Introducing “Numbers Game” – A Detailed Study of the Last Stages of Eelam War IV

Michael Roberts …. See

  OR
http://www.margasrilanka.org/
[right panel at top—then click]

   Pic from Tamilnet, 1 May 2009  from Tamilnet, 5 May 2009, in Third NFZ  in the extreme south of the final pocket of LTTEresistance

I. PREAMBLE

Presented here is an “Introduction” and pointer to a significant visual and textual study entitled “Numbers Game: The Politics of Retributive Justice,” which scrutinizes both the data and other studies of what happened during the last five months of Eelam War IV. This was the period when a large body of people, almost exclusively Tamil in lineage, was corralled into an increasingly shrinking area by virtue of a strategic/tactical decision by the LTTE leadership. The Tamil Tigers who were now facing imminent defeat, were hoping to use the human mass to engineer a humanitarian catastrophe, thus forcing the international community to act by halting the conflict. This comprehensive survey has been assembled by a collective, the “Independent Diaspora Analysis Group.” The key hand is a person who wishes to remain anonymous and can be called “Citizen Silva.” Born to Sinhalese parents, raised and educated in the West, he has spent the entirety of his life outside the island. This foreign setting has enabled him to build close personal links with the island’s other ethnic diaspora groups, thus shielding him from the communalistic shadows that overwhelm many of his compatriots back home. As the analysis of the satellite imagery reveals, his engineering background allows him to bring to the examination a range of technical skills not usually associated with the average empirical scientist.

The Original Cave Man at PUNYELROO in Outback Australia

  … captured by Alan Marriage

The Use of Cluster Bombs in Sri Lanka: Fiction rather than Fact

Citizen Silva, 1 May 2012,whose original title  runs “The Use of Cluster Bombs in Sri Lanka: Fiction or Fiction” — with the editorial change anticipating his conclusion. **
The recent revelation about the alleged discovery of sub-munitions in the Wanni East has re-opened the debate about the use of Cluster Bombs in the Sri Lankan Conflict. The story initially broke as follows on April 28, 2012 (Title: UN finds Cluster Bombs in Sri Lanka ): “The Associated Press obtained a copy Thursday of an email written by a U.N. land mine expert that said unexploded cluster bomblets were discovered in the Puthukudiyiruppu area of northern Sri Lanka, where a boy was killed last month and his sister injured as they tried to pry apart an explosive device they had found to sell for scrap metal. The email was written by Allan Poston, the technical adviser for the U.N. Development Program’s mine action group in Sri Lanka. “After reviewing additional photographs from the investigation teams, I have determined that there are cluster sub-munitions in the area where the children were collecting scrap metal and in the house where the accident occurred. This is the first time that there has been confirmed unexploded sub-munitions found in Sri Lanka”, the email said. RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press

Tamil Protest being mounted near MCG with TRC support

Adam Shand, in The Australian, 26 December 2012, with a different title “Tamils take their cause to the Boxing Day Test”

THE Sri Lankan cricket team faces up to 1000 protesters at Melbourne’s Boxing Day Test today amid claims by organisers that Australia had helped sanitise Sri Lanka’s brutal repression of its Tamil minority to stop the flow of asylum-seekers before next year’s federal election. One of the organisers, cricket writer Trevor Grant, said the Tamil Refugee Council would stage a noisy but peaceful demonstration outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground to send the message that the Gillard government was supporting the genocide of Tamils for its own political ends.

Sri Lanka’s willingness to use its navy to prevent asylum-seekers leaving the island nation by boat was a key factor in Australia’s support for the regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Mr Grant said. “The Gillard government needs to take a tough stance on asylum-seekers to the next federal election. They need the Sri Lankan government to stop the boats so Australia is prepared to turn a blind eye to the genocide of the Tamils,” he said. Mr Grant said protesters wanted a boycott of Sri Lanka until Mr Rajapaksa agrees to UN demands for an independent inquiry into war crimes and his regime ends the persecution of Tamils.

The UN hacks off its own toes

Kath Noble, courtesy of the Island, 21 November 2012, where the title is “The UN’s plan for making white people feel better”

Last week I felt like I had been transported back in time. We were back in those awful first six months of 2009, when I was by turns horrified at the plight of the people caught up in the fighting in the Vanni and disgusted with the way in which the international community was responding.

Of course, we all wanted to stop the war. I hate violence. But as I argued then and continue to believe, at that point, the only way the war was going to stop was with the defeat of the LTTE. Prabhakaran would not give up on Eelam. He was going to continue his vicious campaign against the Sri Lankan state and all its communities until he was caught or killed. Our task, therefore, was to minimise the damage. We had to try to ensure that it was done with as little death and destruction as possible.

The Fake Memoirist’s Survival Guide

 Christopher Beam  on “How to embellish your life story without getting caught” ….  

……… SEE
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2008/03/the_fake_memoirists_survival_guide.html

See JUDY MARIAMPILLAI IN
http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2012/09/21/unfolded-truth-about-the-tamil-tigress-book-written-by-niromi-de-soyza-sri-lankan-born

The Fair Niromi

Especially recommended for DBS Jeyaraj, Nikki Barraclough, Shanika Sriyananda and all those who have swallowed the performance of Niromi de Soyza in presenting her so-called autobiographical memoir, Tamil Tigress, wth the assistance of Allen & Unwin [of Demidenko fame]. A careful study will probably indicate, as Arun Ambalavanar suggests, that she has at times leaned on the work of Narayan Swamy — thereby repeating  the same little mistakes that he made in relating a few incidents [mistakes that are inevitable in relating a complex story from afar, but are less likely if one is a bystander or participant in the events]

. The real Niromi , namely, Subothini Mariatta Anandarajah

SEE ** Judy Mariampillai in
http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2012/09/21/unfolded-truth-about-the-tamil-tigress-book-written-by-niromi-de-soyza-sri-lankan-born/

** Michael Roberts: “Clouds of Deception: Jeyaraj anoints and cloaks Niromi Tigress,” in www.groundviews.org

** Michael Roberts: “Niromi de Soysa’s Path of Redemption with Deception? or Both?” 27 October 2011,
http://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/niromi-de-soysa%E2%80%99s-path-of-redemption-with-deception-or-both/

Fitting Artificial Limbs for the IDPs and ex-Tigers, July 2009 to March 2010 — FINS at the frontline

Susiri Weerasekera … a report penned on 21 August 2011 for the benefit of FINS donors, a report that bore a different title; and reproduced here at my insistence with some minor editorial insertions and with emphasis [highlighting in colour] added as my prerogative. Web Editor.

Sudesh of the FINS at work in an IDP camp

The Colombo Friend In Need Society, the leading artificial limb suppliers in the country since 1985, is situated by the Beira Lake at 171 Sir James Peiris Mawatha. The society supplies about 70 limbs per month, having in its 26-year period of performance served 19,800 amputees all over the country between 1985 and 2011. All prostheses are low cost and of appropriate technology, a combination of a rubber foot piece aluminium shank and, often, a plastic socket. These artificial limbs are all issued free supported by donations from individuals and groups and is completely independent of single large donors from any country. We are completely independent in our decisions.

With a well-run mobile camp unit, Colombo FINS had served 40 plus outstation camps by 2009.  We were the only organisation with adequate infrastrucure to run mobile camps.  We promptly took up the invitation by the Ministry of Health, in their letter of June 6^th 2009,  soon after the war, to help the IDP amputees. As the war ceased on 19^th May 2009, our compatriot doctors were ‘ informed’– wrongly as it turned out to be — that there were thousands and thousands of fresh amputees as a result of the escalated war in the last few months with large numbers of deaths (quote Dr. Panagamuwa of U.K.).

Burning with Zealotry

Tony Allen-Mills, courtesy of The Sunday Times and The Australian

HE thought he was going to play Samson, the biblical strongman who lost his locks to Delilah. Instead Tim Dax, an exotically tattooed actor struggling at the seamier margins of Hollywood, found himself carrying a spear on a low-budget film called Desert Warrior. The only desert in sight was painted on a warehouse wall in central Los Angeles.  At the time neither the plot nor his character made much sense to Dax. Yet he posed where he was told for $US75 a day and assumed the film, like most of his other acting credits, would swiftly disappear on to remaindered video shelves.

Alex Kuhendrarajah, where are you? Lessons to be learnt by Australian media

Michael Roberts, courtesy of Eurasia Review, 19 August 2012

Alex! Alex! Where art thou? We need you. Australia needs you. As a tale of “high drama” and alleged “piracy” surrounds the Wallenius Wilhelmsen and its detour to unload 67 male asylum-seekers at Christmas Island[i] hits the Australian headlines your experience and grandstanding would be beneficial to all sides. RECALL how you bestrode the Australian media waves during the last quarter of the year 2009 after the Jaya Lastari, with its 256 Tamil asylum seekers, was impounded at Merak off Java and all of you attempted to blackmail your way to Australia! Now, in August 2012 as another clutch of asylum-seekersrescued by the Wallenius Wilhelmsen has “threatened to harm themselves” and secured a passage to Christmas Island, thereby raising Scott Morrison’s ire (on behalf of the Liberal Party and Australia at large),[ii] your inside knowledge would be pretty handy.

Deported from Britain: back to ‘duress’ or ordinariness in Sri Lanka?

Michael Roberts, 11 August 2012 .. This essay supercedes all other versions of this article in other sites.

When the crisis story of Dayan Anthony’s deportation to Sri Lanka by the Australian federal authorities hit the headlines in late July the so-called FACTS retailed by the reporters of the Australian and Ian Rintoul, as spokesman for the Refugee Action Coalition, were riddled with discrepancies.[i]They also believed his relatives’ claim that Anthony had been tortured when originally arrested in 2009.[ii]Rintoul added that “other Sri Lankans who have been forcibly sent back to Sri Lanka have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned” (Amanda Hodge & Stuart Rintoul 2012).

The Australian the media men and women seemed unaware that (a) a number of Tamil refugees who had been in southern India for decades had been returning to Sri Lanka in the last three years;[iii]and (b) that Britain had deported a considerable number between 2009 and 2011, normally using chartered planes for the purpose. Such a horrendous lapse highlights the insular world in which the majority of Australian journalists seem to repose.