Shadow Minister;
You forgot to mention that the majority of Sri Lankan refugees and asylum seekers coming to Australia are actually Tamil Tiger and their supporters too scared to face up to their treason's.

Foxy,

I am not siding with Russia, India or China, simply pointing out that without their support and the Sri Lankan support the inquiry is simply not going to happen. This is Realpolitik.

apparently you lack the intellectual horsepower to comprehend what I said and are ignorant of what actual comprises a war crime. I would recommend that you apprise yourself of the geneva convention and what is and isn't a human rights violation. Here's a news flash. War is nasty and people get hurt. Firing on an enemy area that contains civilians is not a crime, and the estimates of casualties was less than 7000 not 40 000 caused by both sides not just the government, compared to Rudd and Juliar killing nearly 2000.

Similarly the information to the commanders on a battlefield is sketchy at best, and any inquiry that wants to pick through the decisions made with 20/20 hindsight is simply a fishing expedition. If there are specific allegations of soldiers executing captured civilians then these should be raised as individual instances.

The real question is what is happening now. Are people still being shot at, or can Tamils go on with their lives safely. That is what determines whether a refugee is genuine, not what happened 5 years ago.

Spot-on Shadow Minister --in *ALL* your assessments.

Here are a few inconvenient facts the illegal immigration spruikers don't want to face up to:

<< more than 440,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have returned to the [Sri Lanka's] north, three years after government forces declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who had been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland for more than 25 years.>>

<<Since the end of the civil war, more than 5,000 Sri Lankans have returned to the island nation under a UNHCR-facilitated voluntary repatriation scheme. Most were from refugee camps in Tamil Nadu[India]>>

[Source for the above:humanitarian news and analysis -a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs]

Another little fib which these spruikers fed us much earlier in the piece was that India --COULDN'T & WOULDNT --ACCEPT TAMIL REFUGEES SINCE IT WASNT A MEMBER OF THE CONVENTION.

Dear Foxy,

You just don't seem to get the logic put forward by SM, Banjo, Chris and SPQR. It is the logic of true humanitarians.

You see if you apply it to history you get to see things far more clearly and enables you to sharply delineate the dictator from the humanitarian.

Take Saddam for instance. All those lefty agitators who whinged about the gassing of the Kurds needed to realise this was the act of a caring man. These were terrorists plain and simple, or in Chris' words treasonous. Sure there were women and babies included in the Kurdish villages, but did Saddam have any way of targeting just the fighters? No. To paraphrase Shadow Minister 'Gassing an enemy that is in civilian areas is not a crime', or as Chris says Saddam 'had the right to deal with them however he chose' and remember what happened internally was 'none of our business'.

But far, far, more importantly while in power Saddam kept such sterling control over his population that we hardly had any refugees risking their lives seeking perilous boat journeys to Australia. In fact I'm thinking a posthumous humanitarian award would correct the injustice. The form is going in alongside Tony's and Shadow Ministers in the morning.

You might well think the US and the UK saw him as a war criminal but just like their bid to have the Sri Lankan government investigated it is all a product of bleeding hearts liberals who know nothing of war. Indeed if those countries and ours had taken heed of our three humanitarians we would not have gone to war, so many lives would have been spared and Saddam could have been free to continue his great, caring work.

In my humble opinion Saddam stands beside our Tony and Shadow Minister as worthy of recognition as a great humanitarians by the Australian, and indeed the world community. Let us strive to honour these men in a manner they richly deserve.

Dear SM,

Chrisgraff has kindly agreed to be your final nominee. You're looking solid mate.

SteeleRedux

I agree Saddam's gassing of the Kurds and Rudd/Gillard's drowning of 1000s of women and children were all heartless grabs for power.

You have been nominated for the left whinger "they were exercising their right to drown" award.

@Steele & Co

<<It is the logic of true humanitarians...>>

Aye, Oz should adopt the SteeleRedux Humane-Immigration program -that ways, Saddam and the Tamil Tigers would all be safely re-settled somewhere in suburban Oz (far away from Steeleville or Foxyville no doubt).

Just like that poor fellow Ayatollah Khomeini who was given sanctuary in France, for years--before he decided to return home and start executing infidels.

Or the Madrid Bombers, a number of whom were given refugee status in Spain-- before they repaid Spain by setting off bombs in peak hour trains.

Or the Somalis given "refugee" status in Oz (or the US or Sweden)but return to fight for al-Shabaab in Somalia ...or Kenyan shopping centres.