Sri Lanka internment camps compared to Nazi gas chambers

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 June 2011, 18:42 GMT]
“We saw how the Sri Lankan government created protected zones whose only equivalent that I can think of are the gas chambers of the Nazis who duped their victims into believing they were safe and then killed them. Corralled into an ever-shrinking space, civilians were bombed and shelled. Thousands died. Desperate doctors performed amputations on children without anesthetic. Disease, starvation, infection decimated the population,” says an Israeli blogger in an article titled “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields – what genocide actually looks like” written after viewing the Channel-4 documentary on Sri Lanka’s war.

Excerpts from the review article follows: 

 “The program included stomach-turning graphic mobile phone footage of summary executions, hundreds of dead bodies, including those of women who had been raped and then shot.

“It showed hospitals and hospital field units being bombed and shelled.

“You felt the fear, the desperation, the horror, the hopelessness.

“We saw the UN leaving a town to its fate because the government said it could no longer guarantee the safety of its personnel and we saw the people of that town pleading with the UN not to go.

“We saw UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s cursory and rapid visit to what can only be described as a concentration camp, rather like the Red cross visiting Teresienstadt and reporting all is well,” Ray Cook writing in his popular blog says.

Labeling the killings as a clear case of ‘genocide,’ Cook continues, “And it wasn’t just the Sri Lankan army who were guilty. The Tamil Tigers are by no means innocent. They prevented their own people from escaping so they could use them as human shields, killing many who dared to run for their life.

“The program left no doubt that both sides were guilty of serious war crimes, but the Sri Lankan government, in its attempt to end the decades long conflict with the Tamils, embarked on a policy of genocide. Any Tamil was guilty by association. There was no mercy. The army was out of control and rampant.

“The Sri Lankan government employed deceit to cover up its crimes; it did not allow journalists to enter the war zone, it tried to convince the world that a ‘No-Fly Zone’ had been created to protect civilians when its purpose was clearly the opposite. It sought to maximize casualties hiding behind the excuse that the Tigers were using these zones to fire at the army.

“It deliberately targeted hospitals to such a blatant degree that the Tamils pleased with the Red Cross not to pass the army the co-ordinates of their field hospitals because evidence was clear that when they did so, a few hours later, they were shelled.”

External Links:

Ray Cook:

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields – what genocide actually looks like