Shavendra Silva war claim on Sri Lanka’s final battle revives debate over civilian rescue, LTTE hostages and global narratives.
Shavendra Silva war claim during yesterday’s Big Focus programme has reopened discussion on Sri Lanka’s final phase of the war and its global narrative.
At one point during the programme, Shavendra Silva said he had met General Kalkat during a military course in India in 2015.
He was most likely referring to Amarjeet Singh Kalkat.
Kalkat was one of the most highly decorated officers in the Indian Army and was also involved in “Operation Pawan,” the Indian military operation carried out in Sri Lanka during the intervention of the Indian Peace Keeping Force.
What Shavendra Silva said was that someone like Kalkat had reportedly stated that the operation carried out during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s war, known as the Humanitarian Operation, was the largest hostage rescue mission in world history.
That operation involved rescuing hundreds of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians who had been held hostage by the ruthless LTTE Tiger terrorists.
According to Silva’s account, Kalkat had reportedly said the Sri Lankan government should ideally seek a Guinness World Record for it.
That statement, in essence, is true.
The LTTE Tiger terrorists used nearly 300,000 innocent Tamil civilians as a human shield and behaved brutally by shooting at them from behind as they fled through the No Fire Zone.
Sri Lanka does not speak enough about how those civilians were rescued from them.
By April 2009, after the earth bund defences at Puthumathalan were breached, tens of thousands of Tamil civilians continuously fled into areas controlled by government forces.
On one occasion, close to 100,000 civilians are reported to have arrived in areas under Army control within a single day.
Likewise, during the final phase of the war, between 250,000 and 300,000 civilians escaped from the LTTE terrorists and moved toward the military.
As they fled, LTTE terrorists shot and killed Tamil civilians attempting to escape.
Once they reached areas secured by government forces, the Sri Lankan military immediately provided them with treatment, food, and even bottles of water.
This was the world’s largest hostage rescue operation.
But Sri Lanka does not need Guinness World Records, nor is it likely to receive them.
What matters is that the truth should be told to the world.
This is important because channels that sided with the LTTE diaspora, such as Channel 4, continue portraying allegations and misinformation as truth by repeatedly accusing the Sri Lankan armed forces of genocide and other crimes.
Yet Sri Lanka does not speak enough from its own side about these events.
Likewise, while dollar-funded NGO groups continue spreading false propaganda, Sri Lanka is not doing enough to bring these facts forward.
The LTTE diaspora still continues spreading these narratives.
The recent incident in Canada was also one example of this.
From Sri Lanka’s side, the world must be made aware of these matters.
It was not only Tamil civilians who were rescued.
More than 12,000 young men and women who had been organised under the LTTE terrorist organisation were rehabilitated and reintegrated into society within a relatively short period.
Even today, they live within society, study, and work.
The point is that, regardless of how the rest of the world sees it, even people within Sri Lanka do not have a proper understanding of these events.
