The situation in Sri Lanka is another bit of evidence that separation of state and religion is necessary for a decent society whether in Australia or elsewhere. The Buddhist monks apparently used the Sri Lanka government to eliminate Hindu and Muslim religious rivals.

Except for the minor typing error that Muslims made up much of LTTE what Graham Cooke listed is the true account of what has been happening in Sri Lanka. LTTE led Tamils and fought for separation as all the peaceful measures to arrive at a peaceful and fair solution to the ethnic problem was met with brutal force by the successive governments. Unless there was pressure from UN HRC the president would not have moved away from his insistence of 'zero' civilian casualty and carried out his agenda of marginalising the ethnic minorities. The internally displaced people are languishing in either poorly equiped tents, demolished huts and with relatives or friends. The heavy presence of mono-ethnic military in Tamil speaking areas chock the local people.

"..minority Muslims who made up much of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam"

It's good that the author exposes his complete ignorance on the topic in the first few lines. Saves us wasting time reading the whole thing.

I have it from a former LTTE combatant that Muslims made up around 30 per cent of LTTE fighters, Hindus around 60 per cent and Christians 10 per cent. I did not at any stage suggest that Muslims made up a majority of Tamil Tiger combatants.

Mr. Graham Cooke covers widely all the aspects of current situation in the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka. However,

It is NOT true that Sri Lanka is conceding any ground to the UN. Sri Lanka bought more than enough time from the UN Secretary General from the beginning through the alleged marital connections and the religious affliations.

For the past 39 months since the conflict ended, the Eastern Province has substantially been colonised such that the Tamils will have less representation there.

New Buddhist temples built in the North are marketed to China and Japan for more aid (no regard to any UN principles)

The paramilitary groups and hooligans are well looked after by the Defense Secretary to keep the Tamils shut.
The Embassies and foreign missions are filled with alleged war criminals for immunity and the work is now on to get around the odd Senators and MPs.



The comments made by the UN representatives (Gordon Weissm, Benjamin Dix) before leaving the conflict zone to be noted:

UN staffer Benjamine Dix was choking with emotion when he shared his feelings with C4 about the UN leaving. “For me that was personally the worst moment of my life. It seemed like their greatest hour of need; there was an army sitting at their door step waiting to take the town and we drove out; that was a very difficult time for us, a real sense of abandonment of these people,” he said, pointing particularly to one girl in the crowd amidst waving hands.

On 15th Sept 2008 when news that the international staff were leaving spread, a crowd had gathered, “please don’t leave, they cried, pleading not to go, I ran my camera along the waving hands and there was one girl at the end she wasn’t shouting or chanting but there was real sadness in her face – I was quite emotional - her face captured the real emotion at that point. troops to protect a field hospital were used to deliberately target the hospital. .

"I have it from a former LTTE combatant"

LOL. Oh well if a "former terrorist" told you then it must be so. Did you happen to ask him what these "30%" were up to when the LTTE carried out the cleansing of the entire Muslim population of the north? Maybe a few of them joined in at Kattankudy and popped a few grenades into the mosque there as well.
Such top class journalism