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It saw one of the bloodiest conflicts of this century, and yet many still only see it as a tropical paradise.
While the south boasted palm-fringed beaches - a picture-perfect destination for cocktail-sipping tourists - northern Sri Lanka was a hell on earth for the Tamil minority as government troops clashed with Tiger insurgents.
"Denial has become a Sri Lankan habit," explains Frances Harrison, ex-BBC Sri Lanka correspondent and author of Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka's Civil War.
The book details the devastating accounts of survivors of the 26-year conflict.
"Europeans sipped coconut juice and stared out at the horizon of the ocean, unaware that just an hour's flight to the north, people were dying in First World War-style trench warfare."
Channel 4's The Killing Fields brought the story of Sri Lanka's war crimes back into UK mainstream media.
Now, Harrison retells the conflict with a clarity and impact only a seasoned journalist can deliver, having travelled extensively in the war zone and reported on the Tamil Tigers during the peace process.
"Like the tourists, the world turned a blind eye to the tens of thousands of civilian deaths that took place in the north-east of Sri Lanka in the space of just five months in 2009," she writes.
A media blackout imposed by the Sri Lanka government means that the death toll is impossible to pinpoint: estimates run from 7,000 to 147,000.
Now, the United Nations says there is evidence that up to forty thousand civilians could have been murdered in just five months.
These revelations are all the more bitter when Harrison writes,
"At the same time that Sri Lanka's vicious war was raging, the world's attention was focussed on the Israeli incursion into Gaza, where the death toll was about 1,500."
Having witnessed the war in the early noughties, Harrison recounts the bloody climax in 2009 through harrowing stories from those she met along the way - tales of extraordinary survival, as well as devastation and death.
A young journalist covering the atrocities for the local TamilNet website; a Catholic nun who
enters war zones to comfort the dying as other flee; a woman who worked in the Tiger media unit, now a mother of two living in South London - Harrison touches upon all walks of life, painting their stories sensitively and in detail. It is the first time some of these stories have been told.
Grasping an underreported and extremely complex subject, Harrison demonstrates journalism at its best by backing up her emotive portraits with hard facts and figures.
As a new UN inquiry calls for further investigation into the atrocities committed by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil rebel fighters, Harrison tells more than figures ever could by bringing to light the human cost of war.
'Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka's Hidden War' is published by Portobello books on October 4, 2012.
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This regime has been in power with blood in its hands with the murder of several Journalists, French Charity Workers, Surrendered POWs, Students, Innocent Artists, Businessmen and women and children and there is no Rule of Law and with all that the International community and so called global institutions including the UN have failed to take action to deliver Justice, ensure Human Rights and International law.
The history is made and it will tell the world who are the real criminals, who collaborated with the war criminals, who were silent and let the crimes takes place, who have failed to take a neutral stand in the name of democracy, human rights, International law, ethics and Justice and finally the God's judgement in favour of the victims!
God bless the victims and their families!
The current UPA regime and few BJP Leaders including Sushma entertaining and trying to protect the alleged war criminal Rajapakse from the International law and blocking independent international human rights investigation.
Indian UPA regime and few BJP leaders are well known for corruption and the Sri Lankan regime knows how to corrupt the Indians and the Malayalee mafias with sex, money and gifts. This has given strength and confidence to the Rajapakse regime to continue with the culture of Denials.
Several independent Journalists have been murdered and disappeared, 17 French Charity Workers were murdered in Cold blood, Students were gunned down, torture, rape and murder of thousands of surrendered POWs and innocent Tamils are never been investigated or anyone charged despite calls from leaders including Rev. Desmond Tutu, Chris Patten, Mary Robinson, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Selvi Jeyalalithaa, global Human Rights organizations and NGOs.
This is the 21st Century Horror and a structural genocide of Tamils that the world has seen through the lens and it is surprised that the so called leaders of the International community have not taken a strong action yet.
By not preventing mass murders and ethnic cleansing of a minority race and not bringing the alleged criminals to face the ICC swiftly, the World’s leaders are setting up a wrong precedent in favour of War Criminals and Human Rights abusers and weakening the Global institutions!
‘’The United Nations has singled out 16 nations for cracking down on critics, saying most of those countries' governments are going unpunished for their acts of reprisal. … Algeria, Bahrain, Belarus, China, Colombia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela .…’’ - UN faults 16 gov'ts for reprisals against critics, 13 September 2012, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hLxDhEXaoyK82vaROHB3j7IRyk7g?docId=046e9ade10de44c1b099d82a8ad87520
Independent Report on Sri Lanka and United Nations Human Rights Violations, 10 April 2012, http://endoplasm.org/independent-report-on-sri-lanka-and-united-nations-human-rights-violations/
Frances, thank you for the resilience you mustered to listen to these horror stories and convey to the world in addition to writing articles challenging other journalists to write about this war-without-witnesses.
Dear international community, please press the President to release the reports of the 15 Commissions he appointed in the last 6/7 years:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/85007346/A-List-of-Commissions-of-Inquiry-and-Committees-Appointed-by-the-Government-of-Sri-Lanka-2006-%E2%80%93-2012
Successive Sri Lankan governments have been doing the same for decades:
Sri Lanka: Twenty years of make-believe. Sri Lanka’s Commissions of Inquiry, 11 June 2009, https://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA37/005/2009/en
Another Commission of Inquiry(locally known as Udalagama Commission) appointed to investigate chosen sixteen of the hundreds of crimes committed in 2005/6/7. When the war was over the Commission had finished only six cases and was asked to wind up though the Commissioner offered to carry on. They submitted a report on the six finished cases. The victims of the six cases as well as the whole country are waiting to know the verdict.
If something is not right with a small (all parts are important) part the whole country will go up in arms in any given investigation in this part of the world. In that part of the world an ethnic majority can kill the ethnic minorities and there are no investigations - most of the hundreds of crimes in 2005/6/7 involve murders of Tamils outside the war zone. This investigation should not be confused with the investigation into the killings of the war zone about which this book is about, Channel 4 Killing Fields is about and the UN Panel of Experts(2010-2011) is about.
Avaaz is asking for your signature for a petition:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Sri_Lanka_Mettez_les_criminels_de_guerre_derriere_les_barreaux/?tVwYHab