Tamil Justice

ABC – Why the Tamils want to flee

ELIZABETH JACKSON: For the past six months or so it’s been almost impossible for Western journalists to get into Sri Lanka. Yet there’s a lot of reasons why they want to go there. So many Tamils are fleeing the country and many are trying to gain asylum in Australia.More

Eric Campbell from ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent program got lucky; he’s just returned from Sri Lanka. He told Shane McLeod about his experience there.

SHANE MCLEOD: Eric Campbell, it’s obviously been a pretty tumultuous few weeks in Sri Lanka. Is it a difficult country to find things out – to film things?

ERIC CAMPBELL: It’s a very difficult country to find things out and film things. We spent several days applying for permission, driving to places we’d been promised we’d be able to film, only to be turned around at the last minute and sent back.

We’d gone to great lengths to try to interview Sri Lankan officials without success. So, we’ve had to piece together from other people we’ve spoken to, including some of people who suffered from the civil war, exactly what’s going on and why so many Tamils have decided to get in boats and try and get to Australia.

SHANE MCLEOD: Something that I’ve found quite fascinating throughout the past few months is how little information we actually are able to get about Sri Lanka outside of the big cities. Why is that?

ERIC CAMPBELL: Well, if you remember during the large offensive that took place last year between January and May when the Tamil Tigers, the resistance army of the Tamils was finally wiped out, Sri Lanka went to great lengths to keep the outside world away from that.

No independent media were able to go there. Even aid agencies and the UN had a great deal of trouble finding out what was going on then, even as reports were coming back of massive civilian casualties.

So, I think the Sri Lankan Government has taken the point of view that the least the outside world sees, the better they’re able to massage an image of what really went on. And it’s worked quite well.

If you consider that when the United Nations Human Rights Commission met to look at the situation in Sri Lanka amid these claims of massive civilian casualties, they actually passed a resolution praising Sri Lanka for its actions.

And remember this was at the same time as the UN Human Rights Commission was condemning Israel for its incursion into Gaza, even though the civilian deaths that occurred during their offensive against the Tamils’ region was far, far greater – a multiple of perhaps 20 times greater – than the civilian casualties in Gaza.

SHANE MCLEOD: With the difficulties you had trying to get to these places, were you able to eventually meet some of the people who were there during that fighting?

ERIC CAMPBELL: We did. We were up at Vavuniya on election day, and that’s the town where about 300,000 Tamil civilians were taken after the Tamil Tigers were finally routed.

You’ll recall that when the army was closing in on the Tamil Tigers, the civilians in that area were retreating as well from the army frontlines. They were then trapped in an area about the size of Central Park – some 300,000 people – and they were unable to leave. They were used as human shields by the Tamils. Tamil Tigers were actually executing people if they tried to leave the area.

So they were caught in the Tamil stronghold surrounded by the Sri Lankan army, which then pressed on with an absolute merciless campaign to crush the Tamil Tigers. Now, that’s understandable given the terrible atrocities the Tamil Tigers have committees since they’ve, since they’re uprising began in 1983.

But you do have to consider whether due care was taken to safeguard civilians, who through no fault of their own were trapped in that area. And all the signs are that very little care was taken and that the deaths were quite astounding.

We’ve spoken to a former UN official, who wasn’t able to discuss it publically at the time, but he believes that up to 40,000 civilians were killed during this offensive that was virtually unseen by the outside world.

SHANE MCLEOD: And we’re talking here about the offensive that took place over a few months last year.

ERIC CAMPBELL: Over five months from January to May. It was a very successful military operation. It did what no one thought could be done, which was to completely crush the Tamil Tigers. And there’s nothing to romanticise about them. They were an appalling terrorist group that used child soldiers and suicide bombings and had terrorised the entire Sri Lankan countryside for about 26 years.

Tamils as well as the Sinhalese, the majority people in Sri Lanka, Tamils themselves were victims of the thuggery and violence and murders and assassinations that the Tamil Tigers underwent. But you do have to question whether the price that was paid by the deaths of up to 40,000 civilians can be excused by that military success.

SHANE MCLEOD: Do you see the aftermath as you’re travelling around? Are you seeing destruction, are you seeing houses, buildings that have been affected?

ERIC CAMPBELL: No, the areas where the offensive took place are still sealed off; it’ still impossible to go there. We tried to get up to Jaffna, which saw a lot of heavy fighting in more recent years. We were turned back at the checkpoint despite two days of driving up there with the right papers.