Sri Lanka massacred up to 40,000 Tamil civilians – former UN official

Sri Lanka’s military massacred as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final onslaught against the Liberation Tigers in 2009, according to a former United Nations official with detailed knowledge of events, press reports said.

The former United Nations’ spokesperson in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss, has resigned from the UN after 14 years and returned home to Australia, where he was interviewed by ABC News.

“He’s now free to speak openly about the situation in Sri Lanka, for the first time and does so candidly and unflinchingly,” the media agency said.

“About 300,000 civilians, plus the Tamil Tiger forces, were trapped in an area of territory about the size of Central Park in New York,” says Weiss.

“They were within range of all the armaments that were being used, small and large, being used to smash the Tamil Tiger lines … the end result was that many thousands lost their lives.”

Gordon Weiss says his information comes from reliable sources who had a presence inside the battle zone, not Tamil civilians or fighters.

"The Sri Lankan government said many things which were either intentionally misleading, or were lies", Weiss told ABC’s reporter Eric Campbell.

Weiss says that after the war ended, a senior civil servant openly admitted that the authorities had deliberately underestimated the number of trapped civilians “as a ploy to allow the government to get on with its business.”

The United Nations responded to Weiss’s comments by declaring that he did not represent the organization, and that they were his personal views.

“These views, communicated to the media are his personal ones and do not represent those of the United Nations,” said the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka.

“The overall view of the UN on any particular situation comes from statements by the Secretary General or other senior UN figures,” the statement said.

“The UN repeatedly and publicly said there were unacceptably high civilian casualties from the fighting in the last months of the war, as a result of the LTTE forcibly preventing people leaving and the Government's use of heavy weapons in areas close to thousands of civilians,” the statement added.

“While we maintained internal estimates of casualties, circumstances did not permit us to independently verify them on the ground, and therefore we do not have verifiable figures of how many casualties there were,” the UN said.

The Sri Lankan government meanwhile said Weiss was spreading false information, about the last stages of the war.

“That is absolutely wrong information,” Director General of the Media Centre for National Security Lakshman Hullugalle told Daily Mirror.

The paper quoted Hulugalle as saying "there was sufficient information provided at the time and months thereafter to confirm that such a large number of civilian deaths did not occur. We were able to show journalists through live footage how the LTTE were harassing civilians and how we were ensuring the safe passage of civilians."

Hulugalle insists that no other organizations made such claims in the past 8 months since the war, the paper said, quoting “[t]here were so many foreign and local journalists allowed in those areas. Therefore if there was any truth in this no one would have waited for 8 months to talk about it. And we have had no such complaints coming from any organization."

Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama rejected all claims made by the former UN spokesperson saying Weiss had previously made such false statements.

“He is someone who has been making such false statements and we wholly reject these claims. He is also someone who has been sent out of the country,” Bogollagama said.

While Hulugalle asserts that "so many foreign and local journalists allowed in those areas," media ban by Sri Lanka was widely known and was reported by AFP in April, quoting the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), "[i]t is a disgrace that this war is being waged without independent journalists present...With a major humanitarian crisis and war crimes clearly taking place, the government must heed the international community’s calls for a ceasefire and for better access for humanitarian workers and journalists."

Soon after Sri Lanka’s declared victory over the LTTE in May 2009, the British newspaper, The Times, concluded an extensive investigation into the last days of the offensive and confirmed that up to 20,000 Tamil civilians were slaughtered.

Pointing out that not only the United Nations but several Western governments knew of the ongoing slaughter of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lanka Army, but kept silent for fear of upsetting the Colombo Government, The Times also demanded international action to prevent further atrocities.

The Times reported that "UN chief knew Tamil civilian toll had reached 20,000," and that "UN officials told Vijar Nambiar, Ban Ki Moon’s chief of staff, that their figures indicated a likely final death toll of more than 20,000, during a briefing in preparation for Mr Ban’s visit to the region on May 23."

“Such a monstrous collusion in covering up an atrocity must not go unchallenged. If the UN Human Rights Council refuses to investigate what has happened, the West must do so forthwith,” the paper said in an editorial.

“The silence of those who were warned of civilian deaths in Sri Lanka is shameful. They must speak out now to prevent future atrocities,” the editorial charged.