Hidden Massacre

The Times reports that "more than 20,000 Tamils were killed in last throes of the Sri Lankan civil war". But it looks as if the Sri Lankan government will get away with it:

On Wednesday, Sri Lanka was cleared of any wrongdoing by the UN Human Rights Council after winning the backing of countries including China, Egypt, India and Cuba.

Here is its astonishing explanation:

A spokesman for the Sri Lankan High Commission in London said: “We reject all these allegations. Civilians have not been killed by government shelling at all. If civilians have been killed, then that is because of the actions of the LTTE [rebels] who were shooting and killing people when they tried to escape.”

The claim that the Tamil Tigers were shooting their own people looks pretty far-fetched, but to say that absolutely no civilians were killed by government shelling is entirely unbelievable.