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The Forum > Article Comments > Sri Lanka guilty > Comments

Sri Lanka guilty : Comments

By Bruce Haigh, published 6/1/2014

A tribunal of eleven eminent judges has unanimously found the Sri Lankan Government guilty of the crime of genocide against ethnic Tamil people.

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Well, that's nice Bruce.

But since we in Australia have not yet had to deal with a dangerous minority using terrorism to carve out a new sovereign nation from our territory, we can hardly blame them Sri Lankans using whatever it takes to beat the enemy, can we? If they had played fair while their enemy played dirty, they would have lost.

As Churchill once quipped about another matter where armchair generals used hindsight to judge the decisions of a Japanese admiral. "Only those who have been in his position can judge him."

Bruce appears to be another one who lives by the motto that minorities are always right.
Posted by LEGO, Monday, 6 January 2014 8:49:39 AM
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“The Tribunal requested that states able to do so should take Tamil asylum seekers as refugees.”

Now there’s a surprise. Let’s hope Australia ignores the request and does not import these rebels who couldn’t get along with fellow Tamils on the sub-continent, fled to Sri Lanka where they can’t get along with the majority there, and probably would start causing trouble anywhere they went.

Haigh’s describing of judges as “eminent” is a common ploy to try to convince us that judges are not human like the rest of us and don’t make mistakes. We have the same “eminent’ judges here who are more political activists than they are judges of the law.
Posted by NeverTrustPoliticians, Monday, 6 January 2014 9:45:21 AM
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Bruce, thank you for that article. I do not expect to see a similar report in the msm.

If your assumption about the AHC in Colombo is correct, and on balance I think that it is, then we have yet another instance of Australia wilfully disregarding its international obligations for reasons of base political advantage. Nothing that Abbott, Bishop or Morrison have said since the election would encourage the belief that Australia understands, let alone implements, its obligations under the Convention on the Treatment of Refugees.

It is not just the sending of boats that signals Australia's support for the Sri Lankan regime. Returning refugees in breach of our international obligations is a very clear signal. That they are being returned to an uncertain future and likely death appears not to worry the government.

There are always some, such as the aptly named Lego in his comment above, who appear to think there is noting wrong with genocidal practices such as found by the Tribunal. One trembles to think what might happen if he and his fellow neanderthals ever face a genuine security threat here.
Posted by James O'Neill, Monday, 6 January 2014 9:50:34 AM
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Thanks and well said James.
Posted by Bruce Haigh, Monday, 6 January 2014 10:33:41 AM
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That Australia supports the continuing genocide of the ruling junta in Sri Lanka comes as no surprise to me.

After all, they support the genocide by the Israelis in what used to be Palestine and they also support the genocide carried out by the United States since WW2 which has resulted in the deaths of millions.

Australia appears to have no enduring values whatsoever. It is a pawn nation controlled by powerful others!
Posted by David G, Monday, 6 January 2014 11:41:26 AM
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Australia by all thoughts is by the chess it plays. One small island at the bottom of a collective.....this is true....but remember Australia, you hold all the cards for the global future and some. Why you might ask....its simple...look at the rest of the world...check-mate.

Now that doesn't sound very neutral, but the north is by facts, losing the plot.

Smaller and smarter....that's why we are, and that's why their not.

Planet3
Posted by PLANET3, Monday, 6 January 2014 1:53:48 PM
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David, there's no such thing as "genocide" but don't worry, we've all fallen for that old chestnut.
Genocide is a bogus term, it's a word made up by a Jewish academic named Raphael Lemkin in support of the West's post 1945 WW2 narrative of a mythology so exceptional and so utterly out of character for human beings that a new concept was needed to describe it.
In fat David the Palestinian population has nearly tripled since 1948,there are twice as many Rwandans today as there were in 1995 and since 1963 the Sri Lankan Tamil population has also doubled.
It's funny how these "genocides" keep happening to populations with a sustained growth rate of around 2.5.
David Irving made up a useful word to describe "other losses" in war and civil strife "Innocenticide", the deaths of innocent people or genuine non combatants, that's what we're dealing with here, not the destruction of a people in whole or in part based on their perceived identity or some other group characteristic, that's never happened and never will, it's not how the world and human nature work.
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Monday, 6 January 2014 2:02:31 PM
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Now ask the tribunal to judge if George Bush and Obama are guilty of the crimes of genocide against Iraq and Afghanistan people and the innocent people killed by drones in a lot of countries.
Posted by Philip S, Monday, 6 January 2014 2:49:13 PM
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The Sri Lankan government is firmly entrenched within the Washington consensus - along with many other regimes with genocidal track records and mass human rights violations. The rulings of this tribunal will have about as much impact on the Sri Lankan government as a parking fine.

However, in the infinitesimally unlikely event that Sri Lankan politics were ever to move slightly to the left and took an independent stance on international relations, then the speed with which its government would be officially deemed a brutal, genocidal and dictatorial regime and slapped with a whole bunch of economic sanctions, blockades, humanitarian interventions, no-fly zones, regime changes, mysteriously well-funded 'people's revolutions' - the usual drill - is enough to make the head spin.
Posted by Killarney, Monday, 6 January 2014 10:37:00 PM
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Thank you Jay of Melbourne... innocentocide is a good term. Davig G. I concur with your sentiments. The greatest innocentocidists of all time are the UK and its offspring, the USA. assisted by Australia. A few facts here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37306.htm
Posted by ybgirp, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 6:16:33 AM
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Bruce is on his favourite hobby horse, again!

<<A tribunal of eleven eminent judges has unanimously found the Sri Lankan Government guilty of the crime of genocide against ethnic Tamil people>>

Yes, and I'd dare say if given half a chance the same body of eminent persons would make a similar finding against Oz --probably already has done so --it being scheduled to be revealed in an up coming John Pilger post!

There are two inconvenient facts overlooked by Bruce

1)If you are genuinely seeking asylum, why would you by-pass Tamil Nadu in Southern India and sail to Oz?

2) Why at a time when the UN has seen fit to repatriate Tamils (from all over the world) to Sri Lanka are the usual suspects calling for Oz to open our doors and rubber stamp all illegal arrivees?
Posted by SPQR, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 6:28:23 AM
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En guarde James O'Neill.

If the Sri Lankan government used "genocide" to win the civil war, how come all of the Tamils are not dead? Both Tamil terrorists and Sri Lankan government forces targeted each others civilian populations yet your crocodile tears over "genocide" are directed only towards the government of Sri Lanka.

Do you really think that every racial, religious, and ethnic group within a multicultural country has a perfect right to use terrorism to create a separate monocultural state with themselves on top? If you do, then you have just given the perfect reason why multiculting any nation is utterly stupid, because it will eventually lead to civil war through population birth rate differentials and ethnic enclaves demanding self determination.

It may have been morally wrong and unconstitutional for Abraham Lincoln to refuse to allow the rebel South of the USA to secede from the Union, but I think that most Americans today are glad that he did it. To achieve his goal of holding the USA together, Lincoln broke "Human Rights" by suspending habeas corpus. And when the South publicised that it was going to execute every captured black US soldier it had, Lincoln informed the South that for every black soldier the South executed, he would have a captured Southern soldier executed. The South backed down. Lincoln used the threat of retaliatory war crimes to prevent war crimes.

When faced with an insurrection by a minority of people who use terrorism to get what they want, your options are very limited. You can just give up and let them have their way, which will only encourage other disaffected minorities to do the same thing. You can drive them out of your country. You can engage them in protracted civil war, which over time is going to see a lot more people killed than if you had gone in hard in the first place. You can kill the men, rape the women, and force the survivors to accept your religion, which seems to work for the Muslims.

Which method do you think is best?
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 6:50:48 AM
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So what I understand from reading about this "peoples tribunal" is that it is a group of retired old activists that have got together for a few days, listened to a few sob stories and pronounced a pre determined verdict that Sri Lanka is guilty of war crimes.

I am sure that no one takes this collection of old farts seriously, least of all Sri Lanka.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 12:49:21 PM
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Bruce,

The tribunal has neglected to mention the role of China. It was the Chinese government's decision towards the end of the conflict to supply the Sri Lankan government with military hardware (including heavy weapons) that help turn the protracted civil conflict into a decisive victory for the Sri Lankan government.

At least in the latter years the civil conflict may have had more to do with regional tensions between India and China than anyone else.
Posted by Farquhar, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 4:16:38 PM
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