Video Sparks Calls for Sri Lankan War-Crimes Inquiry - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.

com 28/8/09 7:45 AM

AUGUST 26, 2009, 6:06 PM

Video Sparks Calls for Sri Lankan War-Crimes Inquiry

By ROBERT MACKEY

A screenshot from video exiled Sri Lankan journalists say was filmed in Sri Lanka in January.
Update | Thursday | 9:25 a.m. On Thursday, a Sri Lankan newspaper reported that the
country’s government plans to “lodge a formal protest with the British government” over
the broadcast on British television of the amateur footage discussed in this blog post. Sri
Lanka also published a separate letter of complaint its government has sent to Britain’s
Channel 4 News, which first aired the footage.

In response to these heated denials from the government of Sri Lanka that the video, which
appears to show the execution of prisoners, is genuine, Jonathan Miller of Channel 4 News
in London published a blog post on Wednesday night discussing the challenge of
authenticating amateur video apparently showing atrocities in war zones. Mr. Miller
reported that the Sri Lankan president’s media unit had issued a statement calling the
footage “false and doctored.”

In his blog post, Mr. Miller also noted that it remains dangerous for government opponents
in Sri Lanka to speak freely. Within the past week, Mr. Miller wrote, “an eminent Sri
Lankan academic, Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, director of the Colombo-based think
tank, the Center for Policy Alternatives, said he’d received an anonymous death threat.” Last
Friday, Mr. Saravanamuttu published a statement on the threat and this image, showing the
full text of the letter on his Web site. The letter says that if Mr. Saravanamuttu’s complaints
about government abuses prevent Sri Lanka from obtaining favorable trade status with the
European Union, the activist will be killed.

Original Post| Wednesday | 6:06 p.m. On Tuesday, Britain’s Channel 4 News

broadcast amateur video that exiled Sri Lankan journalists say documents the execution of
Tamil prisoners by government soldiers in January during an offensive against separatist
rebels in northern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government immediately denied that its
soldiers had committed any atrocities and told Channel 4 that the graphic, disturbing
images in its report might have been fabricated.

The amateur video was provided to Channel 4 News by members of the group Journalists
for Democracy in Sri Lanka, who said that it was shot on a soldier’s mobile phone seven
months ago but had only recently been smuggled out of the country. The BBC reports that
the group was formed recently by “Sri Lankan journalists, both Sinhalese and Tamil, who
have fled the country.”

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Video Sparks Calls for Sri Lankan War-Crimes Inquiry - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com 28/8/09 7:45 AM

After the video was broadcast on Channel 4, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka
uploaded the complete 78-second clip to YouTube and published it on its own Web site.
Within hours, the video, which appears to show the execution of two naked prisoners and
the remains of seven other men, was removed from YouTube. Execution footage violates the
video-sharing site’s terms of use.

On Wednesday, the BBC published two artificially blurred excerpts from the video on its
Web site, along with a video interview with the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Britain,
Nihal Jayasinghe. Mr. Jayasinghe called the footage “a matter for laughter” and suggested
that it might have been staged by Tamil Tiger rebels to embarrass the government. Mr.
Jayasinghe claimed that “it is common knowledge” that Tamil Tiger militants were “seen
masquerading in Sri Lankan Army uniforms” during the conflict in order to spread “this
kind of disinformation.”

Since the Sri Lankan government barred independent journalists from the war zone during
the last phase of its struggle with the Tamil Tigers, frequent claims of atrocities made by
both sides during the fighting earlier this year have been nearly impossible to verify. Given
these circumstances, The New York Times, like Channel 4 News and the BBC, has not been
able to verify that the executions seen in the video actually took place.

The Lede was able to speak, by telephone, with a Europe-based spokesman for Journalists
for Democracy in Sri Lanka on Wednesday. The spokesman, who said that he is a journalist
from the Sinhalese ethnic group that makes up the majority in Sri Lanka, asked that he not
be identified by name, saying that he fears that his work could endanger family members
still living in the country.

According to the spokesman, the exiled journalists obtained the amateur video from “an
extremely reliable source” one week ago. Asked about the delay between the time the video
is said to have been shot and its release, the Sri Lankan journalist said that the video
seemed to have been made not to expose the executions but as a sort of souvenir by a
soldier. The journalist said that the video had apparently been passed around by friends of
the soldier after the war and had reached his source in Sri Lanka only recently.

The BBC reported that Amnesty International called for “an international, independent and
credible investigation into what took place during the final days of the conflict.” A statement
from the human rights group said:

Amnesty International has received consistent reports that violations of the laws of war, as
well as international human rights law, were committed by both sides in the conflict.

The government of Sri Lanka must allow immediate access to the conflict area so that
evidence and documents, as well as testimony from survivors, can be gathered.

The complete video has now been posted on the Web site of a pro-Tamil group, Tamilnet.
But the journalist who provided it to news organizations said that suggestions from the Sri
Lankan government that the video had been fabricated by Tamil militants were predictable.
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Video Sparks Calls for Sri Lankan War-Crimes Inquiry - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com 28/8/09 7:45 AM

Lankan government that the video had been fabricated by Tamil militants were predictable.
He said that while his group does contain some ethnic Tamils, the organization was not
acting in support of the Tamil separatist movement. He claimed that “anyone who takes a
stand” against Sri Lanka’s government “is immediately branded a Tamil Tiger sympathizer.”

In the Channel 4 News report, the correspondent Jonathan Miller said: “It’s impossible to
independently verify the authenticity of the pictures of this bloodbath but the group of exiled
Sri Lankan journalists which passed them to Channel 4 News are not a Tamil liberation
group — they campaign for press freedom.” Mr. Miller added that Channel 4 News
consulted “an independent Sri Lankan human-rights investigator, a Sinhalese, who has
watched the pictures with me this evening believes them to be genuine.”

It is possible that the raw video, which looks authentic, is not genuine. As in other
countries, like Iran or Myanmar, that place severe restrictions on the work of professional
reporters, video shot by amateurs in Sri Lanka may offer the only alternative to the official
view of events produced by the government. The danger for outside observers in all such
situations is two-fold: first, it is not terribly difficult to fabricate authentic-looking video;
second, even genuine amateur video is usually provided to news outlets by activists who
have a stake in how the world sees events in their country.

Mr. Miller of Channel 4 News said in his report: “There is no indication of the ethnicity of
the dead men, but the group which obtained the pictures claim the victims are Tamils. The
killers are speaking Sinhala; they are wearing what appear to be Sri Lankan Army
uniforms.”

Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka also issued a written statement that was posted on
Tamilnet on Tuesday, which explained, “for the benefit of those who cannot understand
Sinhala,” that the audio includes “insulting jokes and laughter” as well as “soldiers egging
each other on.”

As The Lede noted in April, it is difficult and potentially dangerous to produce reports in Sri
Lanka that are critical of the government. In January, the Sri Lankan newspaper editor, and
government critic, Lasantha Wickrematunge was gunned down in broad daylight in Sri
Lanka’s capital, Colombo. Mr. Wickrematunge’s brother later told the BBC that “we all
know” that the Sri Lankan government was involved in his murder. “In one way or
another,” he said, “we feel that the state had a hand in it.”

In 2007, the BBC’s Sinhala Web site reported that the International Federation of
Journalists was concerned that restrictions on journalists in Sri Lanka made it difficult for
the public to contend with “the overwhelming amount of rumor and propaganda coming
from all sides of the conflict.”

In May, as the Sri Lankan government’s war with the Tamil Tigers reached its end, foreign
correspondents, including one for Channel 4 News, were deported from the country or
denied entry visas.

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Video Sparks Calls for Sri Lankan War-Crimes Inquiry - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com 28/8/09 7:45 AM

The High Commission of Sri Lanka in London issued a statement to Channel 4 before its
broadcast saying that the government denies that its armed forces committed any atrocities
against the Sri Lankan Tamil community. The Sri Lankan government’s statement also
claims that “in many instances in the past, various media institutions used doctored videos,
photographs and documents to defame the Sri Lankan government and armed forces.” The
government’s complete statement to Channel 4 was included in the British broadcaster’s
report and is posted on the Channel 4 News Web site.

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