The first trip taken by President Mahinda Rajapaksa after the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) had been crushed was to Burma. On 15 June 2009 he ‘thanked the Government of Myanmar for its support and co-operation to curb the illegal activities of the LTTE’. The two regimes clearly see themselves as having a lot in common – besides a belief in astrology and, not least, the weaponry of their armed forces, much of which comes from China.
This weaponry has now been put to full use in Sri Lanka, where the military defeat of the Tigers may have killed 20,000 civilians, displaced 300,000 into military internment camps and left 9,000 suspected Tigers detained without charge. There are reliable reports that civilians and a field hospital were deliberately bombed or shelled by the Sri Lankan armed forces, which constitutes a crime against humanity.
