Of war crimes and double standards

Khaleej Times: The British Channel 4 documentary titled ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ aired last Tuesday has brought on a fresh onslaught of international wrath and local denials on the alleged war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan Army during its last and victorious offensive against the LTTE.

Three decades of war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, proscribed as a terrorist faction by most countries and organisations, including the UN, the UK and the US, shredded the country’s economy and growth by the end of the war in 2009.

The hour-long video, which comprises just a few minute’s footage of “atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan Army,” has been doctored, says the Sri Lankan Government which assigned its own experts to examine the video.

Rejecting the contents of the film, Defence Ministry Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa said that “pro-LTTE elements have used the Channel 4 news agency after giving money to them (Channel 4) in order to tarnish the image of both the Sri Lankan Government as well as the Army”.

The Sri Lankan Ministry of External Affairs stated that the documentary, like the Darusman Report, does no more than put together a sequence of events and images, to justify a conclusion arrived at in advance. It added that the origins of this footage have not been established, and no one has so far taken responsibility for its contents.

“It is a mere collection of visuals previously aired through LTTE websites and a miniscule section of the international media, at the behest of parties with vested interests to undermine the present efforts at reconciliation and development taking place in Sri Lanka.

The views expressed in the film are without any guarantee of authenticity,” says the Government statement.

The documentary is disturbing enough. For those who have little or no background knowledge of one of the worst guerrilla onslaughts on a country for 27 years, the film would leave them siding with politicians asking for a war crime trial for the country’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow uses subtle and persuasive journalism tools and phrases like “unequal war” and “oppressive President” to leave an indelible final impression of the Sri Lankan Army and its Government as the bad guys.

There is just a little bit of film on the Tigers, who “cannot be distinguished from the civilians,” according to Snow, using Tamil civilians as human shields. But that’s about it.

The Sri Lankan Government’s allegations that the most of the footage, taken using mobile phones, has been doctored and is fake may sound hysterical to some. Most of the bombing and killings shown in the video are attributable to the LTTE, says the government.

The question here is — would things be any different if the slain LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who trained the most efficient squad of suicide bombers in the world, were alive? Would he be subject to the same war crimes charges for the killings and ethnic cleansing and a hundred other atrocities he had committed?

So much more than what happened at the end of a long and bloody war is at stake here.

To think that anything would be fair in war is a fallacy. If the film were factual, killing civilians is wrong. Raping and molesting women cadres is wrong.

Shooting at a naked and bound terrorist is wrong. Even if it is done by soldiers who have reached the end and have seen their men mutilated, shot and hacked to death, POWs tortured, women and children raped and decapitated by terrorists, it is still wrong.

But as a Government Member of Parliament, Prof. Rajiva Wijesingha, asked the Al Jazeera anchor during an interview on Wednesday, why not raise the same questions at Tripoli? Is it to deflect the world’s attention from the West reportedly killing innocent civilians in Libya, in a war that is not even theirs? And in Afghanistan? And in Iraq?