I can’t but help to wonder how a man of your intellectual capacity could possibly believe these lies? How sir can you believe that people are not been killed in the wannie by the SL army? And if you agree that they what does it matter if it is one hundred or one hundred thousand? Isn’t it blatantly clear that as long as these people suffer it doesn’t matter if you kill prahbakaran ? coz the circumstances which led to the creation of the LTTE would still be there and worse it will be compounded hundred fold by your governments actions in pursuant of terminating the LTTE. You say “And we've got a war to win against a nasty enemy.” I fear sir that you are as delusional as the people in the Wanni who believe the LTTE will protect them even at this juncture. I say this because I fail to see how you don’t see that it doesn’t matter if it’s one person or a hundred people or a hundred thousand people who are dying. And even though you may be able to dismiss them as collateral damage for the people who lived through it it won’t be that easy. And no political solution which (you believe) is forth coming or no amount of development thr government os willing to dish out to these people will be enough to wipe away those memories. I fear sir that in winning the battle (destroying the LTTE) you are losing the War (winning over the Tamil people). And even more so i fear since an astute person such as yourself cannot see this simple reality there is no hope for Sri lanka!

2. That the Third Word states and intelligentsia have NOT realized, at least since the call for a NEW International Information Order by the Non Aligned in the 1970s, that the Western media are a loaded dice.

3. That the Third World has NOT figured that the liberal humanitarian discourse is a hegemonistic -interventionist one.

All three assumptions are wrong.

We max be dumb but we ain't that dumb. And we've got a war to win against a nasty enemy.

As Fidel said, one must never lie, but one has no obligation to reveal the complete truth to the enemy or when the enemy can use it!. Meanwhile here's something for you folk to figure out. If the Sri Lankan situation were anything like you say, how come the most ethical figure in the UN system, Nicaragua's Miguel D'Escoto, President of the UN General Assembly, and former foreign minister under the Sandinistas, did not mention Sri Lanka even once in his 27 minute address to the UN Human Rights Council a few days ago, though he did bring up several other country situations?

1. Could you tell me from where in my article or subsequent comments you base the first assumption you attribute to me?

2. Fine. Say Western media is a bitch (for the record, does this include Al Jazeera too?). Let's get three media workers – one state journo, one private, one blogger – all armed with same equipment to do exactly what I wanted Sites to do. Place them in three camps. Or in the same camp. Non-western, endogenous eye balls whose bias can cancel each other out. The more the merrier, yes?

And lest this veers off into a debate on authenticity and identity, the issue is that with an atrocious track record of freedom of expression (don't even try to defend this one) the GoSL looks at public scrutiny with as much love as you have for the LTTE. This isn't about Western or Non-Western – it is simply about bearing witness to the humanitarian fall-out of war independently. However, I agree this may be a tall order for a regime that does not quite understand, in general, why independent media is important.

3. I have never been convinced that foreign / UN intervention is forthcoming or possible, even if desirable.

Fidel's spot on – what's fueling, inter alia, the hugely partial web campaigns by or in favour of the LTTE today, giving them more attention, traction and credibility than they deserve, is the obduracy and actions of the Government vis-a-vis human security. I refer you to Sara’s article (Unending End Game) which points to aspects of Holmes' report to the SC that were conveniently ignored by the Government and State media reportage. These are concerns echoed by the recent ICG report, and to see them all as hegemonistic – interventionist discourses based on wild imaginings is an inadequate response.

But you know that.

Sanj

I think you've missed my point.

Kevin would report. We would analyse, contest, refute. You, me and the rest of the world would finally have a perspective (perhaps on occasion real time, with the technology available today) from the ground to anchor meaningful debates on the humanitarian condition in the Vanni.

As for intervention, or more precisely foreign intervention, do you actually believe the UN's R2P mechanism has the wherewithal to act or that the UN can muster member state consensus at the GA or get SC go ahead to intervene, with Russia, China and Vietnam as your allies?

My suggestion does not put Sites theoretically in harms way. IDP camps cannot be targeted and if they are, it's a combination of one party's callousness and the other's inability to protect. Sites could be an important witness in this regard too, if as the GoSL and HRW note, its the LTTE that's doing most of the firing and have killed 2,300+ civilians since Jan? The only videos coming out from the region have been from the TRO – viscerally compelling, but essentially untrustworthy.

Ergo, Sites.

It is impossible, despite the GoSL's repeated assurances in this regard, that the humanitarian fall out of the war will be solved in a few months. An enduring media coverage – akin to coverage that exposed both INGO and GoSL failures and corruption in post-tsunami rebuilding and recovery long after Boxing Day 2004 – would be hugely helpful. My choice of Sites was deliberate – he's not an Anderson Cooper as some are also attempting to bring down to Sri Lanka. He can be guided to witness what civil society (seen here as a larger collective of peoples and more global than local NGOs and their constituencies) demands to be seen and heard. Technologies today can easily make this exercise fully interactive. As Orwell said, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

Thanks for reminding me of Chomsky. He's spot on about the power of media to shape public opinion. Radio Milles Collines is another example, though of a more dangerous nature. I was re-reading Chomsky's 9/11 again recently, where he notes that:

"We should also remember that one exalted task of intellectuals is to proclaim every few years that we have 'changed course,' the past is behind us and can be forgotten as we march on towards a glorious future. That is a highly convenient stance, though hardly an admirable or sensible one."

And I haven't forgotten Chomsky's expose of the NGO and Western media hysteria that functioned as buildup and smokescreen for the Kosovo intervention. You've presented an idea and one good idea deserves another, so here's mine: re-read Michael Roberts' recent piece on the civilians.

Here's an idea – bring back Kevin Sites and send him to the battle front, armed with mobile phone, camera, laptop, to ascertain the humanitarian conditions of the camps, which we are assured are in "safe zones". No need for battle front encounters or to go anywhere near where active confrontations are occurring. No need to report back on military matters, strategies or losses.

Would help a long way in comprehensively dispelling – from your end – allegations from internationals, and from my end, by giving eye balls to the situation on the ground, help us opine more accurately and fairly.

Sanj

4. It is the case that whatever you write, or if you choose not to, you are appropriated by or reviled for it by the parties to the conflict. I am not at all convinced there is genocide in the Vanni. I am convinced that the LTTE is responsible for precisely that which HRW accuses it of, and much more. I am convinced that those who support the Govt do not want to hear, or see, the humanitarian fallout of the on-going war.

Parallels to Gaza and Darfur are unfair in this sense – you're right. They had much more eyeballs on them – from high tech satellite surveillance and Google Earth initiatives to UN missions on the ground and the likes of Al Jazeera giving a worms-eye perspective of the ground situ. In Sri Lanka, we know more about Darfur and Gaza than we do about the Vanni.

That's simply unacceptable. We must debate figures, fight over casualties, contest genocide claims, argue over humanitarian standards and protection and discuss ways to protect civilians. But this must be done with independent information, not just with the GoSL's wordplay. I'm more than happy to write in my Sunday Leader column, and on this site, that I was wrong. That Rajiva was right. But the information that allows that negotiation to occur ain't forthcoming from the LTTE, from Mahinda Samarasinghe, from Government analysts or from SCOPP.

Perhaps you can post a few confidential reports up here?

Thanks again,

Sanj

I've put the link to Rajiva's full response for brevity, but also because Rajiva's already got his personal blog running on the SCOPP website homepage and I have no desire to give the man more space than absolutely necessary on the web.

You asked me over email what I was smoking when I drew a parallel between Darfur and Gaza. I guffawed at that, also because your unrestrainted candour continues to underpin our friendship, much to the dismay of some of the readers here. In the same vein, here's my response.

I didn't aim to draw grotesque parallels of body counts and trauma between Darfur, Gaza and the Vanni.

An erstwhile UNAMID staff member, former military from a country with impeccable credentials as being neutral in matters related to the conflict in Darfur, said that during his time, he could find ZERO evidence for genocide by the janjaweed / Sudanese govt., and that numbers used in the case against Basheer were inflated and could never, in a court of law, be proved. There simply wasn't evidence on the ground. Likewise, the parallel was not aimed to fuel claims of genocide in the Vanni, or suffering beyond that which we know is the result of both the LTTE and Govt being unable and unwilling to protect civilians. The culpability is shared and may be asymmetrical, but there is no getting away from the fact that,

1. We have no impartial eyeballs in the area to monitor the situation. Any reports that come out are immediately and viciously dismissed by the likes of your friend in SCOPP and others in GoSL. No dialogue therefore can be established to contest and clarify the substance of these reports.

2. This pattern of scoffing at disturbing reports from sources other than the GoSL is the triumph of propaganda over fact, of fear over investigation, blather over reason.

3. I find unacceptable and absurd that we are asked to believe the propaganda of the GoSL as a true and impartial account of what is occurring in the North today. It is as unacceptable and absurd as the LTTE's accounts of what is happening on the ground, using sophisticated web campaigns by and for the diaspora to whip up inflammatory emotion leading to shocking self-immolations. Yet this reservoir of outrage is filled by audacious statements such as, admitting to the culpability of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) shelling Puthukkudiyiruppu hospital, when Gotabaya Rajapakse noted that "No hospital should operate outside the Safety Zone…everything beyond the safety is a legitimate target".

During the Interactive Debate on the Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva yesterday, Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat and Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, commented on remarks made by Non-Governmental Organisations. His statement can be accessed in full here.