The two photographs in the front page of today’s The Hindu stares so hard at me, I have problem in thinking anything else. I feel ashamed to be branded as a human alongside so many other humans who lack humane qualities. The photograph is of Balachandran Prabhakaran, son of Veluppillai Prabhakaran the dead leader of LTTE, a now extinct terrorist organization in Sri Lanka fighting for the cause of the Tamil population in a rather violent way. In the final days of the armed conflict between the Sri Lankan army and what was left of the once mighty LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran had been hunted across the LTTE controlled territory. A lot of civilians were reportedly shot and killed during this time by a desperate Sri Lankan Army, for information and to lure Prabhakaran out. Finally, they rounded off Prabhakaran and shot him and his aides in a conflict which resulted in heavy casualties on both sides.
The 12 year old son of the Tamil rebel Velupillai Prabhakaran in a Sri Lankan Army bunker before getting shot and killed by the Army.
Balachandran Prabhakaran’s body with shot wounds to his chest had made international news and the Sri Lankan armed forces had said that it happened during cross-fire. Now Channel 4 in the U.K. has released new pictures of the 12 year old boy, safely sitting in an army bunker, eating a snack. The pictures are said to be taken during the closing stages of the Sri Lankan civil war. The images will be aired as part of a documentary No Fire Zone, which will be screened at the Geneva Human Rights Film Festival during the UN Human Rights Council meeting in March.
Prabhakaran in November 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A forensic pathologist, who examined the later images for the film-makers, said the boy was shot five times in the chest. Furthermore, propellant burns around the wound suggest he was shot at very close range. {independent.co.uk}
The photographs shames as well as intrigues me. There are human rights violations happening all over the globe and that is a fact that we have to face. But what would prompt a disciplined army of a democratic nation to kill a 12 year old boy just because he was the son of a rebel leader is something I don’t understand. They wanted to make sure that any form of resistance/revenge would not happen in the future? That they went to these depths would make the now crushed Tamilian population afraid of forming any sort of armed rebellion in the future? I was an admirer of the President Rajapakse because of the way he ended the long conflict in the island nation. I liked the speech he gave when he visited India after the end of the war. But, this incident has taken my respect away. U.N reports apparently show 40,000 civilians tortured and killed by the Sri Lankan army during the conflict. LTTE has terrorized the Lankans for a long time, bombing their ministers and crippling their economy and infrastructure. It was only natural that the Lankans snapped and bit back… But, the unethical way in which they handled the whole situation has to be condemned.
- Manu
P.S: For more details about this, see here.
Related articles
- The killing of a young boy (thehindu.com)
- UK sells arms to Sri Lanka’s brutal regime (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)
- Michelle Obama Asked to Help Tamil Women in Northeastern Sri Lanka (prweb.com)
- Sri Lankan inquiry says army did not shell civilians (worldbulletin.net)
- Revealed: UK sells arms to Sri Lanka’s brutal regime (oneislandtwonationsblogspotcom.typepad.com)
- Letter from the grave (newyorker.com)
