“I got messages not to shoot those who are carrying white flags.
A war is fought by soldiers.
They do so by putting their lives on the line.
Therefore, the decisions about war should be taken by the soldiers in the battlefront.
Not the people in air-conditioned rooms in Colombo.
Our soldiers have seen in life the kind of destruction carried out by those people before they decided to come carrying a white flag.
Therefore, they carried out their duties.
We destroyed any one connected with the LTTE. That is how we won the war.”
In 2011 General Fonseka was sentenced to three years in prison and fined Rs.5000 by a court for “propagating a false rumour’ in connection with the original Sunday Leader story.
This is what General Fonseka said on the killing of the LTTE cadres who negotiated a surrender and ane they approached the Lankan Army.
They were carrying the White Flag as a mark of Surrender.
They were shot dead.
In the din of the cry to prosecute the Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakshe and his brother Godbaya Rajapakshe, Defense secretary who gave the
orders to shoot,the Vienna convention has been breached.
Why not ask for a Trail at least on this issue?
It is a different matter altogether that this is a retracted statement of Fonseka
Behind the scene manipulation of Rajapakshe, Gotabaya Rajapakshe follows in a separate Post.
Here is how they were shot shot dead.
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“Last night’s toll of the dead is 3318 and of the injured more than 4000. It was a barrage of artillery, mortar, multi-barrel shelling and cluster bombs, weapons which Sri Lankan government denies using on the civilians in the no fire zone. The cries of woes and agony of the babies and children, the women and the elderly fill the air that was polluted by poisonous and unhealthy gases and pierced the hearts of fathers and mothers, of elders and peasants of old men and women of all walks of life. I am not unaware that this letter would arouse the wrath of the Sri Lankan government which will resort to the revenge by killing me.“
On 10th May 2009, a Catholic priest inside the war zone, Father Francis, wrote to the Pope in Rome describing what he was experiencing.Whi
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At 0630 am on 18 May 2009, approximately twelve people left the bunkers carrying at least two white flags. All wore civilian clothing – the men were in white sarongs and shirts.
Witness 2 was lying on the embankment watching the surrender. He saw that the man carrying the white flag was Nadesan and he also identified Nadesan’s wife and Puidevan in this group.
The first batch to cross were met by two different teams of soldiers, including according to an eyewitness, the 58th Division Commander, Shavendra Silva (currently Sri Lanka’s deputy Permanent Representative at the UN in New York), who went up to greet them.
Several witnesses heard Nadesan’s wife shouting in Sinhala to the soldiers. One witness saw the men in the group had their hands held behind their backs by the soldiers though he couldn’t see if they were tied or handcuffed.
About twenty metres behind the first group, was the second one led by the police chief Illango (also
known as Ramesh) who was also carrying a white flag. Witness 3 was in this group. They passed many dead bodies and could hardly see the lagoon through the dense bushes. Witness 3 saw about 200 troops in the bushes. He then noticed the destroyed building surrounded by about 100 soldiers where Witness 1 was being detained. He confirmed seeing civilians inside this building.
The second group watched the first group approach the security forces. Witness 3 saw about 20-5 soldiers in uniform and armed with AK47 rifles surround the first group. He observed Pulidevan and Nadesan’s group being escorted across the bridge surrounded by soldiers.
Then his group was surrounded by armed soldiers. The police chief Illango spoke to the troops in Sinhala. Their group was surrounded and escorted in the same fashion across the bridge. Witness 3 was separated from the others and taken to a sentry post, interrogated and slapped and then loaded onto a bus and taken to a detention camp for former LTTE cadres…
Eyewitness 2
Witness 2 says about an hour or so after the surrender, he was on a dirt road parallel to the A35 highway and spotted the corpses of Pulidevan and Nadesan lying in a ditch by the roadside with soldiers standing around taking photographs. (see map)
“I instantly recognised the bodies of Pulideevan and Nadesan. I knew as soon as I looked at their bodies that they were dead. Both men were lying on their backs in the ditch…
Eyewitnesses say it was not just the LTTE political wing leaders who were targeted, but at least 102 other administrative, financial, political, humanitarian leaders of the LTTE, in addition to unarmed military wing cadres and non-combatants such as children who also surrendered later the same day. There were also other LTTE figures who surrendered in the days before and after 18 May who have disappeared or been killed in the custody of the Sri Lankan security forces.
It appears to have been part of a cold-blooded plan to wipe out any future Tamil representatives.
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It is late at night, past midnight. Make a mental picture of this. Can you see them coming out with white flags in this dense jungle in pitch darkness? The situation was that some terrorist cadres counter-attacked. Prabhakaran was trying to break out and escape to the lagoon, his son went in another direction. At the same time 10,000 surrendered cadres came down from one side. In this kind of situation in the thick of battle, can you expect a young recruit, barely a month into battle, to recognise a senior LTTE cadre and make a decision as to shoot him selectively or spare him?”
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary
Source for Information and Images.
* This Report is by an Organisation vouched to be fair by a Senior member of Sri Lankan Cabinet
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