''The Cage: The fight for Sri Lanka & the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers'' is a book about the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War written by journalist and former

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

official Gordon Weiss. Weiss was the UN's spokesman in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

during the final months of the civil war. Since leaving the UN Weiss has been a vocal critic of the conduct of both the Sri Lankan military and the rebel

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; , ; also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organization, that was based in the northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eela ...

. Weiss believes that

war crimes A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hos ...

were committed during the final stages of the civil war and has called for an international investigation. According to Weiss up to 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final stages of the civil war. In the book Weiss recounts "in chilling detail" the final stages of the civil war, how the Sri Lankan military achieved victory and the price paid for peace by all of Sri Lanka's ethnic communities. It details how hundreds of thousands of civilians were held hostage by the Tamil Tigers in an ever-decreasing area (the cage) in northern Sri Lanka. Weiss tries to piece together events which unfolded inside the cage which had been sealed off from most independent observers by the Sri Lankan military. The book provides context to the findings of the UN panel. It also provides a history of Sri Lanka and "unpicks" the root causes of the civil war. It suggests that the country's history is full of brutal savagery. Weiss is highly critical of the Tigers but he reserves his strongest condemnation for the Sri Lankan military and the international community. Weiss believes that the Sri Lankan military could have avoided high civilian casualties if it wanted to but it chose not to do so. The international community contributed to the slaughter of the civilians by its collective "shoulder shrugging". The UN's unwillingness to provide casualty figures also contributed to the "zero civilian casualties" myth. Weiss believes that the civil war could have been averted if the grievances of the

Tamils The Tamils ( ), also known by their endonym Tamilar, are a Dravidian peoples, Dravidian ethnic group who natively speak the Tamil language and trace their ancestry mainly to the southern part of the Indian subcontinent. The Tamil language is o ...

had been addressed.

References

External links

Gordon Weiss
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cage, The 2011 non-fiction books Current affairs books Sri Lankan civil war books The Bodley Head books War crimes in the Sri Lankan civil war