I know of two priests who have decided to stay with their people in the so-called No-Fire Zone in northern Sri Lanka, where tens of thousands of Tamil civilians are trapped in a living hell. One of those priests described the shelling that killed so many on Saturday night: All sorts of heavy weapons were used for more than 12 hours from all four directions on May 9-10, 2009. The night was a deadly night. Children, women, and elders were screaming at the peaks of their voices. It was callous, heinous and indiscriminate shelling and bombing. Words are lacking to describe [it]. … The eyes of the world are blinded. The people were the deliberate target of the attack of the Army. It was a bloodbath. People who sustained minor injuries also eventually died because no rescue mission was possible due to the incessant shelling and bombing. Even from the sea, the Navy has been using heavy weapons. People have nowhere to go and hide. The rate of killing by shelling earlier was in the hundreds and now it is in the thousands. An Internet phone connection allows us to hear the sounds of the bombs exploding in the background. Crammed into a tiny strip of coastal land, the civilians are caught — literally — in the middle of a ferocious battle between the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military. The LTTE, fighting for their very survival, is keeping them there as a bargaining chip, hoping the international community will force the government to accept a cease-fire. The government, for its part, has called them all LTTE supporters and terrorists. They are children and their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles — members of whole villages that fled the Sri Lankan Army as it advanced north. The LTTE is outnumbered at this point, but refuses to surrender. They are clearly using the people as a human shield — they have been shooting at people who try to escape from the area. Apparently, they are banking on the international community caring enough about the civilians to stay the hand of the government. But this is not what is happening. More than 1,320 people were killed in just 48 hours last weekend. The trapped civilians can’t believe that the international community — the U.S., Britain, France, Norway, Japan, and others — is allowing the slaughter to continue. An aid worker we are talking to tells us the death toll for the day and the details of the recent ICRC shipment of food and some medicines. Conditions are grim: food, water, and medicine is scarce, and sanitation facilities nonexistent. What supplies the ships are able to bring in are far short of what is needed. People are beginning to starve. An ICRC ship got in last week, but two others were forced to turn around because of heavy fighting — without offloading supplies or taking away the 500 wounded people who were hoping to get out. That is about the only way people can escape the area. (ICRC ships have taken out some 10,000 wounded and people accompanying them). In the past the ICRC has gotten agreements from both sides to stop fighting so supplies can be landed, but this has been hard to get recently. There has been unconfirmed fighting between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Navy in the Bay of Bengal. The doctors said they were really relieved last week when some antibiotics were included in the ICRC shipment — they had been without these essential supplies for two months. They have also been without anesthesia for several months — and they still don’t have any. The government is said to have to okay everything that goes onto the ICRC ships, and anesthesia is not on the approved list. This is not an oversight on the part of the government. I can’t imagine what it is like to have a hand or a leg amputated without anesthesia. Yet I must have a hundred pictures of kids or their parents with bandaged stumps. It is, after all, a war zone.Hello friends and fellow lovers of humans everywhere.
[an article from sojo]
Witness to Sri Lanka’s Onslaught
by Christina Cobourn Herman 05-14-2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
from a friend - from SRI LANKA
I was praying today and God put it very strongly on my heart that I should start a day of prayer and fasting for this country before we leave on June 6th.
I'm writing to you because you either lead a small group, a church or are part of a community that can join in prayer with us. How great if we could get people around the world praying all together for these people's lives.
I don't know if you know the current situation in the northern part of Sri Lanka (about 5-6 hours north of us) but it is getting pretty terrible with hundreds dying daily. We really need to lift this up into the hands of God who is able to do exceedingly more than we can ask or imagine. (It's really gut wrenching - please read at least ONE of these articles because it will break your heart for these victims!) And no one knows what the "truth" is because they won't let any foreigners or UN into the area because it's so bad!
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