Hero’s Cemetery burnt by GoSL armed forces
The LTTE Hero’s Cemetery in Kopay in Jaffna was set alight by GoSL armed forces on Tuesday 20 June night. The GoSL armed forces and its paramilitary arrived on motorbikes and started attacking the office of the Hero’s Cemetery. They heaped all the documents and pictures of the fallen hero’s in the office and set it alight. The office sustained severe damages by the fire.
The GoSL forces carried out a similar but far worse attack when it took control of Jaffna in 1996. At that time the GoSL armed forces went amok and razed to the ground this same Hero’s Cemetery in Kopay as well the Hero’s Cemeteries in Udupiddy, Ellankulam, and the Kodikamam in Jaffna. In fact the GoSL armed forces took bulldozers and leveled all memorial stones in the cemetery. The GoSL forces carried out this desecration in 1996, after the then President Chandrika Kumaratunge’s government conducted a victory ceremony that conveyed the message of Sinhala warriors conquering Jaffna. After the CFA was signed, LTTE rebuilt all the Hero’s Cemeteries with well maintained gardens. International Conventions on the conduct of warring armies deem that respect should be given to the dead at all times and memorials for the dead should also be respected. It is also a basic and natural human instinct to respect the dead whatever side the dead person is from. This latest act of the GoSL armed forces is a window into the thought process and conduct of these armed forces that is attempting to control the Tamil people through sheer terror of whatever form.
22 June 2006
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Europe which has a total population of 800 million is made up of 45 language based nation states. South Asia which has a total population of one billion, (1000 million) is comprised of four states. Who is preventing and therefore benefiting by limiting new nation-states in South Asia?
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