Criticism from U.N. agencies and foreign governments has intensified against the Sri Lankan government’s actions in the less than five-square-kilometer territory formerly referred to as the no-fire zone.
Britain, France, Austria and several media channels have accused the government of backtracking on its promise of not using heavy weapons such as artillery and aerial bombardments in the territory, as they have endangered the lives of civilians. There is clear evidence of heavy weaponry causing civilian deaths – hundreds of deaths due to shelling have been reported. On May 12 alone, 49 such deaths were reported.
Government sources have denied such reports, stating that their forces do not use artillery and do not shell civilians. In fact, the government has even tried to attribute the killings to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – the force it is fighting. Its responses lack seriousness.
The government claims that some of the doctors who gave eyewitness details of the deaths to the media were imposters. However, there is clear confirmation that they were genuine medical officers on the government’s payroll.
One minister, when asked about the actual number of people trapped in the five-square-kilometer territory, said it was 5,000 according to the navy commander. But the army commander said it was 10,000 to 15,000. Then the minister said it was 40,000, citing Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband. Figures given by all independent sources vary between 50,000 to 100,000.
While the government was busy denying heavy fighting, a ship carrying foodstuffs and medicines to the area under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross claimed that on Tuesday and Wednesday it could not proceed on its humanitarian mission due to heavy fighting in the area. On Wednesday, it was reported that among those killed was a Red Cross employee. When the British Broadcasting Corporation probed the issue, people outside the area said they had heard sounds of artillery fire while a government spokesman said people must have “imagined” it.
Vani Kumar, age 25, working at a temporary medical facility in the area, in an interview to the Guardian in the United Kingdom described the situation as “hell.” He said, “Most of the time we live in the shelter. There is not enough medical equipment, so it is really difficult to treat people. Food is a problem as well. There is no food at all here, there are no vegetables and no rice, they just eat whatever they can find, that’s all. The hospital is located in a primary school so there is only one room. We just try our best to achieve what we can.”
He further described the incident, “I was in the office working (when the shell hit.) It was definitely a shell. There is no doubt about that. I was about 20 meters away. I was sure it landed inside the hospital, so I went to the shelter. I got the news from the doctors that people were injured and dead. There was constant shelling so I could not leave the shelter.”
The government’s argument is that there is no independent proof of the facts claimed. At the same time it is not allowing any independent local or international media or inquiry teams from the United Nations or elsewhere to enter the area for fact-finding. It has also failed to appoint a credible government inquiry commission to look into the situation. Facts by the government are from its propaganda spokesmen.
The primary responsibility of providing proper information to its own people and the international community lies with the government, which should discharge that obligation through credible authorities. While minor discrepancies can always happen under such circumstances, blatant denials only indicate that the government does not consider it a state responsibility to provide credible information about the situation. Rather, it follows a “catch me if you can” approach.
Hannah Arendt coined the term “banality of evil” when writing about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the chief coordinator of the transportation of Jews to death camps. Arendt reflected for many decades on what made it possible for rational people to construct concentration camps, each person doing various minute functions for the purpose of exterminating the Jews.
The unthinking following of routine like people caught up in the cog, functionaries who carried out their jobs without thinking and exercising their judgment, was what made possible such horrendous acts both in Germany and in Stalin’s Russia, more or less within the same time frame, she found. A similar banality of evil is seen in many other places these days, including Sri Lanka.
For the LTTE, using terror to force the few hundred thousand civilians to retreat with them when attacked by the Sri Lankan army is routine. These people were never considered as human beings with families, feelings, attachments and all things human, but were reduced to a mass compelled to follow the orders of the LTTE. On the other hand, the Sri Lankan government and the military also do not view them as human beings and use terror to force them to leave the LTTE stranglehold.
Even the actual figures of how many people have been in the territory at different times have not been established. When the names of those killed by the LTTE or government forces are not revealed, relatives and friends of these people do not know whether they are alive or dead. A parent of a dead child may not even have the chance to ensure a decent burial. As Arendt mentioned about people in concentration camps, their deaths did not matter, nor did their lives.
Now in Sri Lanka, the same banality of evil as described by Hannah Arendt is being experienced. Under these circumstances, the U.N. Security Council’s official call on May 13 for both parties to respect humanitarian law and save the lives of all people caught as captives in the no-fire zone or in the camps for internally displaced persons, is a ray of hope within a context of terror.
Responsible thinking and exercising sound judgment on the part of all Sri Lankans and the international community is needed to escape entrapment in the mentality of the banality of evil.
Source: The banality of evil in Sri Lanka
Filed under: civil society, civil war, crime, human rights, IDPs, justice, rule of law, Sri Lanka, violations
