{"id":78804,"date":"2018-06-28T05:21:30","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T12:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=78804"},"modified":"2018-06-28T05:21:30","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T12:21:30","slug":"cabraal-says-new-york-times-article-is-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/06\/28\/cabraal-says-new-york-times-article-is-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Cabraal says New York Times article is \u2018fake\u2019 news"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0Yusuf Ariff\u00a0Courtesy Adaderana<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Former Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, has refuted the allegations made in a recent article published by The New York Times, referring to it as \u2018fake\u2019 news which has violated the truth and a gross misrepresentation of facts.<\/p>\n

The New York Times article dated 25 June 2018 titled How China got Sri Lanka to cough up a Port,\u201d written by Maria Abi-Habib, had made certain accusations pertaining to China\u2019s acquisition of the strategic Hambantota port from Sri Lanka while highlighting Beijing\u2019s debt trap\u201d and ambitious use of loans to gain influence around the world.<\/p>\n

The report says feasibility studies had found that the port would not work and frequent lenders\u201d like India had refused to provide loans or assistance for the port, developed during Sri Lanka\u2019s president Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s rule.<\/p>\n

However, issuing a response today, Rajapaksa\u2019s former Central Bank chief Ajith Nivard Cabraal slammed the NYT article as a gross misrepresentation of facts as well as a piece of journalism which has violated the truth in a shocking manner.<\/p>\n

This is probably the type of propaganda under the veil of journalism that President Donald Trump has been regularly referring to as \u2018Fake\u2019 news or reports,\u201d he charged.<\/p>\n

The article had also pointed out certain facts pertaining to Sri Lanka debt position under the former President\u2019s reign and also claimed that Rajapaksa\u2019s campaign aides have received direct payments from the Chinese port construction fund.<\/p>\n

Cabraal said that he was interviewed by the NYT correspondent in question Maria Abi- Habib on 10th May 2018, and that he countered almost every one of her string of allegations and pre-conceived notions\u201d in an hour long interview, with irrefutable facts and figures.<\/p>\n

He said that not surprisingly, Maria Abi-Habib has chosen to ignore all his responses relating to the Chinese loans and projects, as well as Sri Lanka\u2019s debt position under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, which he says would have materially changed her flawed findings\u201d and highly suspect conclusions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Her stance therefore undoubtedly confirms she was on a mission to provide a pre-determined and completely one-sided view point which is detrimental to both China and Sri Lanka in general, and Presidents Xi Jingping and Mahinda Rajapaksa, in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former CBSL Governor added that he will submit a detailed reply to this shockingly imbalanced\u201d article, which he said is not worthy of being published in a newspaper such as the New York Times, and expose it\u2019s subjectivity in a few days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the ex-President\u2019s eldest son MP Namal Rajapaksa also tweeted a response to the NYT article stating that it had many inaccuracies.<\/p>\n

Many inaccuracies in this article. Acknowledging the Port is near 1 of the world\u2019s busiest shipping lanes shows why it\u2019s still a major focus for the West, fearing China\u2019s growing global influence. Sri Lanka\u2018s assets shouldn\u2019t be used as geopolitical pawns in this power struggle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Yusuf Ariff\u00a0Courtesy Adaderana Former Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, has refuted the allegations made in a recent article published by The New York Times, referring to it as \u2018fake\u2019 news which has violated the truth and a gross misrepresentation of facts. The New York Times article dated 25 June […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}