The silent suffering of Sri Lanka's Tamils

Roy Ratnavel, National Post
In May of this year, during the final stages of a brutal ethnic civil war between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government, a so-called "humanitarian rescue" of civilians was undertaken by Sri Lanka's armed forces. More than 20,000 Tamil civilians trapped in the conflict zone were massacred. Thousands of dead are children, and most of them died before they even knew that they were Tamils. Scores of people died in bunkers, or were burned alive and bombed in open spaces. People were also shot at close range by the Sri Lankan army. Sri Lanka had no qualms about using heavy weapons to bombard the very people it claimed to be rescuing. According to some reports, the army even used illegal chemical weapons.
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