Members of Sinhala Nation

One of the issues raised at the 19^th Geneva session in regard to Sri Lanka is the question of SL ArmyƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s shelling the NO FIRE ZONE (NFZ) during the last few weeks or days before the conclusion of the LTTE terrorism. LetƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s assume for the sake argument that the SL Army actually did shell the said NFZ. The declared area of the NFZ was about 25 sq kms. When it was declared by the GOSL, the civilians as well as all the LTTE terrorists including their leader went into the NFZ and they were there throughout the period in question.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Now the question is how come none of them including about 12000 LTTE fighters that surrendered at the end survived the so-called shelling. Had the SL Army knew the exact location of the LTTE Leader, then in order to conclude the matter speedily, the Army would have shelled relentlessly that location. But the fact that he and his family survived until the last date means they strangely escaped the so-called shelling.

Now the next question is why the SL Army wanted to shell only the civilians when the primary target was not precisely located. Were they hoping for a lucky hit like people hope for a lottery win. Did the SL Army then had that much shells to waste for months until the luck hit arrives?

When artillery shells are landed, somebody in the vicinity could see roughly the direction of fire and the military is far more experience in that regard. But since recently, the Army as well as the LTTE did not rely on that traditional method, but used field radars to locate the direction of fire and to calculate the angle & the distance in which the shells are fired.

The NFZ was declared by the GOSL exclusively for the civilian use. Therefore, the LTTE leader and his carders going into the NFZ was the first violation of war ethics. Under such circumstances, when shells are coming from the NFZ, what was the SL Army supposed to do? Sit back and say to them; well it has come from the NFZ, so we cannot fire? The SL Army had to fire back when fired at them whether it is from the FZ or from the NFZ. Therefore, what has happened was that the LTTE located their big guns where the civilians were living and not in the area where the LTTE leader and his family was living. Therefore, that was the second violation of war ethics by the LTTE and a pathetic low-level military tactic.

If one could trace back to Newspapers at that time, there were suggestions to (and strangely from the UNP) to use big guns in order to conclude the matter. But the SL Army refused. Had the Army fired the direction in which the LTTE shells were arriving then it was perfectly a legitimate action. There was a possibility that the civilians were trained and were managing the big guns or it could be that LTTE carders themselves fired first and got into pickup trucks and got away from the guns before the return fire from the Army.

During the WWII, the US Air Force dropped two Atomic bombs solely to save the lives of the US soldiers. Some American scientists were against using them on non-military targets but advised the US Government to drop them into nearby jungles to frighten the then Japanese government. But the military scientists wanted a virgin area to test the effect of nuclear radiation on humans.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ The effect of nuclear radiation were known by then because about 300 scientists, engineers, technicians at the Max Planck institution in Germany succumbed to agonizing deaths with cancer after experimenting with X- Rays. Therefore, the US GovernmentƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s decision to drop the A – Bombs on Japanese civilians was the cruelest decision ever made by a legitimate government.

It was a pre ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”meditated war crime. Going by that experience, what was wrong with SL ArmyƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s firing in the direction in which shells were arriving? After all, the military had to protect the lives of its Sinhala soldiers. During the WWII, the US population was about 200 million. Today the total population of Sinhalese in the whole world is about 15 million. Therefore, the lives of a Sinhala solider is far more important than that of an American soldier, any terrorist or a member of a civilian population that supplied carders to the terrorists.ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚