Author: |Posted: 6:37 pm on 23/10/09
Category: World News Blog
The United States government has not accepted Sri Lankan claims that a video broadcast by Chanel 4 News apparently showing Sri Lankan soldiers executing Tamils is a “fake”.
The film – sent to us by an independent group of Sri Lankan journalists – was broadcast in August this year. Since then, the Sri Lankan government has commissioned experts to analyse the film and concluded it wasn’t genuine.
But a report released by the US State Department says there has yet to be any “independent” analysis of the pictures, which were said to have been recorded by a soldier on his mobile phone. Sri Lanka has resisted calls by the UN for an independent investigation into this and other alleged war crimes. read more
Author: |Posted: 7:55 pm on 18/06/09
Category: World News Blog
Eyewitnesses interviewed during a week-long undercover investigation for Channel 4 News told of thousands of civilian deaths as government forces advanced on the Tigers’ final stronghold.
The deaths, they said, were the result of government shelling. The Sri Lankan president and senior government ministers have repeatedly denied causing a single civilian death in what the government had desginated a “no-fire zone.”
Author: |Posted: 7:19 pm on 17/06/09
Category: World News Blog
Sinhalese Sri Lankans are so relieved their war is over that most appear blinded by patriotism, drunk on victory and deaf to the clamour from outside their island for investigations into possible war crimes.
The country’s pliant media speak with one voice, exhorting their loyal compatriots to celebrate this great triumph over terror.
But the only terror I saw there was in the eyes of vanquished Tamils. Those I met were terrified in case they were caught talking to us, constantly looking over their shoulders. A Tamil journalist pulled out of a meeting claiming he’d be killed were he caught. read more
Author: |Posted: 6:07 pm on 10/05/09
Category: World News Blog
It’s not often that the most powerful man in the country rings you.
I’d spoken amicably to defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa 45 minutes earlier about getting some better access to Sri Lanka’s 25-year war. But this time he was calling me, and seemed to have remembered something.
“Who is this? You rang me earlier? Is this Channel 4? You have been accusing my soldiers of raping civilians? Your visa is cancelled, you will be deported. You can report what you like about this country, but from your own country, not from here.”
