"Sri Lanka's forgotten conflict July 17, 2008
PARTISANS of human rights have been rightly outraged this year by the behavior of ruthless regimes in Burma, Zimbabwe, and Sudan. But when the government of Sri Lanka was stripped of its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council this spring - a body that includes Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Russia among its members - hardly anyone noticed, outside of the small community of human-rights organizations.
This inattention has a price. It means there is scant outside pressure on President Mahinda Rajapakse to protect civilians caught up in a vicious war between the army and separatist guerrillas known as the Tamil Tigers. Tamil civilians in the northern Jaffna peninsula are exposed to indiscriminate bombing and artillery shelling, and a strict army pass system keeps much of the civilian population from escaping.
Human Rights Watch has called on the government to stop the arbitrary detention of Tamil civilians, who have been held in a kind of concentration camp in the north. "The Sri Lankan government shouldn't treat civilians as criminals just because they're fleeing a conflict area," said a recent statement from the group's Asia director.
China and competing Asian powers India and Pakistan could help end the conflict. But they have been more interested in doing business in Sri Lanka and securing geopolitical influence there - just as they have in Burma and elsewhere. The solution to Sri Lanka's conflict must be political, not military. Rajapakse should be encouraged to strike a deal that grants Tamils substantial autonomy in their own homeland areas. If not, the war will drag on, and Sri Lanka's government may find itself classified alongside the regimes in Burma, Zimbabwe, and Sudan as an international pariah."You men, like USrael?
And here is the silence I was talking about:
"UN warns Somali crisis could rival '92-93 famine"
by Daniel Wallis
NAIROBI, July 15 (Reuters) - The killing and kidnapping of aid workers in Somalia threatens to wreck all attempts to resolve a humanitarian disaster that could soon rival its famine in the early 1990s, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
One million Somalis have been forced from their homes by the latest bloodshed -- their situation is worsened by banditry, drought, high food and fuel prices and inflation. Hundreds of displaced Somali women and children protested outside their squalid camps near Mogadishu against the attacks, fearing they will worsen their already dire plight.
"Those killing aid workers are indirectly exterminating us," protester Asha Abdullahi told Reuters. "We have not seen any aid workers since yesterday. Our water reservoirs are almost empty. We fear dying of thirst and hunger."
Suspicion for the killings and kidnappings usually falls on the al-Shabaab, Islamist rebels waging an Iraq-style insurgency against the government and its Ethiopian allies. But there is confusion over the identities of those behind the recent murders. Leaflets circulated in the Shibis area of the capital last week threatened local aid workers with death if they did not publicly resign from the jobs.
Although supposedly from an insurgent group, they used no Islamist phrases. The Islamists have accused government hardliners of ordering the latest killings to spur the international community into sending a robust peacekeeping force to help it stay in power.
Yeah, that's what I thought when I saw the brief!
--MORE--"
Now keep in mind, readers, the agenda-pushing AmeriKan MSM don't seem to concerned about Somalia or Ethiopia.
It's o.k. to approve weapons shipments to a war-criminal government!!!
Look, I don't think any one should suffer in this world, but I OBJECT to the DEMONIZING and AGENDA-PUSHING -- especially when some war criminals are OUR FRIEND.
I guess it is the hypocrisy, duplicity and agenda-pushing that that bug me the most, readers.
