Sri Lankan Exodus Continues

Caught between the shooting lion and wounded tigers

Thousands more civilians surged out of Sri Lanka’s war zone

Sri Lankan war in endgame, 81,000 escape rebel zone

COLOMBO, April 22 (Reuters) – Thousands more civilians surged out of Sri Lanka’s war zone on Wednesday, while soldiers and Tamil Tiger rebels fought the apparent endgame of Asia’s longest-running war despite calls to protect those still trapped.

In this handout photograph released by the Sri Lankan navy on April 21, 2009 shows what the military says is thousands of people fleeing an area by boats from a beach controlled by the Tamil Tiger separatists in northeastern Sri Lanka. Thousands more civilians surged out of Sri Lanka’s war zone on Wednesday, while soldiers and Tamil Tiger rebels fought the apparent endgame of Asia’s longest-running war despite calls to protect those still trapped. In the third day since troops blasted through a massive earthen wall built by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and unleashed the exodus, the military said 81,420 people had been registered for onward transit to refugee camps. REUTERS/Sri Lankan Government Handout.

In the third day since troops blasted through a massive earthen wall built by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and unleashed the exodus, the military said 81,420 people had been registered for onward transit to refugee camps.

The massive civilian presence in a 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) area had been the last crucial defense for the Tigers, who have refused repeated calls from the United Nations, Western governments and neighboring India to release them.

Sri Lanka’s government has meanwhile rejected LTTE and international calls for a truce, saying it cannot allow a group designated as a terrorist organization by more than 30 countries to use the time to rearm, as it has done in the past.

By Wednesday morning, troops had captured about a third of the remaining Tiger-held area, which had been an army-declared no-fire zone until soldiers marched in and turned it into the conflict’s final conventional battlefield after people fled.

“Confrontations are taking place. Whenever we come across LTTE cadres, we are fighting them. The rescue operation is continuing,” military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Defensespokesman Keheliya Rambukwella later told a media briefing troops had taken control of about a third of the area, after seizing the center of the north-south strip of coast and dividing the remaining rebel fighters into two pockets. Nanayakkara said 153,000 civilians have fled LTTE areas so far this year.

UN CONFIRMS EXODUS

The United Nations confirmed this week’s outflow.

“It is 60,000 plus and counting, and we have heard various reports of up to 110,000 coming out,” said U.N. spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss. He cautioned the reports were preliminary and not confirmed.

Injured civilians lie on the ground in a make-shift hospital in this photograph released by the pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) group ‘Mercy Mission to Vanni’ on April 20, 2009 showing what they say are wounded civilians who were fleeing from an area still controlled by the LTTE in the ‘No Fire Zone’ near the village of Putumatalan in Puthukkudiyirippu, northeastern Sri Lanka. REUTERS/Mercy Mission to Vanni/Handout (SRI LANKA SOCIETY MILITARY CONFLICT POLITICS) QUALITY FROM SOURCE

So far, only 7,500 had reached refugee centers away from the front in Jaffna and Vavuniya towns, while the rest were in transit, he said.

Aid agencies have warned refugee camp conditions could quickly turn bad with the populations doubling, but Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has ordered extra food and reliefs supplies to be sent.

On Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross had said the war zone situation was “catastrophic”, with several hundred killed since Monday and at least 50,000 more remaining at risk with limited food, water and medical care.

The United Nations and others have accused the LTTE of forcing people to stay in the war zone or making them fight, and the government of shelling civilian areas. Both deny the accusations.

Senior U.S. diplomat Michael Owen urged Sri Lanka to allow the international community to monitor what was happening and assure help for trapped civilians.

“The 26-year-old conflict is at a decisive point and we see the potential for major developments within the next 48 hours,” he told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.

The military operation to rescue the civilians began on Monday and gathered speed on Tuesday after the LTTE ignored a noon deadline to surrender, despite being massively outgunned by a military built up to wipe them out and end the war.

A senior LTTE official hours later said the group would never surrender nor give up its drive to create a separate state for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils, which has percolated since the early 1970s but erupted into full-blown civil war in 1983.

After the conventional end of the war, Sri Lanka will face the challenges of healing divisions between the Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority, and boosting a $40 billion economy suffering on many fronts including a weakening rupee .LKR.

Sri Lanka is seeking a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund loan to ease a balance of payments crisis and boost flagging foreign exchange reserves. (Copyright Reuters)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSCOL188809._CH_.2400

Do the Poor Have Human Rights?

What Has Soaring Food and Fuel Prices Got to Do with Human Rights?

Whose fault is it If the poor can’t afford food? Give them more money and you create a bigger problem: Inflation.

It’s not the job of your government to control these things you know, they have more important things to do: National security and the Economy (!)

The poor don’t come with engines and wheels; you can’t drive them like cars. Why should they get all the grains at dirt cheap prices, when biofuels bring in a decent profit and help turn the wheels?

Neither the UN nor the so-called global relief organizations seem to care about the plight of the world’s poor. So, once again, do the poor have human rights?

Related Links:

• We Need Food!
• Rome food protesters demand rethink (Video report)
• Human right to food denied in Haiti: Preliminary findings of the fact-finding mission

Fueling Food Shortages

Fueling Food Shortages
By Ralph Nader

Where is Harry Chapin when you need him? The popular folk singer (Cat’s in the Cradle), who lost his life in an auto crash 27 years ago, was an indefatigable force of nature against hunger—in this country and around the world.

To hear Harry speak out against the scourge of hunger in a world of plenty was to hear informed passion that was relentless whether on Capitol Hill, at poverty conferences or at his concerts.

Now the specter of world hunger is looming, with sharply rising basic food prices and unnecessary food shortages sparking food riots in places like Haiti and Egypt. Officials with the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) are alarmed. The WFP has put out an emergency appeal for more funds, saying another 100 million humans have been thrown into the desperate hunger pits.

Harry would have been all over the politicians in Congress and the White House who, with their bellies full, could not muster the empathy to do something.

Directly under Bush and the Congress is the authority to reduce the biggest single factor boosting food prices—reversing the tax-subsidized policy of growing ever more corn to turn into fuel at the expense of huge acreages that used to produce wheat, soy, rice and other edibles.

Corn ethanol is a multifaceted monstrosity—radiating damage in all directions of the compass. Reducing acreage for edible crops has sparked a surge in the price of bread and other foodstuffs. Congress and Bush continue to mandate larger amounts of subsidized corn ethanol.

Republican Representative Robert W. Goodlatte says: “The mandate basically says [corn] ethanol comes ahead of food on your table, comes ahead of feed for livestock, comes ahead of grains available for export.”

Corn growing farmers are happy with a bushel coming in at $5 to $6—a record.

A subsidy-laden, once-every-five-years farm bill is winding its way through Congress. The bill keeps the “good-to-fuel” mandates that are expanding corn acreage and contributing to a rise of global food prices.

Of course, more meat diets in China, futures market speculation, higher prices for oil and some bad weather and poor food reserve planning have also contributed to shortages and higher prices.

But subsidized corn ethanol gets the first prize for policy madness. It not only damages the environment, soaks up the water from mid-west aquifers, scuttles set asides for soil conservation, but its net energy equation qualifies for collective insanity on Capitol Hill. To produce a gallon of ethanol from corn requires almost as much energy (mostly coal burning) as it produces.

Designed to alleviate oil imports, hold down gasoline prices and diminish greenhouse gases, corn ethanol has flopped on all three scores.

Princeton scholar Lester Brown, an early sounder of the alarm of global food shortages and higher prices, writes in Science Magazine “that the net impact of the food-to-fuel push will be an increase in global carbon emissions—and thus a catalyst for climate change.”

Can Congress change course and drop its farm subsidy of corn ethanol this year? Observers say, despite the growing calamities and the real risk of severe malnutrition, even starvation in Africa, Congress will do nothing.

Farm subsidies, once installed, are carved in stone—unless there is enough outcry from food consumers, taxpayers and environmentalists. They are paying from the pocketbook, from their taxes and health. That should be enough motivation, unless they need to see the distended stomachs of African and Asian children on the forthcoming television news.

Unless we wake up, we will continue to be a country stuck in traffic—in more ways than one.

Don’t rely on the election year political debates to pay attention to destructive corn ethanol programs. For years I have been speaking out against this boondoggle, while championing the small farmer in America, but no one in positions of Congressional leadership has been listening.

They must be waiting for the situation to get worse before they absorb a fraction of Harry Chapin’s empathy and care.

END.
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