Bruce Haigh’s call for the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to be recalled immediately (here and in Canberra Times “AFP should not be involved in foreign policy affairs”, July 20 p.17) makes successive wholly untrue statements plus a very foolish error which makes it doubtful Haigh ever learnt anything when he was serving in Sri Lanka. In the first he says “Genocide is being carried out against the Tamils in the north”, and in the very next sentence he says “when genocide was being carried out by the white South African government against black South Africans…”. There is no evidence for either claim of genocide.

The white government South African government did seek to protect its apartheid policy from those blacks and whites who were opposed to it, not without some violence, when it resorted to enforcing its draconian anti-terrorist laws against its mainly black opponents. But genocide never, otherwise how come Nelson Mandela has just celebrated his 94th despite being incarcerated for 26 years with ample opportunity for genocide to be meted out to him?

The irony which totally escapes Haigh is that the Tamils sought to establish an exact replica of white South Africa’s Bantustans or black “homelands”, in other words they wanted a Tamil homeland separated from the Singhalese and the rest of the country, so apartheid was and is their goal.

More generally, all civil wars like those in South Africa and Sri Lanka are messy affairs, not to mention the American civil war, as also Damascus this week, which all had and have their atrocities yet led to the defeat of apartheid in each case and hopefully now also in Syria with its minority Alawites on the run after decades of dictatorship against the majority.

To the victor goes the spoils and the right to record or revise history?
It might be argued that war crimes have been committed in all wars, by all sides, but only the defeated have faced justice, with the very occasional exception proving the rule.
During the Boer war, Breaker Merrant was tried and hung for war crimes.
Various advocates want to expunge his record on the grounds he was simply following orders, or the Nuremberg defence?
And we all know how well that played.
I believe a very troubled and divided South Africa, got it right, in the way it sort to expose the truth?
They realised that one can't go back and change history!
The pages of history once accurately recorded can never ever be erased!
But one can expose and forgive it.
I'm not sure we will ever get access to all the relevant facts, with regard to the dreadful violence and dehumanising brutality, that so marked the Sri Lanka conflict, which many peace loving Tamils refused to participate in!
And now just want to relegate the past to where it belongs. In the past, along with the blame for the bloodshed and conflict, and the terror tactics of their fellow Tamils.
If we would have justice and war crime trails, it must also include the many Tamils, who not only made war on Sri Lanka, but their own as well, particularly if they seemed reluctant to participate in the mindless bloodshed, that usually accompanies civil war?
History tells us there are never ever any winners of war, just losers and an endless list of victims!
Blood on his hands?
Possibly?
Will we ever be able to do anything about it?
Probably not?
Only time will eventually heal the self created Sri Lanka wounds, which might be assisted by a South African style truth and justice commission; and, forgiveness for all who have any blood on their hands.
Rhrosty.

Every report shows that it was the Sri Lankan government who committed the vast majority of civilian massacres and BBC has shown two important documentaries detailing the atrocities but here in bubble land Australia we have Rhosty and Tim declare most of that to be untrue.

The Tamils were entitled to independence from the boot of the Sinhala majority or at the very least equality that they were never allowed.

Our behaviour is reprehensible as it is designed only to illegally stop asylum seekers from leaving the hell in Sri Lanka which is well documented - I saw on the Indian Ocean series just what it is like for the Tamils, 140,000 are still in camps three years on, thousands have been disappeared and so on.

And it is illegal for any country under Article 12(2) of the International covenant on civil and political rights to stop any person from seeking asylum but Australia has thugs in 30 nations doing just that and getting god knows how many people killed.

Bear in mind no Sri Lankans have been sent home since 2009 so it's not like we are not aware that it is too dangerous to do so.

I am seriously disappointed that neither the Canberra Times nor Haigh's grossly dishonest post here has been prepared to accept my demonstrations that Haigh is a liar. At no time did any white South African government state that it was going to deliver genocide against ALL black South Africans. What Verwoerd & co said their aim was to herd the blacks into "Bantustans", exactly like what the Tamils in Sri Lanka wanted.

Haigh's claim that the Sri Lankan government was determined to achieve genocide is a gross libel, and if SL's High Commissioner was legally entitled to institute legal proceedings against Haigh, he should but I doubt that is possible