May 14, 2009 Dear Mr. President, We thank you for your speech on the White House lawn yesterday. It is important to acknowledge that bloodbath (as the U.N. calls it) is taking place. The carnage in Sri Lanka goes on. The government forces continue to shell and bomb civilians in what the Sri Lankan government calls the “safe zone.” Hundreds (nobody knows yet just how many) were killed in the “Mother’s Day Massacre,” said the U.N., but medical sources in the “safe zone” say the number was in the thousands. A month ago the U.N. said that 6500 civilians had been killed by the government in the prior 90 days, with another 10,000 injured. That this is just the latest phase of the Sri Lankan government’s sixty-one year campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Sri Lankan Tamils is obvious to us. During your presidential campaign—when moderator Tom Brokaw asked during the debate, for instance--you seemed to promise that the only compelling reason for the U.S. to intervene militarily in a foreign conflict (with no security threat to the U.S.) was genocide. Tamils everywhere in the world heard you and believed you. When you appointed Samantha Power and Susan Rice—both of them familiar with the modern problem of genocide—to positions of visibility and influence, our sprits soared. Now, we Tamils are dismayed and disappointed that genocide is going on in Sri Lanka and ask why you are doing nothing about it. Tamils have written to us here at Tamils for Obama not only asking the above question but also suggesting three ways that the U.S. can take effective steps that are short of American military actions. These are:
Ms. Rice “swore to myself that if I ever faced [mass killings] again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required,” as she was quoted in The Atlantic Monthly in 2001. We have to agree. Dramatic action is required, and the mass killing in Sri Lanka justifies it. Thank you. Sincerely, |