tamilweek.com/news-features

by Kotravan

Robert Mackey of New York Times is now the journalist to be continuously vilified by appeasers of the Sri Lankan state atrocities. Robert Mackey wrote a post titled, “Is the World Ignoring Sri Lanka’s Srebrenica?” in The New York Times News blog, The Lede on Apr 17th.

Srebrenica – by Yasin Kocak

Blogger Pradeep Jeganathan in a post has accused Mackey of being “illogical” and “disingenuous” in making the Srebrenica comparison as it is a “deliberate civilian massacre, and has been deemed to be genocide, by the International Court of Justice.”

Government of Sri Lanka and its supporters say there is no mass killings taking place in the country. And the appeasers of Sri Lankan state atrocities have been using from pen to gun to silence the critics of the government.

In January this year, Lasantha Wickramatunga, editor of a Sri Lankan newspaper called the Sunday Leader, was assassinated on his way to work by two gunmen riding motorcycles. The Leader’s investigative reporting had been fiercely critical of the government and of the conduct of its war against Tamil separatists.

Renowned author Arundhati Roy and singer M.I.A Maya Arulpragasam are continued to be demonized on Sri Lankan websites, including that of the Sri Lankan army for speaking about Tamil civilian plight.

In his response to Pradeep Jeganathan, author of the post “Is the World Ignoring Sri Lanka’s Srebrenica?”, Robert Mackey says:

About my “motives”

I posted a further clarification of what the question asked in the headline of the blog post I wrote means to many journalists and aid workers who were in Bosnia at the time that Srebrenica was allowed to fall. You can read that addendum to my post, and accept that the word means different things to different people, or not, but I find your wild accusation that some sort of racism is behind what I wrote really baseless. You really have no idea what my background or perspective is, and yet you feel comfortable launching into this personal and insulting attack on me and hinting about my “motives.”

Failure of the United Nations to protect the U.N.-designated “safe areas”

People who were very close witnesses to the failure of the United Nations to protect the U.N.-designated “safe areas” in Bosnia may have a different perspective on what happened there than people who were not, but to assume that the only possible meaning of the word Srebrenica now is shorthand for “genocide” is beneath someone of your education.

Against the killing of innocent civilians

I have one bias here: against the killing of innocent civilians in any war zone. And maybe a second one: against the allowing of it by the international community. But having grown up partly in Northern Ireland and lived and worked in former Yugoslavia with refugees from the conflict during it, I am aware that it is hard to say anything about a conflict like this without being misunderstood by some or most people deeply invested in it.

Different meanings for many different people

Lastly Srebrenica is not in fact a code word for genocide: it is a place, with a history that has many different meanings for many different people. If that were not so, it would not have ended up being the site of a multifaceted tragedy.