Friday November 20, 2009, 7:06 pm
Very sad news. I hope the get their freedom and help that comes from us TAKING ACTION somehow. Is there a way?

Friday November 20, 2009, 7:46 pm
Hi Alicia :)

Of course there are ways! : ) We can educate ourselves and other people about the issue, join or create human rights organisations and progressive political parties that campaign about this issue, and so on....

Saturday November 21, 2009, 2:33 am
It looks like the rest of the world, the European-descended, have forgotten the Tamil people, or want to forget them.

'“People smugglers” help facilitate the passage of those, like many Tamils in Sri Lanka, who are desperate to seek asylum elsewhere.

Ironically, while the government and media portray those facilitating passage for Tamils seeking to leave Sri Lanka as terrible criminals, the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has been accompanied by the celebration of “people smugglers” from a different time and place.

It seems “people smuggling” is justified if you oppose the regime desperate people seek to flee, but a great crime if you side with that regime — as the Rudd government has done with Sri Lanka.

In fact, the agreement Smith signed with the Sri Lankan government actually commits Australia to assisting the persecution of Tamils.'

Saturday November 21, 2009, 3:45 am
One would think the human race might learn! Seems there are concentration camps in many places these days. I often wonder why the powers that be have not destroyed humans a long time ago!

Saturday November 21, 2009, 4:48 am
This is the kind of news that makes one person want to take action for it! I will do what I can to help Simon, great suggestions btw...thank you for caring for all causes sweetie ~

Keep the peace ~
FreeSpirit...

Saturday November 21, 2009, 12:18 pm
India has more than 1 billion people,
and they use their Navy to keep out
3,700 asylum-seekers?
1 billion people, and India can't take in the
250,000 Tamils in the concentration camps?

Simon, it takes a dedicated and principled man
(which you are) to make public this kind of negative
information about his own country.
Big kudos to you, my friend, and keep it up! :-)
noted.

Saturday November 21, 2009, 9:26 pm
Good on you for noting this article and writing comments, mis amig@s. : )

Saturday November 21, 2009, 9:27 pm
(mis amig@s = my friend's ; ) )

Saturday November 21, 2009, 9:32 pm
Marty wrote: "One would think the human race might learn! Seems there are concentration camps in many places these days."

Yes : ( Let's campaign to free all the people from concentration camps! : )

"I often wonder why the powers that be have not destroyed humans a long time ago!"

Assuming you mean "the powers that be" are the capitalist ruling class: well, they don't want to destroy the rest of us - they want to exploit us, to maximise their wealth and power. Without the working class, the capitalist class would not be rich, nor stay rich. They would not have limousine drivers, waiters, chefs, servants, cooks, nannies, people to produce food, clothes, houses, yachts, jets, helicopters, etc., for them.

Sunday November 22, 2009, 12:00 am
This is terrible. :-(

Sunday November 22, 2009, 10:13 pm
Some choose to forget for over 25 years, the insurgency carried out by the Tamil Tigers brought significant hardships for the population the environment and the economy of the country with over 90,000 people officially listed as killed.
The deaths include 27,639 Tamil fighters, more than 23,327 Sri Lankan soldiers and policemen, 1,155 Indian soldiers, and tens of thousands of civilians.
This same group (officially listed as terrorists in 32 countries) deliberately targeted policemen, soldiers politicians, they massacred civilians, carried out suicide attacks using trucks packed with explosives and were found guilty of the assassination.of Rajiv Gandhi.
As far as the so called concentration camps.
The editor of The Hindu, N. Ram, described Menik Farm:
“Conditions in these camps are much better than has been depicted, this is not to say that Menik Farm is a Club Med, but it isn’t Belsen either. The Sri Lankan government is meeting basic needs, including education for children and vocational training for youths.
The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, described a previous resettlement of 2,231 to seven villages in the Musali division in the southern part of Mannar district, which at one time was controlled by the Tamil Tigers: “The government has applied good practices in I.D.P. return. ... The process was carried out in safety and dignity.”
The government says it will take at least six months to make the areas from which I.D.P.s (Internally Displaced Persons) fled habitable again. The Tamil Tigers littered the area with land mines. Houses need to be rebuilt and other facilities provided: The Tamil Tigers controlled the area but neglected the infrastructure.
A very familiar scenario to all terrorist organisations, screw the ordinary citizen, screw the infrastructure, screw everything while we make heroes of ourselves by murdering, maiming and causing destruction. No different to hamarse in Gaza.
I’m not saying all Tamils are terrorists but we in Australia do not want even one terrorist imported here and the best way to ensure that is to use the systems we have in place for legal entry to the country not by the back door.
If they have nothing to hide they should have no hesitation in applying for residency like everyone else does.

Monday November 23, 2009, 12:09 am
In response to what Merv wrote, I write this:

First of all, persecuted people in Sri Lanka (or any other oppressive country) cannot safely apply "for residency [in Australia] like everyone else does". Think about it. This doesn't need explanation for those who use their brains.

Secondly, the Sri Lankan state is much more terrorist than the Tamil Tigers- you can see this by looking at how many deaths and how much suffering each side caused. The Sri Lankan state caused many more deatsh and much more suffering, and that fact is only ignored by those people who believe the propaganda spread by the capitalist media (which has the exploitative agenda of the megarich owners of private media corporations, and the megarich people who dominate government media by dominating the political system through their ownership of most non-government media, through their funding of capitalist piolitical parties, through economic pressure - e.g. the threat of moving factories to other countries, and so on).

As for the concentration camps, the evidence is clear, and the capitalist media ignores it, and writes lies that whitewash Sri Lanka's concentration camps, as you posted above. Just a hint: if the camps were so great, they wouldn't need to use barbed wire and the threat of violence to keep people in them. That alone is a grave violation of the human rights of hundreds of thousands of people. Only fascists ignore such human rights violations.

And only hypocrits are against immigrants coming to Australia, because that is how they and their ancestors got here - against the will of the Indigenous people!!! If the new immigrants don't belong here, then NEITHER DO YOU!!!

When the rich and powerful choose to oppress an ethnic group, some people choose to blame any conflict and suffering caused by that conflict on those who resist that oppression. Some people ignore the fact that regardless of whether any brave souls resist the oppression or not, the oppressors would oppress people, and DO oppress people.

This happened when the Europeans colonised of the Americas and Australia. This happened when the nazis oppressed the Jewish people, Rom ("Gypsies") and Eastern Europeans. And this is happening in Sri Lanka right now!!!

Monday November 23, 2009, 12:11 am
The true human rights activist is willing to criticise and change their own country, for human rights.

Monday November 23, 2009, 12:38 am
Simon, if you have the courage to take your blinkers off and put your conspiracy theories to one side for just a moment I dare you to have a look at this link on Wikipedia at the atrocities the scum you are defending carried out against innocents including women, children and babies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_attributed_to_the_LTTE#Deadliest_attacks

Yeah I suppose you will find another conspiracy theory explaining why all these recorded events didn't really happen. What do you suggest maybe the Sri Lankan government and Wikipedia conspired to put this information forward. Believe that and you are much more gullible than you have already displayed.
And Simon "Human Rights" are only available to those who respect others human rights. You go have a look at the depths of depravity your tigers sunk to just because they couldn't get their own way so went on a 25 year murder spree...and you Simon are defending that.

Monday November 23, 2009, 4:40 am
Merv, I don't have any blinkers on. You claimI do? Well the burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim, Merv. So come on, prove I have "blinkers on", if you can... but you can't!!! :P

I don't believe in any conspiracy theories. As Noam Chomsky showed in the award-winning documentary "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (which was the highest grossing documentary of all time until "Bowling for Columbine"), when we want to show that the capitalist media works for the agenda of those who own and control it, there is no need for conspiracy theories. To claim that the capitalist media works for them needs no more proof than the claim that McDonalds works for the owners of McDonalds.

You can see the agenda of the capitalist class owners of corporations when you read the writings that they write and read (e.g. the nature of the corporate institution [to serve shareholders], corporate plans ["maximise profits by taking over rival corporations and eliminating laws and labour unions hat limit profits to the shareholders"], business newspapers and U.S. government documents, the publications of PNAC, etc.)

Also, other proof for what I say is easy to find. A great place to start is that documentary ("Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media"), or the book which part of it is based upon ("Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman). I also recommend the documentaries: "The Corporation", "Outfoxed", "Weapons of Mass Deception", and John Pilger's "War on Democracy" and "The People's Pimp"section of Michael Moore's series "The Awful Truth".

Plus the pamphlet "The Communist Manifesto", and the book "Capital", by Marx and Engels, plus "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn, and just about anything by Noam Chomsky.

You can find plenty more, but I gave the above sources to make it easier for you.

As for the wikipedia thing... well, I can demolish that point in many ways.

First of all, wikipedia is notoriously easy for propagandists to manipulate, by making a coordinated campaign of many activists, as has been done by pro-Israel activists, for example (and this is no "conspiracy theory" - it is written about in pro-Israel activists' OWN WEBSITES).

Secondly, the sources for the information written in wikipedia is generally the same capitalist propaganda from the capitalist media which, as I have shown, has such a blatant self-serving agenda, that it lacks all credibility. It also comes from other sources without credibility, such as the propaganda publications from capitalist governments, and organisations that receive funding from capitalist governments and/or from corporations.

Thirdly, I never claimed that the Tamil Tigers are angels. I simply said that the Sri Lankan government are worse terrorists than the Tamil Tigers. The evidence for that is clear in UN documents, and other more neutral sources of statistics. And when pro-Sri Lanka writings shows this, too, well, then they have no reason to make themselves look BAD for propaganda purposes, do they?

I have not bothered to look at what wikipedia says about the comparative numbers of people killed, etc., by each side in Sri Lanka, for the above reasons, and also because pro-Sri Lanka people (e.g. the Sri Lankan government) could easily delete the writings on wikipedia that show the atrocities that they have done.

When I want information, I trust my friends who have dedicated their lives to human rights (this mainly means my socialist comrades), because it is only they who have told the truth about political events that I have attended, while the capitalist media has the above lack of credibility, plus from personal experience, I know it to have consistently lied about the political events that I have attended. E.g. I participated in numerous demonstrations that were peaceful civil disobedience actions for human rights, and were violently broken up by police... and the capitalist media claimed each time that we demonstrators were "violent", and that "the police stopped the violence".

I have no patience for your lying media and its propaganda that scapegoats and slanders me and my peaceful human rights activist friends, and that whitewashes the violence of the thugs ("police") of the rich and powerful against us. That media basically does what Goebbels' propaganda machine did for nazi Germany,

Merv wrote: ""Human Rights" are only available to those who respect others human rights. "

Maybe that is true in your fascist worldview, but according to the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights are UNIVERSAL.

So... apparently you reckon that hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians are "guilty" and "should" be locked up in concentration camps, imprisoned without trial, for what some Tamil Tigers did? That sounds like the way Hitler put the huge numbers of Jewish people in concentration camps, for what a few Jewish people did.

Only fascist-minded people support your propaganda.

And now you accuse me of defending terrorism, because I explained that the Sri Lankan state have done more terrorism than the Tamil Tigers? THAT IS ILLOGICAL. You accused me of supporting terrorism!!! And what you did was a personal attack and slander against me.

Keep your deranged accusations to yourself, Merv.

Monday November 23, 2009, 4:45 am
I defend human rights. I do not support terrorism (attacks against civilians).

When people make up rubbish propaganda against that claims that I support terrorism, they show that they have no credible arguments on the topic I had been expounding upon.

Monday November 23, 2009, 4:46 am
I defend human rights. I do not support terrorism (attacks against civilians).

When people make up rubbish propaganda against me that claims that I "support terrorism", they show that their arguments are all hot air.

Monday November 23, 2009, 7:44 am
Thannnxxx.. civilians should not be drawn into the horrors of war or suffer the consequences of it... justice should be done for these people, but there is far toooo much complacency in the world and these hardships tend to be put onto the back burner

Monday November 23, 2009, 2:33 pm
You're welcome, Chaz : )

Good on you for posting here : )