'Western agenda used' for Sri Lanka war crimes

BBC Sinhala
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The director of a British documentary on last stages of Sri Lanka’s civil war has accused the West and the UN of failing to take any “effective action” to prevent alleged war crimes by the country’s security forces.

Callum Macrae, the director of “Sri Lanka Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished” said that many allegations against Sri Lanka government have been confirmed through leaked UN documents, US embassy cables revealed by Wikileaks and an interview former senior UN official John Holmes.

“The international community has an obligation of duty to protect which is a fundamental principal under international law. That duty was not carried out; the international community has failed on that,” he told BBC Sinhala service, Sandeshaya.

Mr Macrae says there were two major reasons for the “failure” by the international community to prevent Sri Lanka continuing with war crimes.

'Shelling UN workers'

“The climate this was allowed to happen was that Rajapaksa regime used the Western Agenda global war on terror to justify what they were doing,” he said.

The film, to be released next week in UK by the Channel4, also figures harrowing details of the killing of Rasmachandran Prabhakaran, 12, the younger son of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Mr Macrae said the footage, recorded by a member of Sri Lankan armed forces, has been carefully examined by video experts to confirm that it was authentic.

“The forensic pathologist analysed and the moment of death from the nature of the wounds and it is clear that he was executed in cold blood,” he added.

The killing, together with other incidents of alleged executions by the security forces, is a clear proof that there was a “systematic pattern of executions of leading LLTE figures and fighters.”

The film alleges that orders for the alleged executions as well as “deliberate targeting of civilians” have come from the most senior commanders, including President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Commander of Sri Lanka Army, Gen Sarath Fonseka.

“The Sri Lankan military is very very disciplined and very organised. The men who have most frequently claimed direct control of the war were President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabhaya,” he said.

The film reveals, says Callum Macrae, how a group of UN workers were fired upon by the Sri Lanka military after the workers informed their GPS coordinates to the military.

“There were systematic shelling of the UN bunker and the area around it. When they protested about it, they were told were sent directly by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseksa,” he said, adding that it shows the highest command was aware about the attacks into the no fire zone.

“Those men bear direct commanding responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The director said nobody would deny that the Tamil Tigers were also responsible for serious war crimes including the using civilians as a human shield in the war zone.

“The war crimes committed by the LTTE are clear and documented and are not challenged,” said Mr Macrae.

“However, it is important to recognise that the international community demands highest standards from a government which claim to be a democratically elected, legitimate government.”

© BBC SInhala

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GoSL reminds US of what its ‘own man’ in Colombo revealed

By Shamindra Ferdinando | The Island
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Sri Lanka striving to defeat a US-led resolution at the current session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) strongly believes a statement attributed to former US Defence Attache, Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith at a seminar in Colombo can’t be ignored by those pursuing the government on the human rights front.

The unprecedented statement made towards the end of Lt. Col. Smith’s tenure in Colombo in response to a query raised by retired Indian Maj. Gen. Ashok Metha disputed the very basis of the assertion that the LTTE wanted to surrender to advancing troops, though the government ignored the move.

The US soldier intervened, though Maj. Gen. Metha, who had served as the IPKF commander in the Ampara-Batticaloa sector in 1987, directed the question to Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva, now at the centre of a controversy over indiscriminate military action on the Vanni front.

Authoritative Defence and External Affairs officials told The Island that the US, too, couldn’t close the eyes to its own man’s statement if it was genuinely interested in knowing the truth. Sources said that all major Colombo based diplomatic missions probably had agreed with the US official’s assumption, though the US State Department distanced itself from the statement attributed to Lt. Col. Smith. The US being a Co-Chair for Sri Lanka’s peace process, knew what was going on in the wake of close quarter combat operations on the Vanni east front.

This is what Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith had to say.

"Hello, may I say something to a couple of questions raised. I’ve been the defence attaché here at the US Embassy since June 2008. Regarding the various versions of events that came out in the final hours and days of the conflict — from what I was privileged to hear and to see, the offers to surrender that I am aware of seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE — Nadesan, KP — people who weren’t and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE.

"So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were in fact real.

"And I think the same is true for the version of events. It’s not so uncommon in combat operations, in the fog of war, as we all get our reports second, third and fourth hand from various commanders at various levels that the stories don’t seem to all quite match up.

"But I can say that the version presented here so far in this is what I heard as I was here during that time. And I think I better leave it at that before I get into trouble. "

"In Washington, no sooner he made these remarks (which were published exclusively in The Island) the US State Department disassociated itself with Lt. Col. Smith’s remarks.

"The State Department’s Deputy Spokesman Mark C. Toner said that the defense attaché had attended the seminar as an observer and a note taker. "His comments reflected his personal opinions. There’s no change in the policy of the United States, and his remarks do not reflect any change in our policy."

© The Island

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Sri Lankan government ‘executed civilians during war with Tamil Tigers’

By Claudia Joseph | Mail Online
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A documentary showing graphic new footage of executed civilians in Sri Lanka, including the son of the leader of the Tamil Tigers, hopes to provide conclusive evidence of war crimes by its government.

A year after screening Jon Snow’s award-winning documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields about the dying days of the civil war – Channel 4 has returned to the island to uncover more evidence of alleged abuse.

The 60-minute documentary, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, will be screened days before the England cricket team flies out to the country.

It comes in the wake of this week’s United States resolution to the UN Human Rights Council censuring Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa and his brother, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaska, for ‘not adequately addressing serious allegations of violations of international law during the war in Sri Lanka'.

‘This forensic investigation reveals damning new evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Sri Lankan government forces,’ said Mr Snow.

‘But it also points directly to those who may bear culpability and command responsibility for this savagery - from the military leaders who led the bloody assaults that killed civilians - to the President and his brother, the Defence Secretary, who have yet to be properly investigated and held to account. 


‘It is our duty as journalists to report this evidence; it is up to the UN and the international community to initiate effective investigations and deliver justice for the thousands who lost their lives.

'At a time when we are seeing similar carnage in Syria - this is vital work.’

In the documentary, Mr Snow examines four instances of alleged war crimes using contemporaneous documents, eye witness accounts, photographic stills and trophy footage to determine how events unfolded in the final days of the war and investigate who was responsible for the carnage.

According to UN estimates, up to 40,000 civilians were killed during the conflict between the Government and rebel forces.

One of the most horrific scenes shows the bullet-riddled body of 12-year-old Balachandran Prabhakaran, son of the Tiger leader Velupillai.

Professor Derrick Pounder, a forensic pathologist at Dundee University, confirmed the boy was shot five times rather than killed in combat duty.

He said: ‘There is a speckling from propellant tattooing, indicating that the distance of the muzzle of the weapon to this boy’s chest was two to three feet or less.

'So he could have reached out with his hand and touched the gun that killed him. After receiving this wound he would have fallen backwards and it’s then that he is likely to have received these two wounds.

'It’s likely that the shooter was standing over him while he was lying flat on the ground after the first shot. So this is a murder. There’s no doubt about it.’

The programme has also obtained unofficial footage, which suggests that his father Velupillai sustained a massive head wound – when his body was shown on television his head was covered by a rag. Separate stills see him first in uniform, then stripped naked and finally smeared in mud.

Again Professor Pounder believes he was executed. ‘This would be very typical of a high velocity gun shot wound to the head,’ he said.

‘A single gun shot wound to the head is a little unusual in terms of an armed conflict - it would suggest it is a targeted shot at a subject who wasn’t moving.’

According to programme makers, both scenes, which show the binding of hands, removal of clothing and shots to the back of the head, suggest a systematic policy of executing captured Tamils, which went to the highest echelons of the Government.

Amnesty International Asia Programme Director Sam Zarifi said: ‘President Rajapaksa was the highest military official in the country.

'He was the Commander in Chief and that is how he portrayed himself. Defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa also proudly proclaimed how involved he was in the military strategy.

'There is absolutely every reason to question those two as to specific incidents. There’s every reason to establish exactly what the chain of command was for events in the final stages - the few weeks of the war which were very bloody and predictably bloody.’

Mr Snow also uncovered a confidential internal UN report, which reveals that officials were convinced the government was deliberately shelling civilians and hospital patients in the ‘No Fire Zone.

An internal cable from the US Embassy in Colombo indicated the government had deliberately underestimated the numbers in the zone in order to starve hundreds of thousands of trapped civilians.

Satellite imagery analysed by the UN also indicates that civilians were deliberately targeted.

Last night the High Commission in Sri Lanka told Channel 4 they ‘categorically rejected the malicious allegations’ made by the programme.

It accused Channel 4 of a ‘continuing hostile and biased editorial position’ with regard to its reporting on Sri Lanka, focussing attention on ‘a number of highly spurious and uncorroborated allegations’ and seeking, ‘entirely falsely’, to implicate members of the Sri Lanka government and senior military figures.

The channel was also accused of ‘choosing to ignore the many positive post-conflict developments now taking place in the country’. The High Commission said their approach would ‘harm the ongoing and comprehensive reconciliation process’.

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished is screened on Channel 4 at 10.55pm on Wednesday.

© Mail Online

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Prabakaran's son's killing: Sri Lanka denies knowledge

By R. K. Radhakrishnan | The Hindu
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Did the Sri Lankan Army kill LTTE chief V. Prabakaran's son, Balachandran, in cold blood on May 18, 2009, around the same time that Sri Lanka won the last Eelam War?

This is the main question raised in a new Channel 4 video, to be aired on Wednesday.

Writing in United Kingdom's Independent newspaper Callum Macrae, the maker of Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, narrates the scene: “A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran, and he is the son of the LTTE leader, Vellupillai Prabakaran. He has been executed in cold blood.” Mr. Macrae says the footage “seems to have been shot [as] a grotesque trophy video by Sri Lankan forces.”

The video is a sequel to the earlier Channel 4 film, The Killing Fields. In that too, Channel 4 showed executions of LTTE cadre.

Asked about the new video, and specifically about the execution of Balachandran, Sri Lankan President's spokesperson and International Media Advisor Bandula Jayasekara said he had not seen the video.

LTTE rump across the world were busy preparing such videos to embarrass and bring disrepute to Sri Lanka, he said and added that their bluff will be called, just as Sri Lanka had frame-by-frame rebutted the first Channel 4 video.

“We can produce thousands of videos where LTTE has killed children, infants and women. We have proof of them banging heads of children against walls and killing them. Sri Lankan forces do not indulge in these things. We conducted a humanitarian operation,” he said.

© The Hindu

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