[Independent UK]

The photograph once served as a relatively removed document of warfare, now the image has become a powerful weapon within it. The distance between the photographer and the activities of war has moved closer proportionate to the increasing accessibility of the camera. Replacing a limited number of commissioned photographers are the proliferating numbers of amateurs whose smartphones and digital cameras are well within reach and whose agendas are open corruption.

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[Guardian UK]

Channel 4’s controversial documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, which featured graphic footage of alleged war crimes, has been cleared of breaching the broadcasting code.

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[Huffington Post]

We failed to prevent a massacre in Sri Lanka. We must not fail to seek justice for it.

‘Never again’ is the promise that has followed the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda and Srebrenica; issued each time with outrage and contrition, and, in recent years, a report on the failure of the international community to act. Kofi Annan commissioned one such report in 1999 on the Rwandan genocide, declaring: “Of all my aims as [UN] Secretary-General, there is none to which I feel more deeply committed than that of enabling the UN never again to fail in protecting a civilian population”. Less than five years later, the UN was unable to galvanise international action in Darfur. Ten years later it failed to prevent tragedy unfolding in the final stages of Sri Lanka’s long-running civil war.

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[International Crisis Group]

As South Africa knows better than most, a country cannot begin to overcome decades of internal conflict without a sustained effort at revealing the truth of the past and a committed push for reconciliation. If only Sri Lanka could learn that lesson.

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[Radio Netherlands Worldwide]

First a damning UN report accused both sides in the country’s 30-year civil war of atrocities – a claim the current government refutes categorically. Then in June British TV station Channel 4 broadcast a devastating account of the closing weeks of the conflict in 2009. At this time, the programme said, the Sri Lankan military systematically murdered thousands of civilians. Colombo says the evidence is ‘fabricated’. Distinguishing truth from artifice is problematic in a country where the free press claims it is under constant threat. RNW sent a team to Sri Lanka to investigate.

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[AFP]

India on Friday urged Sri Lanka to examine claims made in a British documentary that said it targeted civilians while crushing Tamil Tiger rebels two years ago. The Channel 4 documentary, “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields” aired last month on British television contained footage of what it said were prisoner executions.

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[Al Jazeera]

The civil war in Sri Lanka was one of the world’s most brutal conflicts and lasted nearly 30 years. Both the Sinhalese-majority government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were accused of using dirty tactics. When the war ended in 2009 with the defeat of the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government pledged rehabilitation for hundreds of thousands of Tamils languishing in jails and in refugee camps. The government also promised to rebuild the war-torn north and east. But has that happened? And has the mainstream media forgotten about the Tamils of Sri Lanka? The war may be over, but do the old prejudices still endure?

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[AFP]

Sri Lanka has arrested a Briton for allegedly helping a British TV channel produce a documentary accusing Sri Lankan troops of war crimes, a media report said on Saturday.

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[Independent UK]

On Tuesday 14 June, a shocking, heart-wrenching documentary was shown on Channel 4.  ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’, broadcast just after 11pm, displayed what presenter Jon Snow described as “devastating evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and a powerful case for bring those guilty of these crimes to justice.”

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[AFP]

Sri Lanka’s military said Wednesday it had original footage that exposed the “malicious intentions” behind a British documentary on alleged war crimes committed by government troops.

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