A noted photographer and former UN staffer Benjamin Dix told reporters at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India that The atrocities committed against the Tamil during the three-decade-long civil war in Sri Lanka amounted to ethnic cleansing.
Highlights from his interview:
Even today a huge drive is underway to change the demography of the Tamil-dominated region.
“The Sri Lankan Army does not believe that they committed atrocities. It is a propaganda that they liberated Tamils from the Tamil leadership. It was not a liberation, but destruction of the Tamil community.”
“The atrocities continue in terms of removing the Tamil history, or changing names or allowing the Lankan Army to run hotels and tourism in the north. There is still a sense of victory over the Tamils in the north,” Dix said. “There is still a huge drive to change the demography of north Sri Lanka, but I find the atmosphere reasonably relaxed today than what it was in the past,” he said.
The UNHRC has demanded accountability mechanisms to probe the rights abuses blamed on both the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Lankan government forces. Sri Lanka is averse to setting up of a hybrid court with local and foreign judges to investigate the alleged war crimes committed by the government troops and the LTTE in the last phase of the conflict which ended in 2009. According to the government figures, around 20,000 people have gone missing in the island nation due to various conflicts. The LTTE, which led the war for a separate Tamil homeland, was finally crushed by the Lankan military in 2009 with the death of its supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Content source credit: http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/atrocities-against-lankan-tamils-amounted-to-ethnic-cleansing/1032657/
Image source credit: Google Images.