India accused of complicity in deaths of Sri Lankan Tamils
June 01 2009 – Times Online
India was accused yesterday of complicity in the killing of an estimated 20,000 civilians in the last stages of Sri Lanka’s 26-year war against the Tamil Tigers.
Major-General Ashok Mehta, a former commander of Indian peacekeeping forces in Sri Lanka, said that India’s role was “distressing and disturbing”. Two international human rights groups said that India had failed to do enough to protect civilian lives.
“We were complicit in this last phase of the offensive when a great number of civilians were killed,” General Mehta, who is now retired, told The Times. “Having taken a decision to go along with the campaign, we went along with it all the way and ignored what was happening on the ground.”
General Mehta said that the Indian Government, led by the Congress Party, wanted to counterbalance China and Pakistan, its main regional rivals, which had each increased arms sales to Sri Lanka in the past few years. It also wanted to avenge the Tigers’ assassination in 1991 of Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister and late husband of Sonia Gandhi, the current Congress leader, he said.
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Blood on our hands – Former Indian Diplomat
May 19 2009 – Rediff ( M K Bhadrakumar, former Indian diplomat who served in Sri Lanka in the
1980s)
As the curtain comes down and we leave the theatre, the spectacle continues to haunt us. We feel a deep unease and can’t quite figure out the reason. Something rankles somewhere. And then we realise we have blood on our hands.
Not only our hands, but our whole body and deeper down, our conscience — what remains of it after the mundane battles of our day-to-day life is also dripping with blood.
Prabhakaran’s blood. No, it is not only Prabhakaran’s, but also of 70,000 Sri Lankan Tamils who have perished in the unspeakable violence through the past quarter century.
All the pujas we may perform to our favourite Lord Ganesh [ Images ] each morning and evening religiously before we march ahead in our life from success to success cannot wash away the guilt we are bearing — the curse of the 70,000 dead souls.
Our children and grandchildren will surely inherit the great curse. Oh, God, what a bitter legacy!
A long time ago, we created Prabhakaran. We picked him up as an urchin from nowhere. What we found charming about him was that he was so thoroughly apolitical — almost innocent about politics. He was a simpleton in many ways, who had a passion for weapons and the military regimen. He suited our needs perfectly.
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