The government-produced video titled “Lies agreed upon - an investigative documentary into the final days of the Sri Lankan conflict” comes across as the best antidote yet, to the unadulterated LTTE propaganda contained in Channel 4 TV’s controversial “Killing Fields” documentary released in June this year. The Channel 4 (C4) production contained footage of summary executions blamed on the Sri Lankan army. The government video, introduced along with the Defence Ministry’s report “Humanitarian operation – factual analysis” that was launched at an event attended by the diplomatic community on Monday, demonstrates a degree of professionalism hitherto not seen in governmental responses.
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| Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Commanders of the Forces at the launch of the government’s documentary into the final days of Sri Lankan conflict |
The presenter Minoli Ratnayake’s clinically detached style in this hour-long documentary is well suited to the understated approach adopted in unpacking C4’s allegations. No shrill retorts or defensive rhetoric here. Unlike C4’s video, where sources are not mentioned, faces are hidden and voices are distorted, the ‘Lies’ video clearly shows the names and faces of those who testify.
The Tamil audio clips are accompanied by English subtitles and Tamil speaking persons may judge for themselves the accuracy of those translations. Starting with the documentary’s opening scene of a supposedly spontaneous demonstration held outside the UN office in Kilinochchi, the narrator systematically exposes what it calls C4’s distortions, mischievous juxtapositions and lies, using the testimony of a large number of Tamil civilians including doctors who served during the last stage of the battle, IDPs, ex-combatants, their parents, relatives of LTTE leaders killed and many others.
By far the most interesting piece of evidence in this video, and the most damning in relation to the proclaimed authenticity of C4’s execution sequences is the testimony of Daya Master, the LTTE’s media spokesman. This LTTE figure who surrendered to the army at an earlier stage of the war is well known among local and foreign media persons alike. This is what he had to say:
“Whenever a Tamil civilian or Tamil from another faction was caught defying LTTE rules, LTTE used to shoot them wearing army attire. Often LTTE cadres wearing uniforms similar to the military attacked Sinhalese and Tamil villages. Tamil villages were attacked in order to create fear psychosis among the civilians towards the army. They were brutal in hacking and shooting civilians including women, men and children and later used to film these killings for propaganda purposes portraying the military as offenders.”
Now this is not exactly news to Sri Lankans who have long been familiar with LTTE’s tactics over three decades. But this is perhaps the first time this information has been documented in this way. The government’s video is appropriately aimed at uninformed foreign viewers, just like the C4 videos that have been marketed to unsuspecting western audiences (who can pressure their governments and help ratchet up the tempo on war crimes).
Other allegations dealt with in the video relate to the figure of 40,000 civilians killed (courtesy Gordon Weiss), the claims about hospitals being deliberately shelled, food and medical supplies being blocked, and specific civilians depicted as having been abused and executed. The government video asserts that the C4 footage shows only high profile LTTE operatives who died in the last battle, and links these figures (e.g. Issipriya, Ramesh) to specific atrocities committed. It goes further in talking about aspects that C4 glossed over or omitted to mention such as the LTTE killings of prisoners in cold blood, its public humiliations and publicly announced executions of civilians caught trying to flee etc.
A noteworthy aspect of the video is that it draws attention to “the strange silence of the LTTE’s global network.” It goes on to establish, with visuals and testimonies, the links between the overseas LTTE front organizations and known LTTE figures like Castro. These “unholy alliances” have yet to be acknowledged by western governments, whose representatives continue to grace their meetings in the countries where these operatives are domiciled, lending legitimacy to their activities.
The sequence of events relating to the C4 videos and their fallout is worth tracing. It was C4’s initial Aug. 2009 footage of executions, blamed on the Sri Lankan army that set off a train of events leading to the call in Jan 2010 by Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, for a war crimes probe in Sri Lanka. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon initially distanced himself from the controversy telling reporters in New York that the UN special envoy is ‘acting independently’ (UN press conference 11.01.10). A UN statement on Alston’s Jan. 2010 press conference says that after Alston dismissed the SL government’s own report, which claimed the video as a fake, the United Nations Human Rights Council, to which he reports, called on him to withdraw his call for an investigation and apologize to the government. Alston then appointed his own team to investigate the footage. Later in the year under mounting pressure Ban appointed a panel of experts to ‘advise him on accountability issues in Sri Lanka.’ After the panel released its report in April this year C4 broadcast the longer documentary titled “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.” In a somewhat circular argument the head of foreign affairs for Channel 4 News was quoted by AP saying the station “chose to broadcast the footage after the U.N. experts helped it conclude that it is genuine.”
The rebuttal of C4’s Sri Lanka videos and their allegations would assume importance seeing that this material seems to have contributed significantly to the western belief that Sri Lankan forces committed grave war crimes. This call has not emanated from within Sri Lanka from any of the quarters that one might expect, had there been grounds for it. War crimes were not exactly an obsession among IDPs, Tamil political leaders, local rights activists, community leaders or NGOs. When US Assistant Secretary of State Robert O Blake met people in Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi he reportedly said none of them had complained about war crimes, and that their problems related to receipt of death certificates and locating of their loved ones. The BBC covering the LLRC sittings in Vavuniya in August 2010 noted that people were not talking so much about the fighting in the last stage of the war, but about the present and the difficulties they face.
The war crimes outcry was largely manufactured in the west, just like the media products that support it. The government has done well to come up with a product equally marketable in the west, in its effort to neutralize that diabolical campaign. Channel 4’s Killing Fields documentary was screened at the UN with much advance publicity, and has been publicly broadcast in many countries. In fairness, will “Lies agreed upon” be given similar exposure?
The writer is a senior freelance journalist
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