Srilankan Tamils being excuted naked and blindfolded by Srilankan Army

Video released by Journalists for Democracy, Srilanka and shown by Channel 4 News, UK. Be warned the contents are shocking to say the least. Srilankan Tamils being stripped naked, blindfolded and shot dead from behind



Does any one deserve to die like this without any dignity? Much less, killed by their own army? How can any two communities live in peace after people are executed like this? This isn't rooting out Terrorism but planting more seeds for acrimony and more violence!

Why aren't any of the war crimes charges against the Srilankan government being investigated?
Why is India providing tacit support for such barbaric acts?
What is the Srilankan governement still doing in those alleged 'concentration camps' where independent media is yet to be allowed free access?

Spare a thought for the innocent Tamils in Sri Lanka

So Prabhakaran the Terrorist has been killed. Happy? Rejoicing?

Ever thought of the thousands of innocent Tamils who were slaughtered by the indiscriminate use of artillery and chemical weapons by the Sri Lankan army during the Genocidal war?

If not spare a thought, they’re Humans like you too…

Which government that cares about it’s people, would drop bombs over hospitals and crowded places, just because it suspects terrorists are in their midst? You wouldn't shoot at the passengers and bomb the whole bus, if you had to rescue the hostages!

Ever thought why the western nations which went running to Kosovo and Israel ignored Sri Lanka? Is it because it was battle between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and Tamil Hindu minority?

If you didn’t spare a thought for them as a human, maybe you can as a Hindu!

Ever thought why Pakistan which spawns terrorism worldwide and China which has ignored terrorism elsewhere are helping Sri Lanka? The Sri Lankans who slept with the Americans to give them Trincomalee port to combat India during the Cold War have now given Hambantota to the Chinese who are building a billion dollar port for the Chinese Navy! So China forestalls all discussions about the genocide at the UN and supplies weapons to the army.

Chinese weapons,  Indian intelligence, Sinhala Armed personals and racist Sri Lankan leaders came together to perform one of the most cruel war that has cost the lives of many thousands innocents – LINK: The Telegraph, UK

Yes, the people who are supposed to protect us are sleeping though this hostile development… If you didn’t spare a thought before, maybe now you can as an Indian!

Everyone who are responsible for slaughtering an estimated 70,000 innocent Tamils over the last 25 years and another 7,000 over the last 4 months alone and the continuing ‘white van abductions’ of Tamils in the ‘liberated’ areas will pay for it someday, whether it’s the racist Rajapakse brothers and their political cohorts, the murderous Gen. Fonseka or the traitorous Col.Karuna…

So what if LTTE’s leader who was terrorist to many and a freedom fighter to those who mattered was killed today? Even if the LTTE is finished with him, LTTE was not the only militant organisation that fought for the rights of Sri Lankan Tamils. If naxalism and armed struggles can exist in a pluralistic democracy like India, how long would it take for the FREEDOM struggle to begin again from the smoking embers in Sri Lanka?

The silent horror of the war in Sri Lanka

The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.

From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.

Meanwhile, there are official reports that several ‘‘welfare villages’’ have been established to house displaced Tamils in Vavuniya and Mannar districts. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph (Feb 14, 2009), these villages ‘‘will be compulsory holding centres for all civilians fleeing the fighting’’. Is this a euphemism for concentration camps? The former foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Mangala Samaraveera, told The Daily Telegraph: ‘‘A few months ago the government started registering all Tamils in Colombo on the grounds that they could be a security threat, but this could be exploited for other purposes like the Nazis in the 1930s. They’re basically going to label the whole civilian Tamil population as potential terrorists.’’

Given its stated objective of ‘‘wiping out’’ the LTTE, this malevolent collapse of civilians and ‘‘terrorists’’ does seem to signal that the government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide. According to a UN estimate several thousand people have already been killed. Thousands more are critically wounded. The few eyewitness reports that have come out are descriptions of a nightmare from hell. What we are witnessing, or should we say, what is happening in Sri Lanka and is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war. The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is being able to commit these crimes actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice, which is precisely what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the first place. That racism has a long history, of social ostracisation, economic blockades, progroms and torture. The brutal nature of the decades-long civil war, which started as a peaceful, non-violent protest, has its roots in this.

Why the silence? In another interview Mangala Samaraveera says, ‘‘A free media is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka today.’’ ‘This concern has not travelled to India’

Samaraveera goes on to talk about death squads and ‘white van abductions’, which have made society ‘‘freeze with fear’’. Voices of dissent, including those of several journalists, have been abducted and assassinated. The International Federation of Journalists accuses the government of Sri Lanka of using a combination of anti-terrorism laws, disappearances and assassinations to silence journalists.

There are disturbing but unconfirmed reports that the Indian government is lending material and logistical support to the Sri Lankan government in these crimes against humanity. If this is true, it is outrageous. What of the governments of other countries? Pakistan? China? What are they doing to help, or harm the situation?

In Tamil Nadu the war in Sri Lanka has fueled passions that have led to more than 10 people immolating themselves. The public anger and anguish, much of it genuine, some of it obviously cynical political manipulation, has become an election issue.

It is extraordinary that this concern has not travelled to the rest of India. Why is there silence here? There are no ‘white van abductions’ — at least not on this issue. Given the scale of what is happening in Sri Lanka, the silence is inexcusable. More so because of the Indian government’s long history of irresponsible dabbling in the conflict, first taking one side and then the other. Several of us including myself, who should have spoken out much earlier, have not done so, simply because of a lack of information about the war.

So while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country. It’s a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it’s too late.


Arundhati Roy in an article for TOI

China: Death for two in tainted milk case - When do we see such headlines in India?

A Chinese court has handed down death sentences to two men implicated in a tainted-milk scandal that killed at least six infants and sickened hundreds of thousands of others.

The Intermediate People's Court in Shijiazhuang issued the first verdicts in a nationwide scandal surrounding milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.

Two men, Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, were sentenced to death. Zhang ran a workshop that allegedly was China's largest source of melamine used in the tainted dairy products. Geng was convicted of producing and selling toxic foodstuffs.

The court sentenced Tian Wenhua, the former head of the dairy company at the center of the scandal, to life in prison and fined her nearly $4 million. She was found guilty of making and selling fake or substandard products.

Her company, the now-bankrupt Sanlu Group, was fined more than $7 million. Six other former Sanlu executives were sentenced to jail, for five to 15 years.

The court had announced it would also sentence 21 defendants implicated in the scandal later.

Some parents are disappointed that no Chinese officials have had to face formal charges.

The scandal involving tainted milk broke in September, although Sanlu authorities knew of problems with their company's products months earlier.

Middlemen who sold milk to dairy companies had watered down the raw milk and then mixed it with melamine, which gives an artificially high reading for protein.

Melamine is normally used to make plastics and fertilizer. If ingested in large amounts, it can cause kidney stones and kidney failure. The Ministry of Health said it was likely the tainted milk scandal with Sanlu Group at its centre killed at least six babies. Another 2,96,000 infants suffered kidney stone and urinary problems.


When would we see such quick judgments against corruption happening in India?


Cross posted from Indian Medicos 

Free Tibet!

A casual train conversation that turned into a full fledged political discussions on Tibet... I promised to blog about it so here goes...

• Tibetans travel through the passes of Himalayas to reach India via Nepal illegally in search of a better future/education.
• They have a 'Government-in exile' in Dharmashala, Himachal Pradesh headed by the Dalai Lama
• The Government-in exile has various departments much like our own. For example the education department allots Tibetan students to study at various educational institutions across the country. Chennai has 120!
• Apart from Himachal Pradesh Tibetans live in a few large Refugee camps around the country in places like New Delhi, Karnataka etc
• Children make the treacherous trip via the mountains to reach India to study. They don't see their parents for years together. They have a school in Mussorie where they study and move on to colleges. They can return to the school even during their college holidays!
• Though all Graduates dream of returning to return to Tibet, many choose to work for the Government in Exile in India.
• When the Dalai Lama dies he'll leave a clue as to where his next incarnation would be and the Tibetans will have to go an identify the child.
• Next in hierarchy to the Dalai Lama is the Panchen Lama, the real Panchen Lama was a 5 year old kid when he and his family 'disappeared'!
• Now there's a Chinese government 'installed' Panchen Lama who is doing the rounds in Tibet. He gives 'religious sermons' which at least one person from every family has to attend.
• Considering the Dalai Lama is the only potent force for the Tibetans, wonder what the Chinese will do to the child who gets identified as the next Dalai Lama
• They're happy to have self rule within the Chinese framework
• They're happy with India's neutral stance. But an aggressive posturing from India is like their main hope!
• The Yummy part: There's just one Tibetan run Tibetan restaurant in Chennai, Mount Kailash, near Loyola. Recco: The mo-mo :D

I'm sure at least half of this is news to most people!

India in Isolation

The largest democracy in the World, surrounded by chaos. How long can we live in isolation as our neighbours continue to suffer?

Afghanistan, continues to reel under Talibanisation years after the Talibans were driven out of most of their land by the Americans. The Americans are fighting those they armed to drive out the Soviets.
Pakistan has spent more years under military rule than in Democracy, a heavy price to pay for maintaining a huge army to match India. Wouldn't peace between brothers have done a lot more good?
Nepal in Transition... Democracy without elections. Maoists in power. A king without a Kingdom.
Tibet where's that? Can China's importance and might make us forget the aspirations of this forgotten country and it's people?
Bhutan, peaceful, yet a blast from the past.
Burma under Military rule for Decades. How long will India take the side of the Military rulers? If peace loving monks can protest and die for democracy, can't India lift a finger to help?
Sri Lanka, the war wages on. Once bitten twice shy but can't we mediate peace?
Bangladesh, the only place where Military rule is probably doing some good... rooting out corrupt politicians. Why aren't we more friendly with these people? Why do they provide haven for terrorists who harm us?

Does a country of a Billion that ignores it's neighbours deserves a Permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council by right of it's size alone?
Is the American way of 'fighting' for Democracy wrong?
Is the Indian way of remaining a mute spectator right?

A new Hippocratic Oath

All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.” Doctors have to take the Hippocratic Oath, named after Hippokrates of Kos (460-370 BCE). No one knows whether the Hippocratic Corpus of seventy medical works, which includes the Oath, was actually authored by Hippokrates or his students. Nor is the classic Oath, with references to Greek gods and goddesses like Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia (from whom we get the word hygiene) and Panacea invoked now. Instead, we have modern versions based on a Geneva Declaration of 1948; references to spreading abroad have been excised. In aftermath of the attempted Glasgow bombing, doctors figure prominently among suspects; doctors from India.True, we have no more than the finger of suspicion now. But let’s not forget our Omar Khayyam. “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash a word out of it.” Proven or not, the finger of suspicion may land on several Indian self-perceptions.

One of them, of course, is about India and terror import-export. India imports terror, is a victim of it, has been the national perception. Will that change if global perceptions change. Related to that is a crucial economic question, which also engenders a self-perception, we are first rate pool for global skill migration. Every year, around 270,000 emigrants leave India. That is 3 per cent of global migrant population. In 2006, India’s migrants sent home an estimated $26.9 billion, 3.3 per cent of GDP; 15 million Indians live abroad.These emigrants are of different types and professional emigration to Britain, the US, Canada or Australia is not quite the same as relatively lower skilled emigration to the Middle East. Within the medical fraternity, 59,095 doctors work abroad, primarily in the four countries mentioned: 4.9 per cent of total doctors in the US are Indians, 10.9 per cent in Britain.

Migration, of course, is coterminus with the beginning of human evolution, people have always moved elsewhere in search of better resources and opportunities. There is push of lack of opportunities in the homeland and pull of better prospects in the new home. No one can object to doctors emigrating (only a few return), even if the desire for greater prosperity is sometimes cloaked as desire for specialised training. If supply-side adjustments in medical training occur (a big if), there is plenty more in the labour pool to compensate for the 1,500 or so who exit every year. But there is one caveat. Every doctor trained in India receives $40,000 in public subsidies. We should eliminate these. As long as subsidies remain, shouldn’t we insist on a payback before emigration?

There may be tighter controls on immigration post-Glasgow. But the West has no option. Net welfare gains from immigration are obvious. Add to that labour shortages and the ageing population in developed countries. The social security system remains financially viable only if a steady stream of relatively young and highly skilled workers (professional category) joins the labour force to pay premiums. If such populations are not available at home, they can only come from abroad. That is the general point.

More specifically, medical systems (like National Health Service or NHS in Britain) will simply collapse. Incidentally, this is the 60th anniversary of NHS and a complete review of NHS has just been announced, under the chairmanship of Sir Ara Darzi. One doubts that Darzi Committee will recommend the impossible, complete replacement of foreign doctors in NHS by the indigenous variety. Instead, because the West is now justifiably paranoid about security and terrorist threats, there will be tighter controls, not just on transit through airports, but also on relatively permanent immigration. And almost inevitably, this will involve stereotyping, labelling and generalisation, based on ethnicity and racial profiling. This already existed implicitly and de facto. Glasgow contributes towards making it explicit and de jure.

One wants to keep out the undesired and allow in the desired, reducing probability of risk to zero. But that is not how it works. Collateral damage will occur by keeping out some with no ulterior motives, simply because they fit stereotypes. There is nothing Indian government can do and perhaps this is a good thing, given subsidies on doctors and shortage in numbers. Simultaneously, entry barriers won’t necessarily keep out the undesired. The ones under suspicion now would probably have slipped through filters, because they are people like us. Before the event, who would have suspected doctors, of the medical or dissertation varieties?

That apart, there are instances of discontent within British and American nationals. It is not as if the indigenous population is risk-free. Where does that leave us? Perhaps one should go back to Hippokrates. At that time, the dominant Knidian school of medicine was based on diagnosis and because knowledge of human anatomy was imperfect, this was often wrong. The Hippocratic or Koan school turned out to be superior because it used prognosis. Knee-jerk reactions to terrorism, inevitable though they may be, hinge on diagnosis, not prognosis.

Perhaps, the new Middle Eastern Peace Envoy, who happened to be an ex-British prime minister, should find a solution. Palestine and India were divided along religious lines by the British almost 60 years ago, roughly when NHS was also set up.

From The Indian Express

Five years after 9/11 - The Xenophobic world we live in

It just took two towers (9/11), a few trains (7/7) and a foiled plane bombing. Now the western world considers anything that walks on two legs, having a beard, as a terrorist! Call it bigotry, call it Islamaphobia, call it whatever, it's sad and troubling how broad minded our human race has become!

Only last month a flight was forced to return to the Amsterdam airport escorted by fighter jets when travellers got Xenophobic and suspected their co-passengers of being terrorists. The pitiable suspects turned out to be Indian businessmen, who happened to be Muslims. (Link)

Now Scotland Yard has admitted it is profiling thousands of UK Muslims and is carrying out a close surveillance of the activities of these potential 'terrorists' (Link)

While the West continues it's obsession with it's flawed 'War on Terror' program, that ignores the root cause of the problem. The terrorists continue to indulge in arbitrary slaughter in the name of jihad. Thousands of human lives have been lost, mostly innocent, yet the Vicious cycle continues with no end in sight.

Last month, I too became a terrorist inadvertently...!!! Read more about it on www.Chennaiist.com, a new group Blog where I contribute. Chennaiist, is all about Chennai, the City I live in and love the most!