Drop food now if the concern is humanitarian': Vanni civilians

“If the Colombo government is starving us, the world should know who is keeping us hostages. If the world’s concern is ‘purely humanitarian’ it should act this very minute to give us our means to keep the body and soul together”, is the voice of the civilian victims of Colombo’s starvation weapon, reported TamilNet, quoting hospital sources in Vanni.

Even the meagre food stock of the hospital staff depleted they said.

UN humanitarian chief, John Holmes, acknowledging the situation, said the food supply was barely enough only for a day.

But five days later, no more food shipments to Vanni was the decision in Colombo.

“When Colombo breaches its own international pledge on the use of heavy weapons against its own civilians, the world watches it. Now when it deliberately starves its own civilians to death, then also the world watches,” a political commentator in Colombo told TamilNet, adding that the loss of credibility of UN is going to be irreparable.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa government calculatedly maintains a very low figure of the civilians in the ‘no-fire’ zone in order not to send enough food. Colombo’s figures in the past were supported by India, but both were discredited later.

While Colombo maintains a figure of 15 to 20 thousand civilians, reliable reports from Vanni put it to more than 120,000. Even some international agencies and media are not doing justice in harping on a figure of around 50,000. Colombo prevents international agencies from finding out the truth.

Recently, the UN decided not to penalize Sri Lanka for what it is doing.

'Sri Lanka is a democratically elected government fighting a terrorist organization' is a view maintained by Britain and France.

However humanitarian it could be, it is an internal matter of Sri Lanka, not to be discussed officially in the UN Security Council is the stand of China, sitting on UN action.

The core responsibility now falls on US, said political observers.

Meanwhile, health officials in the Vanni appealed that if there is any meaning for the word humanitarian, the minimum humanitarian act right now is to drop food to the civilians of Vanni without wasting a minute, as an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe caused by Sri Lankan government enforced starvation engulfs the civilians of Vanni.

“The US government and the world should realise that the situation culminating in the most inhuman act of Colombo calculatedly inflicting starvation death on civilians is ultimately a consequence of the lopsided application of a US policy, and the US has every responsibility to remedy it. Failure amounts to connivance to the crime. US has to immediately airdrop food,” said a relief official in Vanni.

"Colombo, blatantly lying to the world that what takes place is only ‘hostage rescue’ and it is not using heavy weapons, is actually engaged in an all out war to kill or imprison free civilians by the use of all heavy and prohibited weapons. The worst weapon it uses is complete denial of food," complained the relief official who was engaged in arrangements with moving the hospital to a new location as Sri Lanka Army fired artillery shells have hit the makeshift hospital several times. Patients were struggling without medicines and shelter.

"The Indian Establishment is not only extending its war partnership with Colombo indefinitely, but also is believed to be pressurizing Colombo to use ‘all methods’ to win the war before the Establishment’s fate is decided in the elections in mid May. The starvation agenda is believed to be one such either to kill or to crush the will of the freedom loving people and to incarcerate them."