{"id":78969,"date":"2018-07-03T16:56:19","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T23:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=78969"},"modified":"2018-07-03T16:56:19","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T23:56:19","slug":"sri-lanka-s-killing-fields-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/07\/03\/sri-lanka-s-killing-fields-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSRI LANKA \u2019S KILLING FIELDS\u201d Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The three Channel Four documentaries, Sri Lanka\u2019s Killing fields\u201d, (2011) Sri Lanka’s killing fields: War Crimes Unpunished<\/a>\u201d .(2012) No Fire Zone, the Killing Fields of Sri Lanka (2015))\u00a0 are propaganda films intended to support the\u00a0 war crimes charges against Sri Lanka. They were done to help UNHRC to target Sri Lanka. The films were aimed at gullible television audiences, equally gullible UNHRC members, and the foreign governments which bleat on behalf of the USA.<\/p>\n

These three films are like Russian dolls, each film is an expanded version of the previous film. The footage consisted of three segments. The first segment showed the\u00a0\u00a0 summary execution of bound, blindfolded, and naked Tamils by Sri Lankan soldiers. Second segment showed images of dead females who may have been sexual assaulted and the third showed suffering civilians in the conflict zone.<\/p>\n

The \u00a0films\u00a0 \u00a0also featured interviews with Sir John Holmes,\u00a0\u00a0 head of UN humanitarian operations, British Foreign Secretary David\u00a0 Miliband, Benjamin Dix, a British UN worker based in Kilinochchi<\/a>, Gordon Weiss, the UN’s official spokesman in Sri Lanka during the final stages of the civil war, \u00a0William Schabas<\/a>, international human rights lawyer, Steve Crawshaw\u00a0 and Sam Zarifi of Amnesty International<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The second film Killing fields unpunished\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 was prepared because the UN had still not taken action. The \u2018final\u2019 film was \u2018No Fire Zone\u2019, directed by the prize winning Callum Macrae. This was described as something of an international phenomenon. Not just an agenda setting investigation, but a cinematic tour de force \u2013 a stunning and disturbing film in its own right.<\/p>\n

It was described as “beautifully crafted and heart wrenching\u201d by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting in Washington, “utterly convincing” by the Globe and Mail in Toronto – and in the UK, Empire noted: “It is vitally important that this feature reaches the widest possible audience\u201d. One critic in Australia described it as the most devastating film I have seen\u201d, whilst the London Film Review says “No Fire Zone<\/em> shocks on every level. It shocks, it educates, and it convinces” the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, said:\u201dNo Fire Zone<\/em> is one of the most chilling documentaries I\u2019ve watched<\/p>\n

The leading western countries responded\u00a0\u00a0 to these films exactly as expected. British Foreign Office Minister<\/a> Alistair Burt<\/a> issued a statement on 15 June 2011 in which he expressed shock at horrific scenes in the documentary.[<\/a><\/sup>Burt stated that the documentary, along with other evidence, constituted “convincing evidence of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law” and urged the Sri Lankan government “to give a serious and full response”.<\/p>\n

Australian Foreign Minister<\/a> Kevin Rudd<\/a> stated that “No-one watching this program could emerge from that undisturbed and we don’t either”. He called on the United Nations Human Rights Council<\/a> to re-investigate alleged war crimes and examine whether the UNHRC’s original findings [resolution A\/HRC\/S-11\/L.1\/Rev.2 passed on 27 May 2009] “can any longer be regarded as well founded”. The Australian Senate<\/a> passed motion number 323 on 7 July 2011 which, amongst other things, noted that the documentary was “further shocking evidence supporting allegations of war crimes committed during the 2009 civil conflict in Sri Lanka” and called for “allegations of war crimes to be investigated and verified”<\/p>\n

In the United States<\/a>, Congressman Jim McGovern<\/a>, co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, described the contents of the documentary as “a gruesome example of humans at their worst”.[39]<\/a><\/sup> He went on to say “These scenes provide much more than simply shock value, however: They also are powerful evidence of the need for an independent investigation to hold those responsible accountable for the crimes…If the Sri Lankan government is unable or unwilling to act, then the international community must respond in its place”.<\/p>\n

This indicates that the films have achieved their purpose,\u00a0\u00a0 which was to catch the attention of the public all over the world, convince them that there was an evil regime in Sri Lanka,\u00a0 and create a push for a war crimes probe at the UNHRC. \u00a0But these films went beyond the bounds of political documentary.\u00a0\u00a0 Centre for the Study of Interventionism\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 said that these films have brought political journalism to a new level, because the message communicated is so specifically interventionist.<\/p>\n

The films repeatedly said that the persons directly responsible for the war crimes and crimes against humanity were Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother \u2018Gota bear.\u2019 \u2018They were liars\u2019, declared Miliband who came to try and stop the victory.\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018 They are still in power \u2018 moaned Snow, \u00a0\u00a0The military\u00a0 top\u00a0 brass who handled the final victory, Prasanna de Silva, 55\u00a0 division\u00a0\u00a0 and Shavendra Silva, 58\u00a0 division are also specifically charged\u00a0 with war crimes,<\/p>\n

In this manner, these films insult and defame with impunity, a recognized sovereign state, its duly elected President, and its well trained military. Sri Lanka did nothing to squash these films. Channel Four would have taken legal advice for these films, certainly, but \u00a0if Channel Four had\u00a0\u00a0 tried\u00a0\u00a0 this \u00a0stunt with \u00a0say \u00a0a\u00a0 powerful\u00a0 corporate body, like a high ranking bank,\u00a0 (unlikely)\u00a0\u00a0 Channel Four\u00a0 would have been promptly taken to courts, sued for everything it had and made to close down.<\/p>\n

Even before the film Killing fields\u201d was shown, British broadcasting regulator Ofcom<\/a> received 13 complaints about the film. These were rejected on the grounds that the documentary hadn’t been broadcast yet. Thereafter between 14 June 2011 and 4 July 2011 Ofcom received 171 complaints. \u00a0The majority of the complaints were that the documentary was misrepresentative and misleading. There were complaints of impartiality, offensiveness and misleading material. The government of Sri Lanka publically branded the video a fake<\/a> and lodged a series of complaints with Ofcom.<\/p>\n

Ofcom held an inquiry and dismissed the complaints. Ofcom concluded that “overall Channel 4 preserved due impartiality in its examination of the Sri Lankan Government’s actions”, “the audience was not materially misled” and that the images included in this programme, whilst brutal and shocking, would not have\u00a0 upset its late night audience. It carried very clear warnings about the nature of the content”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But criticism did not end there. Shyam Tekwani, an expert in terrorism & media at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies<\/a> who has extensively covered the Sri Lankan conflict, compared the “tone and tenor” of Sri Lanka\u2019s killing fields\u201d to that of productions by the LTTE’s propaganda wing, the Truth Tigers. There is clearly an effort to sensationalize and shock with carefully selected and edited footage. The slant is pronounced, he said. But the attempt to provide a stomach-turning narrative is on shaky ground. The volume of testimony it uses as evidence is not enormous and most of it is derived from leading questions. The documentary invites an investigation into its own credibility and accountability to journalistic norms, concluded Tekwani.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka strongly objected to these films. Government of Sri Lanka stated that, the conduct of Channel Four has fallen well short of the standard and fairness expected of a responsible television channel.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka journalists confronted Channel Four reporters at Commonwealth Heads of State conference in Australia (2011). They said that the films distorted events, it was unethical reporting and a disgrace to journalism. The Channel Four representative\u00a0 was\u00a0 unshaken. When told \u2018you put people in shadow\u2019 came the bland reply, \u2018they were scared.\u2019\u00a0 The Sri Lanka journalists were not named in the film, but I think it was\u00a0 Rajpal Abeynayake with Shamindra Ferdinando joining him.\u00a0 (\u201dKilling fields unpunished\u201d)<\/p>\n

There was\u00a0 some public\u00a0 resistance too. Channel 4 film\u00a0 crew had come to Sri Lanka during the CHOGM sessions in Colombo, (2013) but were forced to turn back on their way to Jaffna. The crew had come by train.\u00a0 Protestors has sat on the railway line and not permitted them to proceed. The police had sent them back to Colombo by van.<\/p>\n

Now let us look at the content of these films, starting with the title, Sri Lanka\u2019s\u00a0 killing fields\u201d. Sri Lanka\u2019s\u00a0 \u2018killing fields\u2018 were\u00a0 not killing fields at all, they were the three NFZs created by the government , which the LTTE refused to recognize as NFZs. Channel Four ignored this important fact and declared, In these killing fields tens of thousands were destined to die, targeted by government fire,\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cambodian journalist Dith Pran<\/a> coined the term “killing fields\u201d for the fields in Cambodia where a million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge<\/a> regime, between 1975 to 1979. There is no comparison between Cambodia\u2019s brutal Khmer Rouge forces and Sri Lanka\u2018s well trained armed forces. Eelam War IV was a civil war between the legitimate army and a secessionist group funded and supported by the west. In equating Eelam War IV with Cambodia, Channel Four is\u00a0\u00a0 also implying that this war was nothing more than a baseless killing of \u2018innocent Tamils\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Channel Four films are pro-Eelam film. One film carries a map of Eelam, starting from Kalpitiya and ending near Yala. The films ooze sympathy for Tamil separatists. They present Prabhakaran and Balasingham in heroic mode, refer to \u2018hardline Sinhala nationalists\u2019 and give a twisted interpretation of the Eelam War. T<\/strong>his was an unequal war. The government had aims from China. The final stages of the war were very bloody, \u00a0about 40,000 died.<\/p>\n

Civilians were herded into the NFZs, corralled into an ever decreeing area of land, and killed. \u2018As the civilians fled the government followed\/\u2019 \u2018Civilians fled away into what was left of the NFZ they were fired on as they went.\u2019 The films imply that this was genocide. Tamil civilians are shown as an innocent group, facing a demonic President and a trigger happy army, firing left and right, and using<\/strong> heavy weapons as well. \u2018The moment you stood up a bullet would hit you, said Vany Kumar. \u2018This would be followed by a second bullet, so that anyone who ran to help the injured would also be hit. \u2018So we only go to tend the injured half an hour later. \u2018<\/p>\n

If there really was carnage at the end of Eelam War IV, the LTTE\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 could have broadcast the event immediately to the world, in real time. They had the technology. Pulidevan was in touch with Frances Harrison of the BBC by satellite phone, right up to the last day of the conflict on 18 May 2009. He was also in contact with prominent South Indian on this satellite phone. On the evening of 17th May 2009 Marie Colvin, of The Sunday Times\u00a0 had received a\u00a0 phone call from the LTTE political head Balasingham Nadesan.<\/p>\n

The real carnage in the Eelam war could be found in LTTE brutal attacks on the border villages where they killed with machetes, and knives. Those attacks were mass murder. It was ethnic cleansing, it was hatred. <\/strong>Photographs depicting the carnage, dead bodies, bloodied and spread eagled, appeared in the newspapers at the time. There were also the<\/strong> LTTE attacks at Anuradhapura and Arantalawa, both premeditated. Further, LTTE had tortured the Sri Lanka soldiers it took prisoner, eyes gouged out, tongues removed. Channel Four is silent about these\u00a0 events.<\/p>\n

The script writers of these films \u00a0first looked through Common Article 3 and Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions and made a list of the war crimes that could be applied to the last phase of Eelam War IV. The script writers\u00a0 then structured the films around these \u2018war crimes\u2019. In the process, they taught rudimentary IHL to the watching audience.<\/p>\n

The war crimes discussed in the films are (i) systemic killing,\u00a0\u00a0 (ii) arbitrary executions ,(iii) humiliation, \u00a0\u00a0degradation and (iv) sexual assault of\u00a0 prisoners,\u00a0 (v)killing civilians, (vi) killing wounded and sick,( vii) killing those who\u00a0 surrender, (ix) denial of\u00a0 food and medicine to civilians not\u00a0 yet killed and (x) firing ammunition at hospitals.<\/p>\n

These war crimes were presented in a novel way. They are presented through first person reports, but \u00a0the speakers are both anonymous and invisible, like ghosts. These ghosts come out with statements which exactly match\u00a0 IHL. They said that advancing troops tortured and shot civilians instead of evacuating them, that food and medicine was denied to civilians, and that PTK hospital was shelled and that there were 65 attacks on medical posts.<\/p>\n

Channel Four caught the audience with one particular shot. A naked, blindfolded man with his hands tied behind his back is brought in, sat down on the ground and then shot. This was first broadcast on Channel 4 News on 25 August 2009. This had an immediate impact. Each succeeding film therefore elaborated on this scene, more and more naked , dead males were \u00a0shown. The final shot was of a collection of dead naked males, laid out in two neat rows, not piled up. (41.58. KF)\u00a0 In all these shots, except for one or two, the private parts of these males cannot be seen. \u00a0They are angled out, as in posed photographs. One \u2018dead\u2019 person was covering his private parts with this arms. (36.40 NFZ). \u00a0In addition, the soldiers are\u00a0 made to look sadistic. \u00a0One soldier kicks the head of a dead body. Others are shown dragging along naked bodies of women \u2018This one has the best figure”.<\/p>\n

Channel Four had to explain how they got this footage. Channel Four said that the video was authentic, it was\u00a0 filmed by a Sri Lankan soldier on his mobile phone in January 2009. It was given to Channel 4 by members of the armed forces who were shocked at the some of the acts carried out due to orders from above. A ghost informant added that he had a collection of photographs of summary executions and killings of those who had surrendered.He claimed the photos were taken by a high ranking army officer on his personal camera.<\/p>\n

The charge that the Channel Four films are a prize fake can be easily accepted. The films reek of bogus. Firstly, there is none of the tension and\u00a0 panic that you would see in a true artillery attack. There is no indication of urgency,( \u00a021.46 NFZ\u00a0 ) or agitation.( 23.25 NFZ) in these films. Contrast this with the well known shot from the Vietnam War, of a \u00a0naked 9-year-old girl running for her life after a napalm attack in 1972.<\/p>\n

There are no geographical markers at all. The NFZ scenes could have taken place anywhere. The endless hospital and patient scenes could have been filmed\u00a0 at one go, in one place. They \u00a0looked posed, they are all are well centered and framed. The wounded are covered profusely in blood and bandages.<\/p>\n

Certain shots are definitely posed. Father with dead child stops crying and assumes his normal\u00a0 face, just before the shot ends (27.05 NFZ\/ 20.45\u00a0 KF). The man coming towards the corpses, at 23.25 NFZ, \u00a0is not at all agitated. A man and woman\u00a0 are praying in fright, in the middle of a street, but\u00a0 those around them are walking and talking normally, quite unperturbed. (16.39\u00a0 KF)\u00a0 A\u00a0 girl\u00a0 is running away from camera, but others are cycling leisurely towards the camera (10.35 NFZ) .<\/p>\n

There is too much awareness of the camera. The \u2018grieving\u2019 man in \u2018No fire Zone\u2019\u00a0 at 44.29\u00a0 looks down, then looks up at the camera inquiringly and looks down again. A family is shown\u00a0 departing but\u00a0 the\u00a0 children are\u00a0 looking at camera. (22.48 NFZ) A group is huddling in a shallow trench. One person\u00a0 is getting\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ready to lie down, the other\u00a0 is\u00a0 looking back at the camera (\u00a0 13.48\u00a0 KF, 20.21 NFZ). Some shots\u00a0\u00a0 are most unconvincing. PTK hospital, after a severe artillery attack, emerges perfectly intact. (15.31 KF) A collection of vans near an artillery\u00a0 strike are also\u00a0 untouched and undamaged.<\/p>\n

These films invent a nice story about Prabhakaran junior, the son of Velupillai Prabhakaran. The improbable story given in the film is that the LTTE sent the boy to surrender to the army, accompanied by five bodyguards. The army killed all five body guards, took Junior prisoner, questioned him about his father\u2019s whereabouts, gave him a ‘bunis’ to eat, then killed him with, not one but five bullets. One would expect the military to be able to kill at close quarters with one bullet. The film included\u00a0\u00a0 two pretty shots of a fat contented boy. Then a photo of a dead boy.<\/p>\n

Vany Kumar provides the female interest in the films. A British Tamil who has, improbably, bounced into the war zone at the height of the war from her safe abode in London, she appears in all the films, talking nonsense throughout. For instance she goes to assist at a hospital after an artillery strike and is surprised to see \u2018so much blood \u2018. She is the mouthpiece for Tamil hype and exaggeration. She says she has never seen anyone as beautiful and charming as the LTTE announcer Isaipriya. She contributes nothing to the film, except to confirm that it is a fake. (CONCLUDED)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS The three Channel Four documentaries, Sri Lanka\u2019s Killing fields\u201d, (2011) Sri Lanka’s killing fields: War Crimes Unpunished\u201d .(2012) No Fire Zone, the Killing Fields of Sri Lanka (2015))\u00a0 are propaganda films intended to support the\u00a0 war crimes charges against Sri Lanka. They were done to help UNHRC to target Sri Lanka. The films […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78969","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=78969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}