Speaking in the Senate during Tamil Genocide Remembrance Week, Australian Senator David Shoebridge said the world remembers the “appalling crimes inflicted upon the Tamil people" by the Sri Lankan government during the final months of the armed conflict.
Shoebridge told the Senate that "300,000 were hemmed into a so called safe zone and subject to bombings and artillery shells."
“[The] Tamil genocide didn’t just happen on one day in 2009 but has happened for decades and continues," he added.
This year marks 17 years since the massacre at Mullivaikkal where an estimated 169,769 Tamil people are unaccounted for and presumed dead.
During the final months of the armed conflict, the Sri Lankan government committed unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, and rape and other sexual violence of Tamils and denied them humanitarian aid.
May 18 is commemorated as Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day by Tamils in the North-East and across the diaspora.
