February 7, 2009

Letters to the Editor: Sri Lankan genocide overlooked.

Re: "Families Hurt by Sri Lanka War View Army Offensive With Hope"
(News report by Emily Wax, February 7, 2009, A8)

To the Editor:

Emily Post wrongly insinuates that only Sinhalese families have suffered in Sri Lanka's wrenching ethnic warfare. On behalf of Tamils Against Genocide, I prepared and delivered to U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder last Thursday a three-volume, 1000 page model 12-count genocide indictment under the U.S. Genocide Accountability Act of 2007 against Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's Army Commander Sarath Fonseka. Both exercise command authority over Sri Lanka's exclusively Sinhalese ("Tamil free") security forces. Rajapaksa is a United States citizen, while Fonseka is a green card holder. The indictment chronicles a harrowing tale of Sinhalese Buddhist genocide of innocent civilian Hindu and Christian Tamils since the accused were appointed to their positions in December 2005: 3,750 extrajudicial killings or disappearances; tens of thousands seriously wounded; more than 1.3 million displaced (the entire Tamil population in the north and east); starvation, withholding of medicine, indiscriminate bombings and artillery shelling of schools, hospitals, churches, temples, and displaced person camps. On February 2, 2009, Rajapaksa declared on BBC radio that nothing outside of a government stipulated "safe area," should exist, including a hospital that has been repeatedly bombed. And like the "safe area" for 7,000-8,000 murdered Muslims in Srebrenica, the government's stipulated safety zone has proven nothing but a euphemism for Tamil killings fields. That explains the government's strict media black-out.

Sincerely,

Bruce Fein
Attorney for Tamils Against Genocide
1025 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 1000
Washington, D.C. 20036
Phone: 703-963-4968