Thursday, September 10, 2009

Mother Day Massacre

The advancing Sri Lanka Army massacred civilians by paving their bunkers with tanks, by throwing explosives inside the bunkers and by shooting the injured, says a medical worker who came out of Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal during the last days of the war, became incarcerated in a camp and now escaped the island. “Around a hundred thousand captured civilians herded to Mullaiththeevu were kept in rows within barbed wires, most of the time without water or food under the hot sun.

Colombo particularly targeted hospitals and makeshift hospitals. When people moved away from Ki’linochchi, its hospital started functioning in the school building at Udaiyaar-kaddu. More than two thousand shells were fired on this building by the SLA.

Ki’linochchi to Tharmapuram, Vaddakkachchi, Visuvamadu, Udaiyaar-kaddu, Puthukkudiyiruppu – until reaching Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal, at an average 50 civilians were killed every day in Sri Lankan attacks. 8000 were already killed before herded into Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal.

Medical work decimated and workers were shaken at the death of patients, nurses and workers. When there were more than 300,000 people, Colombo sent food for only 30,000. Important medicines such as anesthetic drugs were not sent. Life-saving surgery without anesthesia was a cursing ordeal for the patients as well as doctors.

Mothers and children standing in queue to receive infant milk food were targeted in the SL shell attacks. Without seeing no one could visualize the sorrow of the child that lost the mother and the mother who lost the child.

SLA shell attacks, guided by spy craft were targeted on queues for gruel also. Despite casualties the queue would form again. While even gruel was scarce to people, lands they cultivated were harvested by the SLA.

At one stage, the LTTE leadership ordered food meant for combatants to be shared with civilians. The fighters fought only with gruel food and to the last LTTE served gruel to people.

Around 1000 waterholes were dug and several hundreds of toilets were made for civilians at the initiative of the LTTE. Water often mixed with sand was collected in shell-halves and was filtered by cloth.

There were no epidemics. Pregnant mothers and infants bearing shell fragments came to makeshift hospitals. These hospitals functioned 24 hours and wailing was always heard around them. Many dead bodies couldn’t be buried in certain situations of SL attacks and hungry dogs dragged them.

Every time moving patents to ICRC vessel there will be targeted shelling from the SLA. A few hundreds taken for ICRC treatment died. How that happened was not known and whom to ask.

Even in emaciated conditions people donated blood for treatment and some of them later died of their own injuries. More than a thousand people were killed on the day when the SLA entered into Maaththa’lan and Pokka’nai (20th April).

On May 15th and 16th the SLA entered and rampaged the pocket of land crowded with nearly a hundred thousand people. I had to pass through at least around 300 bodies when I came out. Some were alive but couldn’t walk. I helped a few who could walk. Some held my feet when I tried to go away. What could I do?

There is a long list of people who were eliminated and disappeared after capture by the SLA. The army-controlled area was a place where murders took place in front of one’s eyes.

In Mullaiththeevu, a hundred thousand people made to stand in rows would all of a sudden be ordered to squat by the SL army. The soldiers would make sadistic laugh at seeing the melee of people falling on each other in the exercise.

Long poles were used to beat the people and to threaten them. Old and young stood under hot sun for a long time, immensely suffering from thirst. Mullaiththeevu to Vavuniyaa was scenery of disaster.
There were 20 to 25 people in a tent in the internment camp at Cheddiku’lam. Food was sometimes thrown from a vehicle.

Everyday in the internment camp around 30 people died. It was a place of epidemics.
Thousands suffered of Chicken Pox, hundreds had brain fever, many elders died and some committed suicide.
The bribe to SL army for a person to come out was several hundred thousands of rupees.

In the last days of the war over 18,000 killed, more than 5,000 lost limbs, more than 7,000 seriously injured and several thousands suffered minor injuries. Several thousands suffer mental illnesses. More than a hundred medical workers- doctors, nurses and volunteers perished.

Knowledge and exercise of precaution reduced casualty. No one died of any epidemic under LTTE control. Several thousands of Sinhala youth of the SLA, from poor families, regrettably laid down their life in the war.

The sadistic lust of Mahinda Rajapaksa is very astonishing - inflicting pain on ordinary civilians in every possible way, and then projecting that as forms of his soothing operation to the outside world.

The world may forget, but Tamils will never forget the true face of the civilization of 21st century, the world has shown to them, writes the medical worker in his notes.

3 comments:

  1. What else is new?? Madame Justice forsaken Sri Lanka.

    The Evil ever present... and as always the Rajapaksa government has put on an elaborate song and dance to bedazzle the international community into believing justice is being done...

    At the end we know what is going to happen. The victims will suffer and the guilty go free..

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  2. I am appalled by this Massacre.

    Yes they won the war, but they have a greater war ahead of them, to bring peace to our country. End of warfare is not fulfillment of peace.
    How can we justify Hiroshima style massacre. How will Sinhalese feel if it happens to their kith and kin?

    JVP and Sinhalese youth went through similar situation like the Tamils in north. Even dogs don't party over dead dogs...do they?

    Let government face the true facts with courage as they face the war. Sri Lankan army did this type of brutality and needs to be condemned.
    Those who condone to such violence will have blood on their hands too.

    We cannot bring the dead to life but we can prevent more being taken to death. Let us not give our souls to evil.

    We have become a race who claims to be Buddhist but doesn't follow the teachings of Buddha.
    This is disgrace to the valient soldiers and will be a disgrace to them until the perpetrators are brought to justice.

    The government has the obligation towards the SL army to bring culprits to justice.

    We cannot merely disregard this Massacre. That how a responsible government should act.

    Of course is SL government responsible, go ask a man in the street.

    Sri Lankan Government blames LTTE for everything.
    Colombo should prosecute errant soldiers and apologized on behalf of the army.

    Get real Sri Lankans!!

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  3. There is not now, nor has there been for years, a shortage of small-minded propagandists of the Sri Lankan government.

    The Pro GoSL apologists who fail to see the obvious retreat from democracy and decency that is the Rajapaska regime rely endlessly on the propagated myths that any and all who oppose their point of view are paid lackeys of their opposite numbers.

    Sri Lanka will never awake from its troubled sleep so long as so many are willing to enjoy the kool-aid offered by the extremists .

    In the end it will be more than the Tamil minorities who suffer as the present rot will eventually turn what should be a paradise on earth into nothing more than a despotic regime bent on enabling a smaller and smaller elite in their quenchless thirst for money and power.

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