We need our Nuremberg

The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps and he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He said, "Get it all on record now — get the films — get the witnesses — because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that “this never happened.”

In the aftermath of the Mullivaikal massacre, Channel 4’s documentary ‘Sri Lanka's Killing Fields’ — goes a long way in meeting his statement. This is now a matter of Sri Lanka’s history. No bastard can deny it. And to that end, it should be included in Sri Lanka's school curriculum for all children to read so the cycle of violence that crippled that country for decades will not be repeated. In addition, Ratko of Sri Lanka — Rajapakse and others should be brought to justice so the reconciliation can begin. 

The parallels between the crimes against humanity in Serbia and Sri Lanka are far greater than the differences. In both cases, the evidence abundantly demonstrates that a small clique of extremists planned and organized the bureaucratized elimination of a group planned at various meetings and based on a well-developed, pseudo-ethnic ideology. 

It was to be expected in Sri Lanka, of course, where denial and geopolitics diverted attention from the well-documented involvement of the Sri Lankan government and the military in the ethnic cleansing of Tamils. To be consistent with human history, as usual, hereto are deniers of atrocities and this one is no exception.

Tamils told the world, contrary to claims; safe zones are anything but safe. We told the world, contrary to claims, that Sri Lanka had no constitution to protect Tamils. We told the world, that Sri Lanka is a murderous, scurrilous state. We told the world, that the Sri Lankan invasion of Tamils’ homeland would not be the beginning of the end of the war, but merely the beginning of the end of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Western governments should not feign surprise when Sri Lankan dictatorial regime that they have tacitly supported committed such reprehensible acts on Tamils and take some blame for Sri Lanka’s unrefined, brutish and phobic behaviour. Mistakenly, the West thought that perhaps Sri Lankan extremism would just go away after the elimination of Tamil Tigers — small-minded bullies like Rajapakse would tire, but the truth is there are not going anywhere.

Unless the West forcefully stands up against state-sponsored violence and injustice against Tamils in Sri Lanka, the provocateurs who like to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation will roam free.

But Tamils must not blindly hope that Channel 4 documentary will yield justice. The road to justice will be a long and arduous one. Anytime now, with clockwork predictability, the useful idiots of Sri Lankan terror apparatus around the globe with overwhelming confidence will deny such a thing ever took place. 

The truth is the very opposite. Deniers have no case whatsoever, as all the evidence makes incontrovertibly clear. Channel 4’s documented stories reveal horrifying tales of killings, torture and abuse; of innocent Tamils. Even if it were ever to be proved that it was done to eliminate terrorism — which has never been the case — the fact of war crimes and crimes against humanity remains indisputable. 

Meanwhile the courage of the Tamil people, during decades of this slow cultural genocide and devastation, represents the highest aspirations of the human spirit. And Sri Lanka’s brutality from the dawn of its independence — torture, mass killings, disappearances and indiscriminate aerial bombardment — is a legacy of man’s inhumanity to man.

Tamils’ emotions, no matter how much we have tried to jimmy them into seeing things another way, will not budge because Sri Lanka’s evil unleashed on Tamils since independence cannot be undone. But by dismissing Sri Lanka’s twisted logic for the poisonous nonsense it is, we can act to ensure it does not metastasize into the marketplace of ideas.

I often reflect back on my father, who was killed in the ancestral town of Point-Pedro, Sri Lanka by a single bullet 30 years ago. Though now as a father with a son of my own, with my family “protected” in Canada, my father’s memory could not be totally submerged, surfacing constantly and playing on an endless loop in my subconscious mind and invading my dreams and my private thoughts. I wish I could tell my father that finally, in my forties, I have the riches of my own family such as I never imagined possible growing up during the war in Sri Lanka. I wish I could tell him about the tear in our family fabric since his demise. But even though he isn’t here for me to share the joy and pain, I feel the warmth of his presence every time something good happens in my life.

It has been nine years since the Mullivaikal massacre, and many other memories have been formed since. But May 18, 2009, stands out as a moment in time so different from the rest of our experiences — leaving a huge void. Tamils have come to understand deaths and their profound significance in our life; we can’t let those moments go unlived. We should give up resenting them and embrace life and resurrect hope — hope for humanity. These are some of the mundane miracles that bring smiles as they happen and hold us close to the root of what living is all about.

With time, many of us will find peace with the past while knowing all that came at the price of so many years of turbulence and the extraction of so many lives — many of them died before they even knew that they were Tamils. In keeping with such collective constant agony, our own forced smiles consist of visible pain, considered a common fate of Tamil survivors of Sri Lankan tyranny — to be in the memories of the massacred.

We know the kind of people who deny the Holocaust. What interest anyone has in denying the suffering of Tamils remains to be discovered. To kill the innocent on a vast scale is horrifying; to deny the horror is simply inhuman. Now, where is our Nuremberg?

Tamils will keep asking this and will ask against all odds and all organized powers. When the time comes, to anyone who will listen, to everyone who won’t listen, and — above all — to us, when no one will listen.