War crimes and child victims

It was left to V. Anandasangaree, the TULF leader, who knows his North much better than any of the foreign or local commentators on recent developments there, to expose the LTTE’s false claim about a claymore mine attack last Tuesday by the Security Forces within LTTE controlled territory where the LTTE said, through TamilNet and its other propaganda arms, that at least 11 of those killed there were schoolchildren whose bus hit a mine laid by the military.

The media gave short shrift to the military’s denial of such an attack and that they did not operate so deep in LTTE controlled area.

The report of this attack came very handy, especially to anchorpersons and reporters of the international news channels to show a comparison, and thereby some justification, of the LTTE’s typically savage bomb blast that has by now killed at least 20 and injured more than 40, including many children, at a clothing shop near the busy and crowded Nugegoda junction, the next day.

The juxtaposition of the two events, the claymore attack in the North that allegedly killed 11 children and the Nugegoda blast where several children were killed and severely injured, came handy to show some justification for the LTTE’s action.

It is useful to quote what Anandasangaree had to say of the reported claymore attack:

“The reported news item that 11 persons including nine students had been killed in a claymore mine attack by the Forces that penetrated deeply into the LTTE held area is a real fabrication.

Reading this in the Tamil newspaper this morning I felt that this news is a prelude to some serious incident to take place in the course of the day and as expected this tragic incident had taken place at Nugegoda.”

“The claymore mine incident took place in a village which is so close to the Kilinochchi town that the Forces can’t even dream of reaching that village and if what the paper had said is true, the end of the LTTE is nearing.”

“Those who were instrumental for this news to appear in the papers had a clear motive for doing so. It is obviously to show the International Community that the 2nd incident is retaliatory to the first incident and also to justify it.”

This comes from a person who is very knowledgeable about the LTTE, the Tiger mentality and its tactics. It confirms the position of the military that it had no connection with the reported claymore attack in the North last Tuesday.

But significantly, the media, especially the foreign media that has so many resources to get at the facts when they need it, was quite happy to keep on repeating this propaganda of the LTTE, with the least interest in verifying its authenticity.

Interestingly, although the news channels, such as the BBC had sufficient time to know the number of children killed or injured at Nugegoda by the time they filed their reports for broadcast and for their web sites (for in depth reporting of events, as we are often told), that piece of important information was not included in their reports.

Reporters and editors who are supposed to give good coverage of important breaking news, and later fill in the details of such news, did not think it necessary to highlight the number of child victims of the Nugegoda blast, which could have been obtained very easily if they cared to, but were happy to repeat the LTTE’s claims about the number of child victims of the previous day’s reported claymore attack in the north.

Just look at how the BBC web site reported this on Wednesday night -

“Deadly bomb attacks in Sri Lanka

At least 16 people have been killed in a bomb explosion in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, the military says.

At least 37 were also injured in the blast, which hit the city’s busy Nugegoda district.

The bomb went off outside a clothing shop, after a guard reportedly tried to open a suspicious parcel.

The blast came just hours after a suicide bomber killed one person and hurt two in Colombo. Officials blamed the two attacks on Tamil Tiger rebels.

They took place a day after Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran described hopes for peace as naive, after increased fighting in the north.

The Tigers say that more than 20 civilians, most of them children, were killed in two attacks by the military in the North on Tuesday.”

This was what the BBC web site said close to midnight of Wednesday, more than five hours after the Nugegoda blast, when there was enough time to get a proper figure of victims and their breakdown by age and sex.

Further down the same news item on the BBC web said:

“The Tamil Tigers said that at least 11 of those killed in the North on Tuesday were schoolchildren whose bus hit a mine laid by the military. The Army denied responsibility.”

Genocide

Interestingly, the same BBC web report, also had a prominent sub-head in the middle of its peace that read “Genocide” within quotes, indicating a comment by someone, on the incidents it reported. But nowhere else in the body of this story was any reference made to genocide, either directly or indirectly.

The possibility is that “genocide” in Sri Lanka is either an obsession of the BBC reporter or editor who handled that story, or that one or both of them were willing retailers of the LTTE’s oft-repeated allegations of genocide being carried out by the Sri Lanka government. It was an interesting time to slip in that allegation.

The BBC World news report of the two bombings in Colombo last Wednesday telecast at 11.30 pm that night, ended with a somewhat ominous comment by the narrator about the attacks on civilian targets, with a pay-off line as it were, to the effect that the situation was deteriorating in Sri Lanka, as shown by these attacks, because the Tigers had rarely attacked purely civilian targets in the past.

All that an editor of a news item needs is some quick reference in the very exhaustive library of the BBC to come up with enough examples of the LTTE’s attacks on purely civilian targets from the time it began its terror operations with the killing of the Mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiyappah way back in the early 1980s. One is reminded that though even journalist horses can be taken to the water, it is not possible to make them drink.

Reporters without Borders

One is more than intrigued by the statement issued by Reporters sans Frontiers (RsF) better known here as Reporters without Borders, the Paris-based organization that issued a statement to the effect that the attack by the security forces on the Voice of Tigers (VoT) radio station last Tuesday, was a “war crime”.

This is an observation later repeated by other foreign and Sri Lankan organisations too, that lay claim, often justifiably to being media watchdogs.

Obviously, RsF and the other organisations that repeat this charge, seem to be under a grave misconception that the rules of compliance, whether in the Geneva Conventions or any other related Protocols that deal with enemy combat between sovereign States, in what is known as war, applies to action taken by a sovereign State against a grave internal threat which takes the form of unbridled terror against the people and the State.

They support the right of the LTTE to engage in propaganda broadcasting under Geneva Conventions, which itself is a question, quite oblivious of any other use the LTTE may be making of its radio stations or other communications facilities.

A little inquiry from the defence authorities would have told these organisations that the VoT facility that was destroyed in the attack was a well-known operation of the terrorist LTTE, which in addition to being used for propaganda for the separatist aims of the LTTE, is also been known to have been used for its clandestine armed activities, targeting both the Sri Lankan Security Forces and vulnerable civilians.

It is an action that the Security Forces considered necessary as part of the current operations to rid Sri Lanka of terrorism that is being carried out by an organisation that is committed to the use of violence and terror to further its aims, and has repeatedly shown it has no regard for any recognised norms of behaviour in seeking to achieve its goals.

Victims and Civilians

Much is being said that the victims of that attack, present at the location at the time of the attack, were civilians. These organisations do not state their source for such an assertion, except the claims of the LTTE itself, which it appears has been operating this facility for a considerable time as a radio station for separatist and terrorist propaganda (that these organisations are in favour of leaving untouched) as well as clandestine military operations.

RsF and the other organisations referring to international instruments state that deliberate attacks against journalists and infrastructure belonging to or used by the press constitute a serious violation of international law and that journalists have the right to perform their role in territories where fighting is taking place.

Surely, this refers to the role of journalists covering a conflict and certainly cannot refer to or mean those persons, whether journalists or otherwise, who participate in such conflicts, and others who claim to be journalists who do so.

It is no easy task to identify who is a journalist and who is not, when a person functions in a place that is known to be used for terrorist purposes, and regrettably though, even “journalists” who decide to participate in the military-cum-propaganda related activities of an organisation of terror will have to pay the price of such participation.

RsF in its statement even charges that the VoT staff (or is it cadres?) had not been given warnings of the attack by the Air Force. It is ridiculous for any military institution to give warning to those who it has identified as enemy terrorists, of an impending attack on a facility which they use for the purposes of terrorism.

For the record, there were some who said that the former leader of the LTTE Political Wing SP Thamilchelvan, was also a civilian who was killed in an attack on another communications related location of the LTTE. This was given the lie when he was posthumously given the rank of “Brigadier” which is said to be the highest rank in LTTE’s fighting arm.

Such belief in persons engaged in the activities of terror being civilians, except when they are caught, injured or killed while committing an act of terror, would make the woman suicide killer, reportedly a polio victim too, who failed in the attempt to assassinate the Minister of Social Services and Social Welfare Douglas Devananda earlier this week; and, the other woman who was killed in the failed attempt to assassinate the Army Commander in April last year, none other than innocent civilians, until they detonated the lethal bombs strapped to their bodies. The same goes for the killers of Rajiv Gandhi, too.

These organisations may have their own interests when they issue such statements, rushing to condemn the actions of the Sri Lankan Security Forces or the Government, with hardly any research being done to justify what they say.

Such knee-jerk reactions, which help the propaganda goals of the LTTE, whether intended or not, only lead to serious doubts as to the genuineness of these organisations when they make statements on other issues that may require more serious consideration.