Lalin’s Column: Ban Ki-moon- Report and facts.

‘Prabakaran declared war on SL on four different occasions from 1985 even while peace talks were on. When he looked like winning, the Diaspora romanticised war, calling his cadres ‘boys’ etc. When SL and IPKF soldiers died and thousands of Sinhalese civilians were murdered, the LTTE and its supporters were exultant.

Back ground

In 2007 with a cease fire on and international peace monitors (SLMM) in situ, the LTTE conducted an act of war at Mavil Aru. The SL forces had not forgotten that the terrorists had killed over 50,000 unarmed civilians with bomb, bullet, shell, knife, sword and axe, 18,000 soldiers and 600 policemen who surrendered on a promise of safe conduct by the LTTE. (1990).

‘War is horrible but politics is far worse’ Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

This time the government knew the only effective way to stop them was unfortunately to kill them unless the circumstance changed again. The battles were fought mainly at close quarters in jungle terrain. The fighting was merciless. The LTTE, holding 300,000 Tamil hostages spurned surrender offers. Almost all the hostages and over 10,000 LTTE cadres, though shot at, escaped.

The west with the expectation of extricating them clandestinely encouraged the LTTE to continue fighting.

While the rules of war prohibit killing civilians, those who are armed though in civilian clothes did not expect to be spared. The war ended suddenly on the banks of Nandikadal in May 2009.The LTTE ceased to exist.

Little has changed in war in 500 years. In Europe’s 30 year war (1618-48) casualties ranged from 15% to 75 % of the population, especially in German and Polish states. Europe became peaceful only after two World Wars in the 20th century after nearly 80 million had died. In the American Civil War (1861-5) there were over one million casualties including 650,000 soldiers on both sides, of who 68,000 died in prisons. The aftermath had repercussions in the South until 1970 when segregation ended in USA. It was always those who fled who fanned the flames of revival.

After 30 years of conflict in which about 100,000 died ended in Nandikadal, peace reigns in SL. There has not been a single terrorist incident since. The Tamils in Colombo outnumber the Sinhalese.

There are over 5,000 people disabled for life among 30,000 wounded. Lessons were learned and reconciliation is taking place. Reparations will take longer.

LTTE cadres who surrendered, including hundreds of Baby Brigade conscripts and teenage female ‘Songbirds’ suicide cadres who had to ‘dine’ at night with the Sun God before ‘blast off’, are being rehabilitated island wide. Thus far not one LTTE cadre has been punished. There is no spirit of revenge and vengeance in SL, only great relief, remorse and even a shared sense of guilt and shame.

That is except for supporters of the LTTE, some tens of thousands living mostly as refugees in the West. Frustrated at the unexpected turn of events as they eagerly expected to come back to SL to claim rewards and their abandoned property from a victorious LTTE, they now pay blood money received from the Tamils in the Wanni to western politicians who want their votes to take up their struggle. The aim is basically to revive the murder and carnage spree. Few if any in SL even speak of the war.

Politics

The UN has had many SGs before Ban ki (Banki) Moon. It is not ready to pin point who killed former SG, Dag Hammarskjold, in Zaire (former Belgian Congo) in 1961 or 100,000 women and children in Iraq and those in Afghanistan or Libya. Yet it alleges that it knows who killed whom and how many and in what circumstances in SL’s conflict that ended in 2009.

Even Banki must have known the LTTE had in 2009 taken 300,000 of its own supporter’s hostage. It established an enormous human shield to protect itself in its last bastion in the Wanni. The hostages were shot if they tried to escape.

Banky does not care

There is no comparison with other such hostage situations like Beslan in Russia where the Chechnya terrorists took 1,100 school children captives of whom 380 were killed in a 3 day siege. UK’s celebrated Iran Embassy lightning operation that had only 2 hostages killed of 26 where also there was a white flag allegation and killing of 2 unarmed terrorists. As one SAS man said ‘The difference between a successful hostage rescue and a disaster is measured in milliseconds in conditions impossible to imagine when ...visibility is restricted .... and the next person you meet may want to blow your head off’. Was this not applicable to a greater degree in the flooded jungles of the Wanni and in the night in over 5 months fighting against 30,000 terrorists?

Banky and his cohorts are not by any measure ‘highly respected’ as one man put it in the Daily Mirror on 23 April 11. For good measure that journalist awarded the same gratuitous certificate to the members of the LLRC too. Just in case.

It appears that the only chance Banky has of getting a second innings is by offering third world countries for batting practice (chopping block) to the west. He clearly desires, aspires and craves to get that chance. He had used his South Korean Foreign Minister’s post to travel world wide for many months to canvass for his first stint.

Charging like the Light Brigade at Balaclava, Banky has certainly ‘volleyed and thundered’ to force his largely unknown ‘experts’ to produce ‘reports’. Amazing for a South Korean who knows how his country exercises utmost restraint in the face of extreme provocation by the North. The North can flatten his capital Seoul within eight (8) seconds if it goes to war. So it pays all South Koreans to suck up to those who have insured them.

Banky’s spokesman (Haq) with his head cupped in his hand when answering questions looked more like a strip artist on stage for the first time. That man’s father is also in the UN!

Moon did not have the sanction of the UN to get this report done, yet his panel suspiciously selected from outside the UN, set out to haul SL over the coals for thrashing the daylights out of the world’s most horrible terrorists ever and restoring peace.

The report, full of mistakes and with wild, lurid, unsubstantiated allegations was based solely on material given by the Diaspora, USA and UK, Tamil net and selected western NGOs and horse keepers in SL. SL’s versions were banned. Did ‘Triumphalism’, the word hacked to glory in SL by the ‘Centre’ reveal who was behind the wording of the report? Was a draft sent to Banky for the approval of the obliging panel?

Did the UN think to intervene when according to the international press 20,000 SL troops in Jaffna were allegedly considering withdrawing under threat of an LTTE attack in 2000? The west had wished to stop the inevitable in 2009 only because it was the LTTE that was being scuttled.

The west appears to have a monopoly on what they call ‘HR’ and ‘HL’, something reserved exclusively to whip the third world. It even considers using nuclear weapons on the 3rd World. It was done before in Japan, nearly done in Vietnam and Iraq and it may be done in Afghanistan and other places too since the conflict in SL is over.

In 1961 when SL fearlessly and in hind sight wisely nationalised the Shell Company assets, the USA mounted punitive economic sanctions in retaliation, aimed at vapourising SL. The USA is doing the same in Libya for similar reasons but for far bigger stakes. What price the UNSG is doing its dirty work this time in SL?

The Tamil Diaspora with its control of blood money disburses staggering amounts to influential western politicians. They made sure the ‘experts’ did not say anything too adverse about the LTTE atrocities. Moon’s three ‘experts’ were ‘fulfilled’ and how. They justified it by saying that ‘the panel did not consider LTTE abuses outside the conflict zone under international law because of the uncertainty (all three are lawyers!) surrounding (that word again) whether non state actors have Human Rights obligations beyond the territories they control’. So if the LTTE massacred even a million civilians in the towns, villages and places of worship,these ‘experts’ were ‘uncertain’ how to proceed. After all what would the Diaspora offer be next time?

One of the ten principles of war is the concentration of force. Clausewitz said ‘take possession of enemy material and strength and operate against where they are concentrated. He also said ’never waste time’ and ‘the side that is surrounded by the enemy is better off than the side that surrounds its opponent especially with equal or weaker forces. The SL army, well versed in the principles, was however caught in a bind that would have foxed Clausewitz.

The LTTE itself behind a formidable moat and bund type defence surrounded itself with the 300,000 Tamil hostages and used them as a human shield. Two years after the war ended the figure was bumped to 370,000 by the ‘experts’. It was a well paid Diaspora hit.

Who could have figured out how this dilemma could be solved? When the SL forces attempted to surround the LTTE they realised that the LTTE had ordered 300,000 Tamil civilians to surround the LTTE. So how could the army take out the LTTE without harming the civilians? Concentration of force would be counter productive as moral imperatives existed.

Astoundingly, most of the 300,000 hostages trusting the SL government, broke out successfully defying murderous LTTE fire. Even the ‘panel’ could not bluff that they were then killed by the SL army as they came over in seemingly endless streams of first hundreds and then thousands.

The ‘panel’ has been instructed, helped, advised, and coaxed, bull dozed by the West and the Diaspora to say 70,000 LTTE hostages were killed by the SL Army. If so, there must have been nearly 400,000 not 300,000 civilians, in the LTTE redoubt in the Wanni. How were these wildly different figures arrived at and by whom? No figures for how many hostages, traitors, prisoners etc the LTTE killed have been given nor even the number of LTTE killed. Yet the ‘experts’ say they know where the graves of the dead are as they (not their patrons) saw satellite pictures. Were they also added to the final score?

The human shield took a heavy toll of the SL troops who were restrained in their use of force.

This permitted the LTTE to further consolidate their defences even as heavy rains and floods made matters worse. The LTTE also tried to drown hundreds of troops by attempting to breach the Iranamadu and other tanks (reservoirs), unconcerned of the danger to the civilians in the path of the surging waters. Scores of troops were drowned. What about the Tamil hostages? Who knows who advised Prabakaran to do so? That was a war crime. Was it to buy time until the West intervened?

Does the report mention how many SL troops perished in the last phase of the conflict? According to the then Army Commander Lt Gen Fonseka, it was 7,000. Were these also added to the ‘experts’ total. Every SL prisoner held was also executed by the LTTE as borne out by an escaped LTTE cadre in Canada

People may recall that around the beginning of 2009 there appeared on the web many photos of dusky nubile sub continental Asian females purporting to be LTTE suicide cadres in the Wanni enjoying their last days before attempting to enter paradise with bombs. They were only in their panties if anything but with nothing worn above the waist. They were seen to be cavorting with white males apparently NGOs in SL who were ‘rehabilitating’ them. Did the ‘panel‘ not see these photos? If they did, they made no mention of it. If they say they did not, they are downright liars. Does this throw light on some of the charges that the ‘panel’ made about the SL Army? The number plate on the only vehicle shown in the photos was not a SL one, showing the captions to be a canard, this time maligning the LTTE. Canards however were grist for the ‘panel’.

Despite reports of mass starvation, the women IDPs (all well dressed) who broke out were an inch or more taller and more sturdily built than civilian females in the South, thanks to the food, nutrients and medicines sent by the government of SL to LTTE controlled areas all through the 30 years of the conflict. In addition school books and uniforms and salaries for all public servants were also sent. Was this mentioned in the ‘report’? The ‘experts’ report stating the IDPs were near starvation or died because of it, is blatantly hypocritical. It deliberately hides the fact that most if not all the old people who died after they came in as IDPs also had illnesses, diseases, wounds, fevers, while extreme monsoon conditions also prevailed. Some comparisons with the South may be revealing but that would expose the ‘panel’.

Banky was born in 1944. He is a South Korean Tiger whose country has made economic history. His country, mostly under brutal martial law for most of its existence, was ruled by a relay of the most horrid rulers Asia has known in the second half of the last century. He was their Foreign Minister from 2004-6. He is known for his modesty and competence if not for also having his daughter and son in law in the UN. He is also known as a ‘slippery eel’ and for his subservience to superiors. He categorically and without any remorse, commented that the death sentence on Saddam in Iraq was the business of the state concerned whereas the UN stance is anti death penalty. This forced him to recant later.

He may recall getting to know about the massacre of 30,000 people of Jeju in 1948-50 by the South Korean army and police. It is estimated 39,000 houses were destroyed and 70% of the villages burned. Until recently there was a law that allowed execution of anyone who even spoke about the massacres. That is the culture he is used to. It is a country where its Intelligence chief in 1979 called the President Park Chung Hee to dinner and executed him and his staff.

He must recall where he was in May 1980 when South Korean parachute and Special Forces killed 2,000 pro democracy demonstrators in K (G) wanju with the covering approval of the US Army in situ under Gen Wickham who released theatre troops to do the dirty work.

Banky is desperate to save his post. He got together three insignificant people known to him through the scratch phobia mafia net work of the UN, dubbed them ‘experts’ and paid them very well to conjure a ‘report’ on what must have been known to them was hailed as an epic of the 21st century- the total defeat of a terrorist movement –without any help from the UN.

Was the binding glue of the SG and his ‘experts’ that they were all from countries that have had horrendous and periodic massacres and have cosy well rewarded relationships bound by mortal fear of Al Qaida.

The USA after the Kentucky State University massacre by its National Guard has its work cut out now in Iraq and Afghanistan if not Libya after learning everything it wanted from Vietnam in order to promote democracy.

The only white eyes in the group Stern Ratner represents the only country in the world to use nuclear bombs on people (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), is responsible for the loss of a half a million children in Iraq due to a criminal war it declared with the UN’s tacit approval and daily killing of civilians in Afghanistan from 2001.

Nobody should forget My Lai, the village in Vietnam where over 100 innocent women and children were murdered in short order by Lt Calley, the 5ft 2 ins US Army officer. The punishment given to him was just one day in prison and three years under house arrest of a 20 year sentence for personally killing about twenty (20) Vietnamese in cold blood in November 1970 in Vietnam. Ratner, a lawyer, director of Quadrangle firm, fund raiser for the Democrats, adviser on Khmer Rouge war trials to former UNSG Kofi Anan, was involved in a pension related kick back scandal, influence peddling and inappropriate, unethical actions in NY and fined US$ five million for one and US$ 10 million for another and given a 5 year ban.

Marzaki Darusman, son of an Indonesian diplomat had spent a lot of his life in luxury in Europe, a ‘playboy of the Western world’. He was in demand with the westerners for his repeated and shameless volte face on HR violations including the Bali bombings. He took to politics in adult life, joining the ever green ruling Golkar Party in 1970. He said that he would have liked to be President ‘for self respect’. As Attorney General (1999-2001) he prosecuted in the corruption case against his former boss the deposed President Suharto (a former General) who ruled with a bloody hand for 32 years and was accused of fiddling US$ 40 billion from the country which he may not have shared with Presidential aspirants.

It is not given where Darusman was when rivers of blood ran down Indonesia’s city streets with over half a million people mainly Chinese killed in two months, and 300,000 wounded in putting down an alleged communist inspired coup which led to the ouster of Sukarno, also a dictator, who had led the country from Independence favouring socialism. The USA resents all socialists.

Darusman was an absentee ‘eminent’ person but claimed pay in the SL inquiry into the Muttur massacre in 2007. The eminences (grise) bugged out in great haste when one of them, a Frenchman (?) was photographed having a tete et tete with a woman witness in the BMICH car park. The Diaspora would have been delirious with joy to have him.

The third member is South African Indian Ms Yasmin Sooka. Was it a play to get India’s support in Moon’s up coming attempt at re election? Navi Pillay, another UN worker and a known adversary of SL for reasons all in SL know, must have navigated her compatriot’s selection. Sooka must know a few things about violence post Apartheid South Africa even if not compared with post Eelam SL. It has 66.2 people murdered in 100,000, a total of about 20,000 annually and is for the fourth year in succession called the murder city of the world. There is one rape every 17 seconds including f 67,000 babies - leave aside goats. There are 200,000 robberies a day. Nearly 30,000 whites have been murdered by Blacks since the ANC took power there (but not one Indian).This is post the so called Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) too. Was Moon promoting his second term bid for African endorsement by co opting Sooka?

Where was Sooka when the massacre of 68 Blacks in 40 seconds in 1968 at Sharpeville took place? Not anywhere near surely as most Indians do not easily identify with the Blacks and not only there. Why if a South African had to be appointed to the ‘panel’ could a Black not be chosen?

Sooka was in a law firm up to 1995 and then set up the NGO Foundation for HR (FHR) in 2001.She was also an international observer in Sierra Leone and a commissioner in South Africa’s TRC headed by Desmond Tutu. She put the TRC and ANC to the sword later for not granting remuneration to the victims and claiming blood money from the perpetrators who she made out live in gilded palaces. The President of South Africa Mbeki disagreed.

When appointed she agreed that the TRC should be a model for restorative rather than retributive justice. Now according to the expert’s report on SL signed by Sooka also ‘the assertion of a choice between restorative and retributive justice presents a false dichotomy. Both are required’. Guess who would have insisted on this now and why? Was the LTTE not promoting a type of Apartheid in SL where a minority would have ruled the majority through the brutal use of force? Sooka and Pillai know but will they admit? They are not Black.

This is indeed an expert panel of survivors. They have assiduously kept the worst of the LTTE crimes out of their report. Much would depend on who paid them.

Was Moon’s plan to infiltrate the three into the LTTE enclave with Reiner making the first move bringing in US $ millions to pay for safe passage? Darusman would have produced inflated figures of casualties to make the west howl. Sooka would have simply lashed out as she does in SA to earn her chapattis. Moon then would have asked them to dig in deep, don their NBC (Nuclear Biological chemical ) suits and pleaded with Col Gaddafi’s son in the USA (B O Hussein) to press the button to obliterate the SL forces and if possible all Sri Lanka except the LTTE controlled area. Hussein wouldn’t. So they made this report which satisfied their paymasters. Let’s see who pays the piper now.

- Asian Tribune -