In today’s media…
AP : Sri Lankan civilians starving under heavy shelling
Thousands of Sri Lankans crammed into a squalid coastal strip along with retreating Tamil rebels face relentless shelling that has killed dozens of civilians in the past two days and left many scrounging for food to survive, witnesses said Thursday.
Concern is growing for the trapped civilians as the Sri Lankan army seeks to deal a knockout blow to the Tamil Tiger rebels to end the island’s 25-year civil war.
International South Asia Forum : Lions Tigers, and the culling of Sri Lankan Tamils
Sri Lanka’s Lions (Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist government) and Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) continue their savage war that is now slaughtering thousands of innocent Tamil civilians caught in the crossfire. The government claims to go out of its way to minimize civilian casualties, despite having relied on a strategy of deliberately and indiscriminately bombing areas filled with Tamil civilians; the LTTE, which is branded a terrorist group by over thirty countries, claims it is fighting to liberate Tamils-even as it forcibly recruits civilians, including child soldiers, to fight government forces and uses these trapped Tamils as human shields; and the international community, which claims to care about the plight of innocent civilians, stands impotently on the sidelines as beleaguered Tamils are being murdered.
Times Now : India to send military aid to Sri Lanka
India will send a team of military doctors to Sri Lanka soon in its first open indulgence in the island nation’s fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) since the failure of a peace mission in 1987. Acceding to a popular demand from Tamil Nadu’s political parties, the Centre decided to base the medical team in Pulmodai in the island’s north-east, which was once under LTTE control.
AFP : Sri Lankan conflict due to ‘repressive’ govts: Canada
The 37-year conflict raging in Sri Lanka was borne out of “repressive” governments in Colombo, Canadian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs said Thursday.
UN : Sri Lanka: Ban deplores rising civilian death toll from ongoing fighting
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today strongly deplored the mounting civilian death toll in areas of fighting between Sri Lankan Government forces and Tamil rebels, and called for an immediate halt to the fighting.
Times : UN must protect civilians in Sri Lanka
Sir, We call upon the UK Government to press for an urgent Security Council resolution on the situation in northern Sri Lanka, with the view to dispatching a fact-finding mission there under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General, in furtherance of the Security Council’s primary responsibility under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Business Standard : Sadanand Menon: A war without witnesses
In the past few days, Sri Lanka has been in the news across South Asia. In Pakistan, Lankan cricketers get sprayed with bullets. The attack leads to unprecedented traffic jams in Kathmandu, as Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s pilgrimage to Lumbini gets aborted and he returns home amidst high security. In New Delhi, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee is getting used to making frequent statements on Lanka and one waits for the day when he might rightly pronounce the word, Puthukudiyiruppu, the current theatre of the longest-ranging civil war in Asia between the Sinhala Army and LTTE.
