public criticism of this, as the UN
Resident Coordinator admitted, when he acknowledged that UN awareness
that the LTTE was recruiting one person per family was not expressed
publicly in 2007 (and when it was raised to 2 in 2008, there was an even
more deafening silence).
So it is obvious that a number of those who died in the last few
months were combatants, bearing arms, having been forced into this by
LTTE brutality and the ostensibly benign silence of the international
agencies who had known what was happening, but said nothing. And, more
pertinently, a number of those injured too would have been combatants.
And yet, there are no LTTE combatants amongst the injured, not at
least in any of the reports that are filed, the accusations that are
made. All those injured, the more than 5,000 who were brought out by the
ICRC, the rest who surrendered, are described as civilians.
This is not unacceptable since, in the process of rehabilitation that
Government plans, it is important not to hold their enforced recruitment
against many of these youngsters. But at the same time it must be
recognized that, when they were bearing arms against us, they were
legitimate objects of attack.
When we see that in theory then there are no LTTE wounded amongst
those we are now caring for, we can understand how preposterous it is to
assume that there were no LTTE dead either.
Except at the very end, when after we had managed to rescue almost
all the civilians the hardcore cadres fought and died, there were no
accounts of LTTE dead in the propaganda that was churned out between
January and April.
But to believe that propaganda would be as ridiculous as to believe
that all those injured, whom we are now treating in government hospitals
all around the country, were civilians who were victims of government
assaults.
But people believe what they want to believe. Sensible extrapolation
from the casualties who are now with us suggests that some of them must
be combatants, that many were wounded by LTTE action, and the number of
dead must be less than the now oft tossed about figure that will soon
become gospel.
Certainly the number of civilian dead must be very much less, and
amongst them those killed by collateral damage as opposed to the
deliberate targeting of them by the LTTE as they tried to escape must be
minimal.
We have rescued 290,000, more than the figure of 250,000 that was
being bandied about most often. We avoided the bloodbath that was
predicted, that the LTTE tried to precipitate, especially on May 10. We
have confounded the world in dealing firmly with terrorism while
preserving the lives of most of the civilians who were the most
oppressed victims of terror.
For this evidently we must suffer. But this is a small price to pay
for what we have achieved. And we can but hope that, in time, those who
with more power inflict greater suffering for the sake of what they see
as the greater good will learn to try to emulate our actions.
They must learn in the end to deal with terrorism while remembering
that the people they are rescuing from terror are not be ‘othered’, but
to be treated as fellow humanbeings and thus fellow citizens in our
common humanity.
The writer is the Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the
Peace Process |