Stewart Bell | National Post
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A Canadian, she sometimes thought about how her family would take it if she died. But she got lucky. By the time the shell fragment hit her, it had lost its force. It burnt away her skin but otherwise she was alright.
“Every life is precious and that is why I really hope that no more lives are taken away in a war,” the Canadian told the National Post. (She asked that her name not be published due to fears about the safety of her family.)
A United Nations report has corroborated her account of wanton shelling during the final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka, where she got trapped by fighting and survived for months until making her escape.
The report by a UN panel says there are credible allegations the Sri Lankan military used “large-scale and widespread shelling” between September 2008 and May 2009, causing “large numbers of civilian deaths.”
It says government forces shelled “on a large scale” in the no fire zones that had been demarked for civilians fleeing the fighting — and where the Canadian had her close brush with a shell on May 4, 2009.
According to the report, the government shelled the UN, food distribution lines and hospitals. “Most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling,” the report says.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ordered the controversial study last year. He appointed a panel of experts to look into whether war crimes were committed at the end of the Sri Lankan conflict.
The panel’s 196-page report, made public Monday, concludes that, despite the government’s claim it adhered to a “zero human casualty” policy, Sri Lankan forces may have violated international law.
The government not only shelled civilians, the report says, it also denied humanitarian aid to those caught in the war zone, detained survivors in overcrowded camps and silenced the media and critics with threats, abductions and killings.
For their part, the LTTE rebels used civilians as human shields, shot those who tried to flee, fired heavy weapons from civilian areas, recruited children, made civilians dig trenches and killed civilians in suicide attacks, the report says.
“Even when civilian casualties rose significantly the LTTE refused to let people leave, hoping that the worsening situation would provoke an international intervention and a halt to the fighting,” it says.
The government, which did not cooperate with the investigation, has denied the allegations. But the Canadian said the UN got it right. She said she was among hundreds of thousands of civilians who made their way to the no fire zones only to face daily shelling.
She said she helped out at a hospital.
“Every day, every minute, volunteers would bring in truckloads of bodies, some injured, some dead. I was in the admission area initially trying to attend to their first-aid needs and later in the theatre. Deaths were to be reported in a book but sometimes it was too many, we would not even have the time to write down the name of the dead in the hospital registry book.
“Children as young as four months were brought in. Mothers with fractured limbs, head wounds, bullet wounds from bullets flying from the frontline, which was only a kilometre away,” she said. “Even at the hospital, shells were continuously fired.
“We lied down inside the theatre room or admission room, wherever we were, hoping that the shrapnel pieces wouldn’t hit us. Many civilians who were already wounded were wounded again in the shelling inside the hospital premises. Doctors were killed while attending to patients.”
The woman said she hoped the UN report would not be shelved. “I just hope that the report is not another eyewash by the international community and I really hope that something constructive will be done for the reconciliation of these people.”
© National Post
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