One sided Channel 4 film ‘ Killing fields ‘
Posted on March 16th, 2012
Ben Silva
Channel 4 footage appear to show dramatised material, with the view of creating an anti Sri Lankan sentiment with viewers. This massively biased video footage has only one objective and this is to harm the image of Sri Lanka, that liberated itself from terrorism, that was funded by sources from the West. The video footage is expertly and carefully crafted to mislead the viewers, completely ignoring the fact that LTTE was the deadliest (FBI), cunning, ruthless terrorist outfit in the world. It has to be mentioned that LTTE killed two leaders of democratic states. Further, LTTE killed the Tamil, Oxford educated Minister of Foreign affairs of Sri Lanka.
The footage however showed the bravery of the Rajapaksa brothers and that of the military in resisting imperialistic bullies from UK, who always played the divide and rule game. If video clips were shown of the Iraqi conflict, where over one million civilians have been killed, the effects would have been even more dramatic. Killing of children by American soldiers, who really show the mind set of evil imperialist West, would be even more dramatic. Even the bombing of Libya resulted in many civilian deaths and the deaths of relatives of Gaddafi. Unarmed Bin Laden appear to have been summarily executed.
The West has treated fellow humans in most savage and Barbaric manner (Abu Ghraib, My Lai massacre) etc and yet C4 want to ignore such barbaric acts and want to dramatise liberation of a country from terrorism in a manner harmful for the liberators, for financial gains. C4 has ignored 30 years of terrorism and ignored LTTE massacres such as Dollar and Kent farm, It appears that human rights are used by savage rulers of the West, whose military machine, regularly kill unarmed civilians and children. C4 and the politicians that were shown in the C4 video, had any care for human rights, then they should investigate the human rights abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on.
Although people in the West are decent, some rulers and media appear to be terrorist supporting, barbaric savages, that is hounding GOSL, that liberated its people from the nightmare of terrorism. The C4 material appear to be produced by mislead journalists who have been allowed themselves to be mislead or are in the pay of LTTE supporters. The video is entirely one sided, and has not shown the evil deeds of racists, Tamil tiger terrorists, who were hell bent on emulating Chola invaders. Sri Lanka was fully justified to defend itself.
To compare the conduct of Sri Lanka and the West
The West attacked and killed over a million unarmed Iraqi civilians, subjected the civilians to the awe of American bombing, on the pretext of fabricated evidence of WMD, WMD was promoted by eminent journalists such as Judith Miller, who later admitted to false reporting. Any footage of American bombing , or the killing of civilians, certainly would have been more dramatic than the visual effects of the C4 film on Sri Lanka. Even the recent killing of children and civilians by an American soldiers in Afghanistan would have produced more dramatic effect. The C4 video is simply anti Sri Lankan propaganda, which could be used by enemies of Sri Lanka. It is a unbalanced program carefully designed to mislead the audience and create anti Sri Lnkan feeling, perhaps produced by Tamil Tiger supporters.
ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ The C4 program did not show the horrors created by the LTTE terrorists, such as the killing of poor farm workers at the Dollar and Kent farm. Although the atrocities of LTTE are available (ref. http://www.spur.asn.au/ltteatro.htm ), C4 ignored to show the horrors of terrorism. The terrorists were trained, funded and supported by Indians and the main funding for terrorism came from Western countries such as UK. If the West, stopped giving refugee status to bogus refugees and stopped their fund realising for terrorism, then, there would have been no reason to liberate the country from terrorism. If funding was stopped, then the terrorists would have had no money to purchase weapons or to pay for the vast military machine they operated. The West as the providers of funds for the terrorists should take responsibility for terrorism.
The West killed thousands of civilians in a most horrific manner, in the Dresden fire bombing, when not a single German Soldier was in UK or USA. Americans nuclear bombed Japan, when not a single Japanese soldier was in USA, whilst imprisoning Japanese civilians. In contrast foreign funded LTTE terrorists wete controlling large parts of Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka was fully justified to take what ever means to eradicate the foreign funded terrorist menace, with the declared aim of creating a separate state.
GOSL need to have an information gathering department that collect and archive the atrocities of the West and should expose false reporting by persons such as Judith Miller. Propaganda warfare, as conducted by C4 is real and should be handled in a professional manner by GOSL. Jon Snow appear to follow the footsteps of Judith Miller in false and manipulative reporting. False and one sided reporting on Sri Lanka appear to have similarities with reporting that fabricated WMD. It appears that some lies and nonsense have been fed to C4 journalists, with the aim of misrepresenting the truth, by LTTE supporters. The timing of the release of the film as well as selective use of information all point to the possibility that C4 set out deliberately to discredit Sri Lanka.
March 16th, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Channel 4 video is a narrative and some photos to go with that. With the photos, it suggests different things. Other than that it does not give any convincing evidence. for example, they suggest that 12 year old child’s killing is by SLA. Other than that that, they don’t give any other evidence.
Why this one case is very important incomparison to 1000s of child soldiers dead. the whole wide world knew it.
Not very strange thing is there are booklets published by LTTE tamils even before the end of the with similar content. In those booklets, they accuse Sri Lankan politicians, Buddhist monks and show Tamils killed by LTTE itself in the middle of tamil-sinhala riot photos. They want readers to believe those as true.
I don’t see anything different.
Their present approach seems more oraganized. Because channel 4 reaches a wider ordience, and US and a UK politicians had issued press briefs.
The final stupid thing will be if we start investigating these things.
March 16th, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Fool,
What is all these got to do with Sinhala Buddhist soldiers beleiving Nirvana ?
Do not pretend to be a patriot by writing copycat articles.
It is people like you who are creating these trouble. Come out straight and fight with Sinhala Buddhists if you can.
Whether you write this or not ajapakses will tackle the challenge.
March 16th, 2012 at 3:42 pm
There is one Audio tape in which one Tamil crying and asking “Rajuta Save Tamils from the mayhem”. If Tamils were treated like dogs during the operation how would they have that kind of Requests from the Sinhala side. There were some photos in which escaping Tamils were very happy and smiling to come to this side.
March 16th, 2012 at 5:02 pm
Excellent article. United States of America since 1776 and United Kingdom since the 1500s till today has murdered millions of people around the world. Both these countries have collectively murdered possibly billions of people. Yes you just have to look at how the Americans killed the native americans. That is genocide, how come there is no resolution against the Americans for what they did to the native americans. Americans are so arrogant.
March 17th, 2012 at 1:26 am
“Although people in the West are decent,some rulers and media appear to be terrorist supporting”
This shows how foolish the writer is.
Fool,
People in the west are barbaric in nature. They learned no Buddhism. Talk to any Suddha and see. They all believe in Suddha propaganda only. There are very few decent peopel in the west, even though they behave decently in public, within the limits of law. According to your dhamma this is correct approach. Your Dhamma is “survival of the fittest”.
March 17th, 2012 at 10:39 am
Did you notice how they (Channel Four) conveniently forgot to mention the culpability of Sarath Fonseka who was the commander of the Army then and later spoke about the white flags to trigger all these problems on their behest?
March 19th, 2012 at 7:47 am
I agree that the Channel 4 documentary is carefully constructed, one-sided propaganda. The music is designed to manipulate the emotions and the images edited and put together with a deceptive commentary to present a false impression about the war. There was no context or mention of the brutality of the Tamil Tigers, including their cold-blooded murder of Tamils, Singhalese, Moslems and anyone who stood in the way of their dream of Tamil Eelam. Channel 4 and the makers of this ‘documentary’ should be ashamed of themselves.
My personal opinion is that there should be war crimes charges brought against the most heinous criminals of this war – especially against the cowards who supported the murderous LTTE from their comfort and safety in Canada, the USA, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden etc; the people who sold cyanide and weapons to the LTTE; the people who engineered a suicide cult around the fat, ugly thug Vellupillai Prabakharan. The real warmongers and criminals are coming out of the woodwork – claiming genocide against the Sri Lankan government when the real genocide was planned, financed and orchestrated by the supporters of the Tamil Tigers and their greedy claims for most of Sri Lanka’s beautiful and valuable coastline.
The Sri Lankan government is to be commended for their rapid repatriation of LTTE cadres (compare this with Guantanamo Bay), the return of civilians to the war-torn areas after the dangerous work of demining them, and their stated objective of achieving a trilingual nation by the year 2020. Hopefully the Eelam propagandists and their backers will be recognised and despised for what they are – greedy and divisive warmongers who have contributed only suffering to all the people of Sri Lanka.
March 20th, 2012 at 12:42 am
Good analysis by Romesh. There has to be a proper org. to convey the message to the world.