Catherine McDuffie 3/21/08 11:57 pm Global Crime
The situation in Sri Lanka has become very cloudy as the government and rebel group the Tamil Tigers have begun playing the “numbers game.” The government much more so than the Tigers has been reporting numbers which have now, according to one source, more than doubled the entire population of the northern part of the country. The government soldiers do not bring bodies back to be counted because the government claims it would put soldiers’ lives in unnecessary danger, so the soldiers are responsible for counting the deaths on their own. The Tigers have not been reporting many, if any, numbers of casualties. As you can imagine, this gets very messy and numbers are easily exaggerated. Sri Lankans believe the government when they are told the war will be won soon, but until then, the citizens pay inflated prices for items that are anything but commodities.
This situation seems so crazy to me as the world wants to know what is going on in this war, yet there is no way for us to know for sure. As the war wages on more and more lives are lost and they are those who will remain nameless for a long time to come. I do not know how our military keeps up with how many casualties we have suffered or how many of the “enemy” have been defeated, or if the numbers we are given can even be trusted. Situations like this really put you into perspective on how you view your own country and what you are fed by the government and media.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7307349.stm
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