Muttukrishna Sarvananthan in Sri Lanka's Sunday Leader:
Most of what M.I.A. said about the civil war in Sri Lanka during the course of the aforementioned interview was misinformation at best, blatant lies at worse, either due to ignorance or deceit. “It is ironic that I am the only Tamil, turned out to be the only voice for the Tamil people in the Western media” thundered M.I.A., a claim that smacks of self indulgence and echoes the claim of the LTTE that it is the sole representative of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. A claim accepted by very few Tamils in Sri Lanka or in the diasporas.
“There is a genocide going on, systematic genocide since 1983, Tamils being 20 percent of the population getting wiped out. 350,000 stuck in the battle zone getting wiped out. There are 4,000 Tamil Tiger soldiers but the Sri Lankan government, a million soldiers big, wants to wipe out the whole Tamil population,” claims the self-appointed spokesperson and saviour of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
I can forgive M.I.A. for her lack of understanding of the meaning of 'genocide' because she is not educated enough to understand such terms. I can refer her to an elaborate recent interview with Dr. Franklin Lamb by International Lawyers Without Borders. According to a statement issued by the United Nations on February 16, 2009, the LTTE is abusing Tamil civilians in the conflict zone as a human shield and shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee the conflict zone.
The UN also highlighted the fact that children under the age of 14 are forcibly recruited by the LTTE to fight this futile war. Is not the sacrifice of the Tamil children for a lost cause, a genocide of the next generation of the Tamil community?
More here.