Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy today said India should not support the U.S.-backed U.N. resolution for an inquiry into human rights violations by Sri Lankan army following alleged surfacing of video footage of the bullet-riddled body of LTTE chief’s son.
“India should not act under U.S. pressure (to back the resolution). The slain LTTE chief himself used hundreds of kids as shields in his fight in Sri Lanka and the U.S. is killing civilians in drone attacks in Pakistan,” Mr. Swamy told reporters.
Mr. Swamy said everywhere in the world such killings took place in the fight against terror.
The alleged video, he said, was three year old and did not prove killing of LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s son by Sri Lankan forces. He criticised former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi for whipping up “Tamil sentiments for a wrong cause”.
The report about the video in London’s The Independent came ahead of a crucial vote on U.S.-backed U.N. Human Rights Council resolution for an inquiry into human rights violations by Lankan army.
It showed the bullet-riddled body of Balachandran, the 12-year-old son of Prabakaran, stripped to the waist with five bullet holes to the chest.
The footage dating from May 18, 2009, allegedly showed how the Sri Lankan army engaged in crimes against humanity in the last days of its war against LTTE.
The Sri Lankan authorities, however, dubbed the report as “motivated and concocted”.
“In our view this is a tentative report, uncorroborated and not being authenticated. This has not been shared with us for us to check. It goes against journalism ethics. The report is motivated and is concocted,” Lankan High Commissioner to India Prasad Kariyawasam had told PTI after the report was published.
Keywords: Sri Lanka war crimes, human rights violation, civilian killiing, UNHRC report, Eelam War, LTTE, Prabakaran killing, ethnic conflict, Sri Lankan Tamils
Swamy is a brave man who stands against terrorism, unlike politicians like Vaiko who was seen mollycoddling the Terrorists by entering Sri Lanka illegally. The footage proves nothing, much of it could have been filmed by the LTTE sympathizers themselves, of LTTE shelling those areas during the conflict. Didn't the cowards forcibly hold their own people as human shields? D the rules suddenly change now that they are all dead? What did the so called saviors of humanity do when LTTE was terrorizing innocent civilians by bombing schools, hospitals, temples, buses, plane s and trains? When they were hacking to death entire villages and driving out the Muslims and Sinhalese from their homes? All they dd was enforce a symbolic ban on the LTTE, but turned a blind eye to their fun raising activities and even allowed them to set up terrror gangs in Europe and North America.
I appreciate Mr.Hitesh Gehlot's statement. He is viewing the things as a human being and not like Mr.Swami, who is known for his cruelity. Supporting resolution doesn't mean supporting LTTE. People in India is concealed about many horrible killings and cold blooded murders by SL army. Totally 2-3 million Tamils were killed. Did LTTE kill these many?, even Al-Qaeda never did that much. Eventhough LTTE was not arrogant as some people quoting. They are far more good than India & China which helped SL to do these curious War crimes, by providing weapons. When they had a fighter aircraft in their hand, they attacked Sl Air force station, not Civil airport which was very next to that. Even they had Orphanage homes for children, who lost their parents in war. If they used people as human shields, then why did thousands of people stand in Q to join their child in LTTE. I talked with many SL tamils, so in my experience i am telling, no tamilian from SL told LTTE as terrorist org. you ppl try?
At least one man with rationality.
If India wants to do what Tamil Nadu wants, it could have done so in May
2009.
India will not vote for the resolution.
The USA is the worst criminal in inflicting collateral damage on various pretexts and should find itself alone in condemning anybody else's crimes while fighting terrorists on home soil. Dr. Swamy is absolutely correct.
As for the Tamils suffering in Sri Lanka, that is a whole other issue, best served by humanitarian methods. Now the Rajapakse government is under no pressure to use excessive force and has not shown any propensity for that after eliminating the LTTE. So, India should stand by Sri Lanka and not bow to flirtatious, self righteous noises from the USA.
In fact, it would be morally right for India to ask for an independent inquiry on the elimination of 600,000 civilians in Iraq, and ask why the USA chose to use weapons like daisy cutters.
He is right. If there is any resolution to be brought up it should be by India not the US. India is the regional power and India should be the decider.
what Mr Swami conceives here is that India itself is doing such babaric activities against its own citizens in Kashmir and NE. ofcourse this is an undeniable truth and india should stop it in first place and should not support anyone who doest it. we should vote for the resolution. infact we should have been the one who should have bought such resolution against SL and before doing that we should stop our autrocities in NE and Kashmir.
First off, as can be seen by many of the comments on this page, Swamy
has led a number of people to believe that the UN resolution speaks
only of human rights abuses, and that too, abuses by only the Sri-
Lankan Government. This is not true. The resolution speaks of human
rights abuses only in passing and that too, rights abuses committed by
_both_ sides, asking for a full investigation to prove the
allegations. What is Sri-Lanka afraid of if it did nothing wrong?
Moreover, the bulk of the resolution asks the Sri-Lankan Government to
implement its own LLRC findings. Again, why is the Sri-Lankan
government against that? With regards to Swamy's argument that
"Everywhere in this world, such killings took place in the fight
against terror", he is justifying the killings by the LTTE during its
fight against Sri-Lankan Army terror. So why should Swamy bad-mouth
the LTTE when they did the exact same thing that the Army did which he
seems to have no problem with?
Tomskie Vladimir - And the Russia were checking out the local cuisine
in Berlin 1945 onwards and in Afghanistan, 1980s I suppose? Not to
mention the rape of Ukraine, and countless others. Interesting how
only the arch rivals of that police state figure in your tirade.
If the Americans hadn't launched against Japan in WW2, they might have
been rendered helpless against a Japanese naval assault. Their naval
assets had been rendered totally vulnerable. They wanted to knock out
the Japanese in a swift yet powerful blow and that they did. Not
unlike the current Russian indignation at the proposed US missile
shield bordering Russia, so that the Russian nuke threat against the
former satellites and other targets can be nullified.
I am not sure what message he is trying to deliver. Is he justifying the homicide of the 12 year old kid by telling that LTTE also has used hundreds of kids as shield.He is telling a video which has been authenticated as not proved.I agree that India should not act on US pressure but stillfrom the eyes of an common individual without seeing the political gains for india from the war it was basically a genocide .Nobody could deny that was war crimes behind it .Why there cant be a inquiry for human rights evaluations?They are to evaluate and conclude . Why India should not vote against them to draw a valid conclusion
The UN HR Council's move to pass a resolution follows the findings of a UN panel that was looking into the war crimes committed by both the SL army and the militant organization during the last phase of the civil war had severely indicted both parties of extensive human rights violations. So what is Mr. Swami's problem? Nobody is supporting the well known terrorist organization and its atrocities carried with impunity under the garb of armed resistance against a state known for its brutalities and chauvinism based on bellicose identity nationalism. The civilian crisis did not start with the origin of that particular terrorist organization but much before that - right after that country's independence when the process of sinhala-buddist identity politics began to thrust its agenda on all demo. institutions & instruments including the constitution and with an unaccountable judiciary & police seeds of unrest were sown in a society already fragmented on ethnic and communal lines.
"...everywhere in the world such killings took place in the fight against terror." Really Mr. Swamy? That makes it all right?
If we jettison all morality in our "fight against terror," we become terrorists ourselves. A bit self-defeating, don't you think?
Dr. Subramaniam Swamy's abhorrence towards Muslims is well understood. What is not understandable is his insensitivity towards the systematic elimination of innocent Srilankan Tamilians whose massacre can not by any stretch of imagination be called as collateral damage.
Yeah what he said is correct. as always stronger beats the weaker. the modern approach is democracy. US,NATO,Europe done a ton of war crimes in Germany ,Japan, Cuba, Middle east a lot of places but so far only few are accused for war crimes but non of them were their leaders. George Bush is a war criminal and he was directly responsible for invading the Afghanistan. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman were responsible for war crimes during second world war they killed a millions of people in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is totally unfair Srilankan government just cleaned out the terrorists from their country and what terrorists have done shield innocents and covered behind them and made Srilankan governmental forces no choice . they sent child soldiers to kill governmental army soldiers and made soldiers no choices.
US/UN should understand the reality of the war instead of beating Srilanka for nothing.
I do understand why Swamy advises Government of India not to back US resolution for an inquiry into human rights violations. Why should anyone be afraid for an inquiry? Government of India should not sacrifice interests of Tamils while concerned about China's influence in Sri Lanka.
Firstly,it is not only war on terror,in fact it is war crime and killing of innocent tamilians brutally and in coldblooded.I have seen whole documentary on Channen-4.It is conspicuous,sri lankhan government and high military ranking officers are involved.Documentary revealed,they(gov)provided no fir zone for tamilians(srilankhan gov called them as human shield,that LTTE was using ) and there were 3lack unarmed people were their,that includes,children,women,old aged people.Then they(military)fired heavy weapons and deprived food and medicines especially surgical.And there are videos,that clearly shows shooting at the back of head of civilians(naked),it is pain to watch and gory,specially kids bodies make any stone heart ted man to weep.small children are abandoned with horrendous injuries,some bodies are beyond recognition.Srilankan government showed falls videos,and spurious documents,to cover their carnage.This is not acceptable in any human society special so called democracy.
The atrocities of LTTE cannot be approved at any cost but how is killing
of a 12 year old boy not a human right violation ? India should support
the notion, one must not refrain from doing what is correct just because
USA is supporting it.
Dr Swamy is to be appreciated for his bold and rational view.Where were these activists and channel 4 when Pirabakaran massacred his enemies and organized the gruesome killing of Rajiv Gandhi.Now all and sundry are joining hands to glorify the history's worst terrorist.It is time that people start distinguishing between support to terrorists and support to Sri Lankan Tamils.
India should not join the U.S. in condemning Sri Lanka for human
rights violations. Any unbiased approach should also take the
monstrous crimes of the LTTE during the Civil War, which must
sometimes have led to excesses by the army. The U.S. must first call
for an international probe, with participation by third world
countries into its own human rights violations in Afghanistan, Iraq
and its inhuman, sadistic treatment of the Guantanamo Bay camp
p.o.w's. Investigation into human rights violations by the U.S.
cannot be selective, and exclude the U.S. from their ambit. India
should firmly resist U.S. armtwisting whether with regard to rights
violations or the purchase of oil from Iran.
well said sir. hats off....
This act shows hatred and that is against the teachings of Buddhism. People of Sri Lanka should remove hatred for Tamils from their hearts so that they can take wise decisions in future. Also the government should treat this as a war crime and take action so that people keep faith in the democracy of the country. Otherwise whats the difference in a Civilized society and Militancy. Whatever may be the cast, creed or religion, everyone has the birth right to live in their homeland.
LTTE still terrorist-outfit,had been killed large number of leading Tamil politics in Sri Lanka.Even leaders of TULF and TNA of Tamils been assinations by LTTE.But USA UK and other west Politicail-democracy kept silent on such crucial issues in Sri lanka.Why? USA and UK want to be under the name of "Human Rights" and "war crime" want to created north-east of Sri Lanka, to be established west pupet state under the LTTE terrorist-anachist.
At last west set out mind to divided Indian state into picies in Indian sub-conitnitial.Ethanic card is golden card for west to de-stabilished and undermine soverginity and terrority intergrity and elected democray of Sri Lanka.This is not isloated issue of sri lanka war crime!This will future approach to other South Asain countries. 150 White domination of Indian continantial had more WAR CRIME THEN ANY OTHER PART OF WORLD.Is there any invegastion by UNO Human Right Orginization?Why not past British Empire killed large number of inncoent Civilians?
Dr. Swamy has visited the alleged war criminal Rajapakse recently and is not a man who believes in principles. This statement shows that not only Dr. Swamy, other Indian officials are corrupt, mockert and lack credibility.
The US, France, Norway and progressive nations want an independent "Human Rights Investigation" that is a democratic process and Dr. Swamy is against it. What a shame on this guy and on the Indian Central government if they do not vote for an independent investigation.
Does this mean that Indian politicians except Selvi Jeyalalithaa do not believe in transparency, objective and independent process to deliver Justice?
Dr. Swamy's statement is confirming LSE's recent report outlining Indian leaders qualitiies including widespread corrupt, mockery and poor leadership.
Is MEA, High Comm. of India in SriLanka is Proper ?
Is it Helping Properly to Indians in SL Prisions ?
Is AHRC, India, SL is Helping Properly to Prisioners ?.
Is Any Reporter / Political Leader is Really interested to Save Lifes and Futures of Indians in S.L. Prisions ?.
Sri Lankan Army was fighting against the worst terrorist in the world who had no qualms about using young kids like his own as human shields or suicide bombers.
Subramaiam Swamy is right on this count.
Mr. Swamy is doing a great job in bringing the congress to the dock
for all the atrocities they have committed.But Sri lanka headed by
Rajapakshe must be severely punished for the war crimes while crushing
the LTTE.India should support the UN resolution against Sri Lanka.As
regards J&K & Manipur we should stop our human rights violations &
make suitable amends for the welfare of the people in the respective
regions.
We should own up to our grave mistakes & strive to set an example by
revoking the draconian laws implemented for our selfish motives. JAI
HIND.
I must say its refreshing to hear a Tamilian who isnt so caught up in "Tamil issues".
Please Email the Editor