A Madison link to the Sri Lankan civil war

A cry for my homeland, by Gail Perry Daniels

Fighting between the Buddhist Sinhalece and the Hindu Tamils of Sri Lanka has been occurring for centuries. Recently, the fighting has reached a new level of violence resulting in thousands of causalities, the creation of barbwire concentration camps, and the use of chemical weapons. Shiva Sathasivam of Madison wonders if the world will come to the aid of his homeland.

Shiva Sathasivam
"There is a human tragedy taking place in Sri Lanka and we're ignoring it," said Sathasivam, a nationalized U.S. citizen but Tamil by birth. "The atrocities that happened in Rwanda, Africa, between the Tusi and the Hutu in 1994 are happening right now in Sri Lanka."
The 25-year civil war in Sri Lanka is now drawing international attention due, in part, to the government's recent decision to ban access to all independent monitors into the country, including the media. Amid reports of chemical weapons being used against innocent civilians, the Sri Lankan government has restricted humanitarian and United Nations workers from entering the country.
"It's very frustrating," Sathasivam said. "I have relatives in Sri Lanka, and I've not been able to talk to them or know if they are safe. My fear is that the Tamils have become victims of ethnic cleansing."
Last week, Amnesty International, a grassroots activist organization with 2.2 million members, called on the Sri Lankan government to declare an immediate humanitarian truce so civilians caught in the middle of the conflict zone could leave safely. An urgent humanitarian pause, they added, must be implemented immediately.
The trapped Tamil civilians, numbered at 140,000, are being held by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eclam(LTTE), a militant group that has been at war with the Sri Lankan government for 25 years. While the Sri Lankan Government has declared the shrinking five-square mile wedge of land in northeastern Sri Lanka a safe zone for Tamil civilians, hundreds die in daily crossfire shelling between the government and the LTTE.
Of the civilians who manage to flee the fighting, many are being put into concentration camps where they are not allowed to communicate with the outside world. At Menkk Farm, one of the largest camps, a second line of barbed wire has been installed. According to one aid worker, the camp is being prepared to receive 400,000 refugees. While aid agencies are allowed to visit the camps near Vavuniya, they are not allowed to monitor what is happening within them.
The Sri Lankan government calls these camps "Welfare Centers" while many international watchers call them internment camps whose occupants are subjected to indefinite confinement.
While Sathasivam works from Madison to draw local and national attention to the genocide occurring in Sri Lanka, he admits that many may not know where the small island is located. Sri Lanka is located on the eastern tip of India.
Prior to colonization by the British in the 1700s, Sri Lanka was ruled by two separate kingdoms. The smaller kingdom of Tamil occupied the northern part of the country while the bigger Sinhalece kingdom occupied the south. Under British occupation, Sri Lanka was divided by its two ethnic groups: the Tamils occupied the north and the Sinhalece occupied the south, with the capital, Colombo, located in the south.
"So far this year, the exodus of Tamil civilians in northern Sri Lanka has reached more than 64,000 people," Sathasivam said. "The village in which my parents lived, where I played as a child, and where I knew my neighbors, is now 50 percent occupied by Sinhalece. My fear is that the Tamils will be pushed out of their homeland permanently."

The crisis draws international concern  
 On April 16, Robert Wood, acting department spokesman for the U.S. Department of State, called upon the government of Sri Lanka to assist its Tamil citizens by halting shelling of safe zones and permitting international monitors to ensure the safe exit of the civilians.
"We call upon the government and military of Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers to immediately stop hostilities until the more than 140,000 civilians in the conflict area are safely out," Wood said.
The United States government is deeply concerned about the current danger to civilian lives and the dire humanitarian situation created by the fighting in the Mullaittivu areas in Sri Lanka. The government of Sri Lanka should enforce international humanitarian standards in camps and permit entry into Sri Lanka of international monitors and media access to the camps, Wood added.
The country of India, Sri Lanka's neighbor to the north, has also called on the LTTE to stop its barbaric attempt to hold civilians hostage.
These killings must stop, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told journalists last week. "The Sri Lankan government has a responsibility to protect its own citizens," he said. "At the same time, the LTTE must stop its barbaric attempt to hold civilians hostage."
In 1989, India entered the country as peacekeepers and established a separate state for the Tamils, but the peace lasted only a few months before fighting erupted again.

The war intensifies as the rebels dig in  
On April 9, the watchdog group "War Without Witness" reported that the Sri Lankan Government used chemical weapons on civilians and enemy combatants in the northern safe zone of the warfront. After examination of patients seeking medical help and according to the medical/chemical report released by the group, chemical substances found on the wounds of two victims were consistent withthe chemicals used in a mustard gas attack. The group has now called on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and its 186 member states to immediately dispatch independent observers to the warzone to ensure the safety of civilians.
However, locating the Tamil Tigers is no easy task for the Sri Lankan government. The Tigers have now blended into the local population. In addition, they have shot civilians attempting to flee the safe zone, used civilians as human shields, and forced children to dig bunkers.

Diaspora Groups Meet on Sir Lanka Crisis
Last month, Sathasivam was a member of the Tamil American Diaspor Group invited to the United Kingdom to discuss peace initiatives for the Sri Lankan government.
 The two-day conference filled with workshops and meetings ultimately allowed attendants to address the British Parliament and offer their ideas on how to protect human life and how to bring peace to the region.
"I called for an unconditional ceasefire when I addressed Parliament and that a separate ethnic state be established for the Tamils," Sathasivam said. "I wasn't sure the impact we would have in gathering humanitarian support for the Tamil civilians, but weeks later, the British government called for a cease-fire in Sri Lanka, and they've sent a special envoy to New York to address the Security Council members."
 Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein, a Washington D.C. attorney and council for the Tamils, attended the conference as well. Fein urged the group to support the U.S. effort to bring genocide charges in the U.S. against Sri Lanka's current minister of defense, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a nationalized U.S. citizen.
Fein met Sathasivam several years ago when Sathasivam consulted him on an immigration matter. The two talk often and have been working together to bring attention to the crisis in Sri Lanka ever since initally meeting.
 "When you have a U.S citizen [like] Rajapaksa who shares duel citizenship in Sri Lanka  currently being a co-mastermind to the genocide against citizen women and children, I feel he should be extradited and tried for participating in genocide," Fein said.
Rajapaksa's rise to power came at the hands of his brother, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The Tamils live outside the law much like Black Americans did under Jim Crow. The Sri Lankan government would despise the Tamils even if the Tamils converted to Buddhism because the Sinhalece consider the Tamils to be an unclean race, and that will never change, Fein added.
The government of Sri Lanka defies the laws of the International Genocide Convention, which requires extradition of persons accused of genocide, and they insist that this is an internal problem of the country itself, Fein said.
Fein believes, too, that the only solution to the crisis would be to establish a de-facto Tamil state. We would hear more of this crisis if Sri Lanka had nuclear weapons or valuable oil reserves, Fein says.