As Sri Lanka celebrates the end of a 26 year civil war, the hidden costs and high casualties become public despite the government´s effort to keep them hidden.
Was Mahinda Rajapaska, the president of Sri Lanka being sarcastic when he said that Tamil Tigers were defeated without causing civilian casualties or did he really expect no one to have access to the many hospitals guarded by soldiers and police were thousands of casualties are being hidden away from public view?
Hiding the true scale of the disaster form the public eye, fabricating figures, promoting a don´t talk policy and barring access to the hospitals is surely not going to improve the conditions of a population that have witnessed almost three decades of bloody civil war.
The methods by which the 26 year insurgency was finally defeated are still questionable. Behind the celebrations of victory over the Tamil Tigers lies the hidden human cost of Sri Lanka’s final unslaught. Sri Lanka pursued a military offensive up until the end, killing thousands of civilians who were on the way. According to the unofficial UN figures, more than 8000 civilians were killed in the last four months of the war and more than 17000 wounded.
It can be argued however that the rebels themselves defined the kind of war they would fight by using suicide bombings and often holding civilians as human shields, leaving the government with few other alternatives if any at all.
Hiding the consequences is not helping
But now that the Tamil Tiger rebels have been defeated and the civil conflict has come to a brutal end, what is the reason for bringing more pain to the civilians caught in Tamil territory?
The government has rejected UN calls to allow aid agencies immediate access to Tamil refugee camps under the excuse that the authorities first had to identify any remaining rebel fighters in the camps.
The truth is that they dont want the world to see the magnitude of the disaster and the many children who suffered horrendously and disproportinatley.
Is it vanity, pride, or fear? Whatever it is stopping Sri Lanka´s government from receiving aid will only increase the already high death toll. Health workers and human rights activists say that the country´s medical services can´t handle the huge numbers of children that need treatment.
Thousands of civilians have sustained burn, blast and bullet wounds, many require surgery, even amputation.
But the government is determined to follow a “keep it under wraps” policy. Patients or relatives at hospitals are not allowed to be interviewed without the permission of the hospital director.
Unfortunately, I fear this is one of the many cases where the UN can go as far as to observe, pressure and condemn the war strategies and the treatment given to injured civilians. But as it is the rule for most developing countries, it will remain as a mere condemnation and civilians will keep on suffering.
Anyway, why should the rest of the world care of what happens in Sri Lanka? No oil, no terrorist threaten, no concern…
