Sri Lankan forces accused of shelling hospital

Artillery attacks on a field hospital in Tamil Tiger-controlled territory killed 64 and wounded 87 according to a rebel-linked web site. The Tamil fighters are accused of preventing civilians escape from the war zone. Entreaties from Western diplomatic envoys have been rebuffed by Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa who said: 'I don't need lectures from Western representatives.'

In spite of a declaration on Monday by Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa that "combat operations have reached their conclusion," a report on the TamilNet web site on Saturday said that army artillery strikes on a field hospital killed 64 patients and attending relatives and wounded 87. The report was swiftly dismissed by the government but since journalists and most aid workers are barred from entering the conflict area, neither claim could be independently verified. The TamilNet report said: "The attack has taken place, after the Sri Lankan military was provided with the exact coordinates of the hospital premises three days back through the ICRC [Red Cross], and as Sri Lanka Air Force Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was monitoring the hospital area. The massacre is calculated to coerce the civilians said a rescue worker citing leaflets air dropped Friday with Mahinda Rajapaksa's message asking civilians to come to the SLA side." In its assessment of the crisis in Sri Lanka, the International Crisis Group said: "Since fighting intensified in mid-January 2009, the UN estimates that some 6,500 civilians, including at least 1,000 children, have died, and more than 10,000 have been injured. Some 100,000 civilians managed to escape to government-controlled territory in the wake of the army's assault on Tiger defences on 21 April, but information from the ground suggests that more than 50,000 are still trapped in the region. They have remained there with little access to food, water and medicine for the past three months. Those who took part in April's exodus faced desperate conditions, with relief agencies denied access to the initial points of reception and military screening centres, and the military unequipped to offer urgently-needed food, water and medical care. Camps for displaced have been overwhelmed by the new influx. "Within the combat zone, the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] continue to use the civilian population as human shields and have fired on and killed many of those trying to escape. They continue to forcibly conscript civilians, including children, into battle. For its part, the government has been shelling civilian areas - including its own unilaterally declared 'no fire zone' - without any significant pause over the past three months. Despite the government's announcement on 27 April that it had ordered the military to stop using heavy artillery or airstrikes, such attacks have continued." Looking back to the start of the Sri Lankan civil war, The Sydney Morning Herald noted: "When the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began the bloody campaign for a separate homeland in 1983 they faced a poorly equipped army of about 6000 men. Now they confront a high-tech fighting force of more than 230,000. "Sri Lanka has a much higher ratio of military personnel to population than India or even Pakistan, making it the most militarised country in a region bristling with weapons. "Military spending has surged to 5 per cent of gross domestic product and soaks up about 20 per cent of the Government's budget. " 'In a quarter of a century it has been transformed from a country with a small parade-ground military to one of the world's best combat-prepared armies,' said Iqbal Athas, a military analyst in Colombo. "Sri Lanka's bloated military, one of the distortions of a 26-year civil war that has killed as many as 100,000 people, including almost 6500 over the past three months, is on the brink of achieving its goal." While the civilian toll has provoked criticism from Western governments, Sri Lanka has thus far shown little willingness to yield to diplomatic pressure. The New York Times reported: "One of the highest-level European delegations to visit this war-torn country in years has failed to persuade the Sri Lankan government to declare a temporary truce with ethnic Tamil rebels. "President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka emphatically rejected the appeal Thursday and told Western governments to stop lecturing him, news agencies reported. " 'The government is not ready to enter into any kind of cease-fire with the terrorists. It is my duty to protect the people of this country. I don't need lectures from Western representatives,' he said in a speech distributed by his office and quoted by the news agencies." Al Jazeera added: "A rash of new posters has recently appeared around Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, criticising Western diplomats. "The caption below the photographs of Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, David Miliband, the British foreign secretary and Erik Solheim, the Norwegian minister of international development, says 'Wanted for aiding and abetting terrorism'." Reporting on an underlying cause for the lack of political leverage the Western governments are able to apply, The Times described the impact of China's expanding regional influence. "On the southern coast of Sri Lanka, ten miles from one of the world's busiest shipping routes, a vast construction site is engulfing the once sleepy fishing town of Hambantota. "This poor community of 21,000 people is about as far as one can get on the island from the fighting between the army and the Tamil Tiger rebels on the northeastern coast. The sudden spurt of construction helps, however, to explain why the army is poised to defeat the Tigers and why Western governments are so powerless to negotiate a ceasefire to help civilians trapped on the front line. "This is where China is building a $1 billion port that it plans to use as a refuelling and docking station for its navy, as it patrols the Indian Ocean and protects China's supplies of Saudi oil. Ever since Sri Lanka agreed to the plan, in March 2007, China has given it all the aid, arms and diplomatic support it needs to defeat the Tigers, without worrying about the West." Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group, wrote at Foreign Policy: "The reality is that both the LTTE leadership - a murderous bunch of extremists for whom no tears should be shed by Tamils in Sri Lanka or by anyone anywhere - and the Colombo government have abdicated their responsibility to protect Sri Lankan civilians from mass-atrocity crimes. "And the tragedy is that they have now been joined in this abdication by the Security Council itself, notwithstanding the unanimous resolution of the General Assembly, meeting at the heads of government level in 2005, that it should take 'timely and decisive' action when 'national authorities are failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.' "To their credit, France, the United States, Britain, and a number of other proactive Security Council members have ratcheted up pressure in recent weeks. They have pushed - albeit cautiously - for the council to review Sri Lanka as an official agenda item, and carefully negotiated a series of informal remarks on behalf of the council. "But because of consistent obstruction by a handful of member states, the issue continues to be relegated to informal statements and unofficial meetings - not in the Security Council chamber - but in the basement of the UN building. Those signaling varying degrees of opposition to council engagement have been China, Russia, Libya, Vietnam and - most surprisingly and disappointingly, given its role in advocating human security generally and civilian protection specifically - Japan. While the tacit approval of a military endgame against a terrorist group is understandable enough, looking the other way as tens of thousands of innocent civilians are imperiled in the process is indefensible."