Unpardonable, barbaric act!
21 Feb 2013 11:10 PM GMT
If the pictures that have recently surfaced are anything to go by, the Sri Lankan army stands implicated in one of the worst war crimes ever, that of a cold-blooded execution of a child in the name of waging war against the LTTE separatists. Photos from a new documentary film, No Fire Zone by a British filmmaker Callum Macrae, chalking Sri Lanka’s war crimes in its effort to repress the 37-year-long movement by the ethnic minority Tamilians in the state, hint towards a heinous crime being committed by the Lankan armed forces, that of shooting the slain LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran’s son 12-year-old son from close range. According to Macrae, analysis of the metadata retrived from the digital photographs, reveal that two hours before the boy, Balachandran Prabhakaran, was killed on 19 may 2009, allegedly because he came in the middle of a crossfire between the army and the LTTE rebels according to the official position maintained by Colombo, he was hale and hearty inside a bunker and was seen eating chocolates. Two hours later, his lifeless body was pictured lying on the ground with five bullet wounds in his chest. Macrae, along with the human rights organisations around the world, cite these pictures (stills from the video-footage taken by the same recorder) as proofs that the boy was in indeed murdered in a calculated manner by the army, in an act of reprehensible vendetta against the LTTE forces.
An international probe is absolutely mandatory, not only to get to the bottom of the issue, but also to establish the extent of malpractices and impunities prevalent in the army in war zones. The fact that the bodies of Prabhakaran’s wife and daughter were never found, and that of his son was discovered after having been inflicted with such inhuman cruelty, only lends credence to the UN report of November 2012, which documents extensive suffering and mass killings bordering on almost 40,000 ethnic minority Tamil civilians during the final stages of the struggle. The grim contingencies of the protracted conflict aside, a though examination of the matter at hand must be undertaken, and if the photographs are proven to be genuine, then the Sri Lankan president must be tried for perpetrating war crimes.
An international probe is absolutely mandatory, not only to get to the bottom of the issue, but also to establish the extent of malpractices and impunities prevalent in the army in war zones. The fact that the bodies of Prabhakaran’s wife and daughter were never found, and that of his son was discovered after having been inflicted with such inhuman cruelty, only lends credence to the UN report of November 2012, which documents extensive suffering and mass killings bordering on almost 40,000 ethnic minority Tamil civilians during the final stages of the struggle. The grim contingencies of the protracted conflict aside, a though examination of the matter at hand must be undertaken, and if the photographs are proven to be genuine, then the Sri Lankan president must be tried for perpetrating war crimes.
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