Wednesday
May132009
Sri Lanka: The Hidden Slaughter
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 10:19
Related Post: Sri Lanka - "Why is the World Not Helping?"
UPDATE: The closing paragraphs of this piece were significantly rewritten after attention was drawn to errors in the original entry. Please see the readers' comments for details.
The comment was fleeting, but significant. Steve Clemons, a prominent Washington journalist, posted on Twitter after an discussion with British Foreign Minister David Miliband yesterday: "Surprised AfPak [Afghanistan-Pakistan] wobbliness not the core topic in New America new media chat with UK For Minister Miliband. Steve Coll pushed Sri Lanka mess."
It is estimated that the "Sri Lanka mess", in which Government forces are fighting the insurgency of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has killed an estimated 6500 civilians in recent weeks. Yet it has been effectively a non-story in US and British media. Both The Washington Post and The New York Times only noticed it on Monday, when a United Nations spokesman revealed a death toll of almost 400 from a weekend artillery barrage.
There are obvious reasons (excuses?) for this. Afghanistan and Pakistan are at the epicentre of US foreign policy. Sri Lanka is not. It can claim no connection with the "War on Terror", at least as it has been defined in Washington. No Osama bin Laden lurking in a border town, no nuclear weapons that can be seized by insurgents. So broadcasters and major newspapers don't expend increasingly limited resources on a bureau near Colombo.
Atttention spans may be changing, however. Whether it is because a British minister has dared put this hidden war above the visible one from Islamabad to Kabul, because the concern of the United Nations is finally have an effect, because the Tamil protests in London have unveiled the issue, or because journalists are catching up with the reality of the carnage, Sri Lanka has made the news today in Britain. The Times forcefully declares, "The world must force Colombo to halt the shelling of trapped civilians," and The Guardian has a Page 1 eyewitness account by Vany Kumar (reprinted in a separate blog) of shelling in the "no-fire zone".
Perhaps the most intriguing attention comes in an opinion piece by Andrew Buncombe in The Independent as he quotes a doctor's analysis of the conflict: ""In any military operation there is collateral damage. In Pakistan it's killing, in Sri Lanka it's slaughter."
The piece is well worth considering not only for its thoughtful attention to the relative coverage of the two conflicts but also to wider issues. Buncombe, as the Asia Correspondent of The Independent is having to make decisions on how he expends his own resources of time and energy between covering Pakistan, where he has been writing about the exodus of residents from fighting in the northwest of the country, Sri Lanka, and other countries. It also highlights the relative ease with which a journalist can file stories about and from Pakistan, even in the midst of the campaign against the insurgency, versus the difficulties in getting access to and bringing out information from Sri Lanka.
Beyond these logistical and practical considerations, however, there remains the question, at least looking out from Washington. In the midst of the politics and military posturing around "Af-Pak", will the collateral damage in eastern Sri Lanka ever merit sustained attention?
UPDATE: The closing paragraphs of this piece were significantly rewritten after attention was drawn to errors in the original entry. Please see the readers' comments for details.
The comment was fleeting, but significant. Steve Clemons, a prominent Washington journalist, posted on Twitter after an discussion with British Foreign Minister David Miliband yesterday: "Surprised AfPak [Afghanistan-Pakistan] wobbliness not the core topic in New America new media chat with UK For Minister Miliband. Steve Coll pushed Sri Lanka mess."It is estimated that the "Sri Lanka mess", in which Government forces are fighting the insurgency of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has killed an estimated 6500 civilians in recent weeks. Yet it has been effectively a non-story in US and British media. Both The Washington Post and The New York Times only noticed it on Monday, when a United Nations spokesman revealed a death toll of almost 400 from a weekend artillery barrage.
There are obvious reasons (excuses?) for this. Afghanistan and Pakistan are at the epicentre of US foreign policy. Sri Lanka is not. It can claim no connection with the "War on Terror", at least as it has been defined in Washington. No Osama bin Laden lurking in a border town, no nuclear weapons that can be seized by insurgents. So broadcasters and major newspapers don't expend increasingly limited resources on a bureau near Colombo.
Atttention spans may be changing, however. Whether it is because a British minister has dared put this hidden war above the visible one from Islamabad to Kabul, because the concern of the United Nations is finally have an effect, because the Tamil protests in London have unveiled the issue, or because journalists are catching up with the reality of the carnage, Sri Lanka has made the news today in Britain. The Times forcefully declares, "The world must force Colombo to halt the shelling of trapped civilians," and The Guardian has a Page 1 eyewitness account by Vany Kumar (reprinted in a separate blog) of shelling in the "no-fire zone".
Perhaps the most intriguing attention comes in an opinion piece by Andrew Buncombe in The Independent as he quotes a doctor's analysis of the conflict: ""In any military operation there is collateral damage. In Pakistan it's killing, in Sri Lanka it's slaughter."
The piece is well worth considering not only for its thoughtful attention to the relative coverage of the two conflicts but also to wider issues. Buncombe, as the Asia Correspondent of The Independent is having to make decisions on how he expends his own resources of time and energy between covering Pakistan, where he has been writing about the exodus of residents from fighting in the northwest of the country, Sri Lanka, and other countries. It also highlights the relative ease with which a journalist can file stories about and from Pakistan, even in the midst of the campaign against the insurgency, versus the difficulties in getting access to and bringing out information from Sri Lanka.
Beyond these logistical and practical considerations, however, there remains the question, at least looking out from Washington. In the midst of the politics and military posturing around "Af-Pak", will the collateral damage in eastern Sri Lanka ever merit sustained attention?