In a recent posting,I talked about the Tamil artist, M.I.A.This is what she's talking about. 250,000 innocent Tamil women,men,& children are trapped in the crossfire in Sri Lanka.It is a humanitarian crisis that only seems to grow worse.Here's more from the Times Online:
"As you read this, around 250,000 civilians are trapped in 115 square miles of jungle in northeastern Sri Lanka, where government forces have pinned down the last remnants of the Tamil Tiger rebels.
That's a quarter of a million innocent men, women and children cowering in an area smaller than the New Forest as fighter jets, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery thunder all around them.
Hundreds have already been killed and scores injured in the crossfire, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. More will die if urgent action is not taken. Regardless of who is to blame – each side accuses the other and there is damning evidence against both – this is a humanitarian crisis that deserves as much international attention as that in Gaza.
It also has important implications both for the future of the Indian Ocean island and for other separatist conflicts around the world.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa is on the brink of defeating the Tigers as a conventional military force and bringing a formal end to a 25-year conflict that has claimed 70,000 lives.
That is cause for celebration: the Tigers are among the world's most ruthless and highly organised terrorist groups.
Now that Mr Rajapaksa has the upper hand, however, the burden of responsibility is on him to prove his commitment to democratic principles and the welfare of Sri Lanka's 3.2 million ethnic Tamils.
The Red Cross and others have rightly urged both sides to spare the non-combatants, but the world has little leverage on the Tigers, who are proscribed as terrorists by the United States, the European Union and India.
Since they launched a violent struggle for an ethnic Tamil homeland in 1983, they have forcibly recruited children, pioneered suicide bombing, and killed two heads of state.
It is appalling, but no surprise, therefore, that rights activists accuse them of using civilians as human shields and the United Nations says that they prevented the injured from leaving the frontline."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5610412.ece
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