Calculating the number of missing Tamils would be a lengthier and more arduous, but nevertheless important task acknowledged the former Ambassador.
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“People like the Bishop of Mannar look at census figures at the two relevant districts from October 2008 and look at the number of people that were in Menik Farm and other refugee centres, note that during that time period there was a very tight cage that would have prevented leakage in any direction, suggests that more than something like 120,000 people are missing,” he said. “Various international reports have suggested 40-70,000.”
Those figures are only estimates of those missing, he noted, fearing that many have died “in this horrendous bombardment that occurred”. The bombardment “became more and more and more intense as these so called No Fire Zones became smaller and smaller, and moved further east,” he recalled.
Sri Lanka’s former defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa told him that the government considered everyone in that area a combatant. “You know basically that men, women and children if they were in those areas were.” “1,000 a day dying in April,” he said. “Then that number, at least according to UN experts, tripling in May and becoming even more intense in the end.”
 Michele Sison and Stephen Rapp at St Anthany's Ground in 2014. |
During a 2014 visit to the island, Mr Rapp visited the site of some of these massacres, including St Anthany's Ground where the US government stated the January 2009 "killing of hundreds of families by army shelling" took place.
The Sri Lankan government “suggested only 6 or 7,000 people were killed or missing,” he noted. “This is just impossible… We know at the end of the day the numbers won’t add up”.
Yet Sri Lanka still refuses to produce a figure for the number of civilians killed during the military offensive. Indeed, it has blocked other attempts to do so. “When the Tamil parliamentarians locally tried to do that they were stopped,” said Mr Rapp. “When someone tries to do it independently they were stopped.”
“But these are the kind of things that are the best possible way of determining what may have happened.”
When asked about how even acknowledgement of the massacres that took place seems distant, the ambassador agreed that such an act was “extremely important”. “It’s a difficult issue to confront,” he continued.
Mr Rapp would know, having experienced opposition from Sinhala nationalists first hand.
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Sinhala nationalist demonstrators protest against the former US ambassador in Colombo during his 2014 visit. Photograph: Hundreds of Sinhalese protestors, including Buddhist monks, gathered outside the US Embassy in Colombo during his 2014 visit, with placards depicted the visiting US Ambassador with fangs and blood streaming from his mouth. He was labelled as a “threat to world peace”.
Even if “there were heroic soldiers in the army that fought hard to eliminate a threat”, the Sri Lankan government cannot shy away from the horrors of what happened he said. “It needs to be explained, acknowledged, go through a study in these situations as has happened in other places.”
“That hasn’t been done and of course you have the aspects of this such as the white flag killings and the killings of surrenderees that are murders,” he added. “That needs to be acknowledged as such and investigated and prosecuted.”
 Michele Sison and Stephen Rapp tour Puthumathalan school and hospital in "No Fire Zone 2". |
“When that kind of truth is revealed, then I think clearly the people will understand that justice is necessary.”
Indeed the lack of such justice shows “an impunity that reigns and people think they can do anything and they can get away with it,” said Mr Rapp.
“Reports that Yasmin Sooka and the group that she leads, the ITJP, point to in terms of these ongoing situations of abductions and sexual slavery and white vans, kidnappings and torture and horrendous acts,” he added.
The ongoing human rights abuses are linked directly to Sri Lanka’s failure to hold perpetrators accountable said the former ambassador. “Even emblematic significant cases against some people – cases that politicians, political leaders, military commanders should be ashamed of – in those kind of cases this hasn’t been done”.
“And so people think they can get away with it.”
 Sri Lankan peacekeeping troops are honoured in Haiti, during a mission last year. |
With Sri Lankan troops pledging to participate in UN peacekeeping missions across the globe, the issue of impunity for human rights abuses may spread beyond the Tamil North-East. Acknowledging how Sri Lankan soldiers in Haiti were expelled for the sexual abuse of minors, the Ambassador bemoaned the lack of action.
“And then those cases get sent back with very strong evidence and the response of the government is “No, no, insufficient, nothing””, he said.
“Obviously that undermines.”
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