Channel 4 News must choose between journalism and advocacy propaganda regarding Sri Lanka

Engage Sri Lanka’s media monitoring project, Sri Lanka Media Watch, has called upon Britain’s Channel 4 News programme to choose between legitimate journalism and advocacy propaganda in its focus on Sri Lanka.

In its most recent programme, “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished”, screened on 14 March 2012, Channel 4 News sought to make new claims regarding the last few weeks of the Sri Lankan civil war, fought between the government and LTTE rebels, which ended in May 2009. This was the second hour-long programme made by Channel 4 News on the subject. The coordinator of Sri Lanka Media Watch, Peter Walker, restated the comment he made about the first programme: “There is a name for those courts in which one person is the accuser, judge and jury: a kangaroo court. Channel 4’s programme was the journalist equivalent of such a court. Snow and his colleagues should stick to tabloid journalism, they make very poor lawyers.” Read more....

 

Miliband’s campaign: Blind to the truth and bedding falsehoods

by Saratha RAJENDRAN

So, is David Miliband having another banana moment? Mr. Beanlike pose at the 2008 Labour Conference.

Historians give credit to the British for creating most of the internal conflicts in countries which were under British colonial rule (Ex: Rhodesia, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). 

A most apparent case study would be the British Labour Party’s decision to move from the Tories’ policy of humanitarian relief in Yugoslavia to threaten, then actual, aggression against the Serbs. By rewarding each separatist group in turn, it achieved NATO’s covert objective of Balkan fragmentation.

Having said that, why would the same Labour Party’s David Miliband be interested in interfering with a national issue in Sri Lanka soil? The latest exhibition of impunity unfolds as the former British Foreign Minister appears in yet another Channel-4 outcry of “possible war crimes”. Read more....

UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka: Test of India’s backbone as an emerging regional power

By Raj Gonsalkorale

 

US resolution on Lanka only to divert attention from Israel - Cho S. Ramaswamy, editor of the Tamil weekly Thuglak, and a former Rajya Sabha member.

Mr Ramaswamy in his interview with R. Bhagwan Singh of the Deccan Chronicle on the 18th of March, questions why the US has moved this resolution. He says “What happened when the UNHCR spoke about (alleged violations by) Israel? 

The US attacked it and said that this is becoming political. Why target Israel when there are violations all over the world? You are doing all this country-specific thing and that won’t do, the US had said. And that’s what India says. Perhaps, the US has come up with this resolution just to show that there are human rights violations elsewhere, too, in order to divert the world’s attention from Israel. Why should India be interested in it? Why should the Tamil champions be interested in it?” Read more....

 

Army tells Channel 4, NGOs and Tamil Diaspora :

‘Present allegations to LLRC with evidence’

Chamikara WEERASINGHE 

‘Channel Four should present the allegations they make against Sri Lanka Army with evidence to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) instead of dramatizing their old video clips taken from open sources of pro-LTTE websites’, the Sri Lanka Army yesterday said. “NGO activists,such as, Pakiasothy Sarawanamuttu, Sunila Abeysekara, Nimalka Fernando and Sunanda Deshapriya from Sri Lanka, could have done the same, if they had any true interest in Sri Lanka’s human rights situation”, states the Army. 

Sri Lanka Army Spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasekera said, Channel 4 as a rule telecast anti - Sri Lankan material under the influence of the pro - LTTE diaspora. Their new video footage, which is supposed to be a follow up of their first one, is full of “shocking comments” synchronized on their old collection of material from open sources. Read more...

Defence Secy. responds to C4 allegations

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Having failed to throw a fresh lifeline to the LTTE, an irate former British Foreign Secretary David Wright Miliband called President Mahinda Rajapaksa and senior Sri Lankan political and military figures liars. ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields II: War Crimes Unpunished’ telecast on Wednesday in support of the US-led bid to move a resolution at the current session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) targeting GoSL, quoted Miliband as having made the remark during a discussion with US Diplomats in Colombo. Miliband’s remark wouldn’t have been in the public domain if not for the whistle-blowing website Wiki Leaks, which had now exposed hundreds of thousands of classified US military and diplomatic cables.

Miliband made his bid in the third week of April 2009. Read more...