Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished | |
---|---|
Genre | Documentary |
Directed by | Callum Macrae |
Presented by | Jon Snow |
Narrated by | Jon Snow |
Composer | Wayne Roberts |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original languages | English Tamil Sinhala |
No. of episodes | 1 |
Production | |
Executive producer | Chris Shaw |
Producer | Callum Macrae |
Production locations | Sri Lanka United Kingdom |
Running time | 50 minutes |
Production company | ITN Productions |
Release | |
Original network | Channel 4 |
Original release | 14 March 2012 |
Related | |
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished is an investigatory documentary about the final weeks of the Sri Lankan Civil War broadcast by the British TV station Channel 4 on 14 March 2012. [1] It was a sequel to the award-winning Sri Lanka's Killing Fields which was broadcast by Channel 4 in June 2011. Made by film maker Callum Macrae, this documentary focused on four specific cases and investigated who was responsible for them. Using amateur video from the conflict zone filmed by civilians and Sri Lankan soldiers, photographs and statements by civilians, soldiers and United Nations workers, the documentary traced ultimate responsibility for the cases to Sri Lanka's political and military leaders. [2] The documentary was made by ITN Productions and presented by Jon Snow, the main anchor on Channel 4 News. The Sri Lankan government has denied all the allegations in the documentary. [3]
During the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009 and after its end in May 2009 evidence in the form of video, photographs etc. started emerging showing what appeared to be gross violations of international and humanitarian law by both the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). British broadcaster Channel 4 was one of a number of foreign media organisations who publicised this evidence. In August 2009 Channel 4 News broadcast video showing naked and blindfolded victims being executed by Sri Lankan soldiers. [4] The Sri Lankan government denounced the video as fake but forensic analysis by independent experts and the United Nations confirmed that the video was genuine. [5] In November 2010 Channel 4 News broadcast additional video of the same incident. [6] On 14 June 2011 Channel 4 broadcast a 50-minute documentary called Sri Lanka's Killing Fields which featured amateur video from the conflict zone filmed by civilians and Sri Lankan soldiers depicting "horrific war crimes". [7] This documentary received significant international publicity, eliciting reactions from foreign governments and international human rights groups. [8] [9] [10] [11] The documentary was re-broadcast in India, Australia and Norway. [12] [13] [14] It was also screened specially for legislators in Washington, D.C., Brussels, Ottawa and Wellington. [15] [16] [17] [18] The Sri Lankan government denounced the documentary as a fake. [19] It subsequently released a documentary titled Lies Agreed Upon which claimed to counter the allegations made in Sri Lanka's Killing Fields but failed to deal with the specific incidents detailed by Sri Lanka's Killing Fields. [20] [21] In November 2011 Channel 4 announced that it had commissioned a follow-up film Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished from ITN Productions with new evidence concerning the final days of the conflict. [22]
On 11 March 2012 Channel 4 premièred Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished at the 10th International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights being held at the same time as the 19th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. [23] Channel 4 broadcast the documentary to UK audiences on 14 March 2012 at 10:55 pm. [24]
The Guardian's Sam Wollaston described the documentary as "a proper piece of journalism that asked serious questions of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother the defence secretary – questions that should be asked in a war crimes trial". [25] Giving the documentary 4½ stars, The Daily Telegraph's James Walton noted that the documentary had proceeded so carefully and left little to chance that it was impossible sustain any objections. [26] The Independent's Tom Sutcliffe described the documentary as "essentially a work of frustration, a reiteration of the original charges and a repeat of a call for action that went nowhere last time" thought it did have some new facts. [27] David Butcher of the Radio Times found the documentary to be "excruciating...but the evidence of serious and sustained war crimes looks irresistible — with the apparent culprits still sitting at the top of the country’s government". [28]
The musician and activist M.I.A. expressed support for the film and its makers, stating "This C4 #killingfields doc makes the points I couldn't make". [29]
Sri Lanka - The Sri Lankan High Commission in London issued a statement on 15 March 2012 which accused the documentary of broadcasting "highly spurious and uncorroborated allegations" and of falsely implicating members of the Sri Lankan government and senior military figures. [30] The statement went on to reject the "malicious allegations" made by the documentary's producers and alleged that the timing of the documentary was a "cynical" attempt to gather support for a resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC. [30] The Sri Lankan military condemned the documentary as "sensationalism" saying that most of its contents weren't new, they had been broadcast on the first documentary. [31]
United Kingdom - British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt issued a statement on 15 March 2012 in which he noted that "Once again, Channel 4 has brought to international attention important and disturbing evidence to support allegations of grave abuses in Sri Lanka". [32] Burt stated that since the end of the civil war the international community had "called for an independent, credible and thorough investigation into alleged war crimes on both sides of the conflict" and that Channel 4's documentaries reinforced the need for that investigation. [32]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a Tamil militant organization that was based in northeastern Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Velupillai Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.
The Sri Lankan state has been accused of state terrorism against the Tamil minority as well as the Sinhalese majority, during the two Marxist–Leninist insurrections. The Sri Lankan government and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces have been charged with massacres, indiscriminate shelling and bombing, extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, disappearance, arbitrary detention, forced displacement and economic blockade. According to Amnesty International state terror was institutionalized into Sri Lanka's laws, government and society.
Eelam War IV is the name given to the fourth phase of armed conflict between the Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Renewed hostilities began on the 26 July 2006, when Sri Lanka Air Force fighter jets bombed several LTTE camps around Mavil Aru anicut. The government's casus belli was that the LTTE had cut off the water supply to surrounding paddy fields in the area. Shutting down the sluice gates of the Mavil Aru on July 21 depriving the water to over 15,000 people - Sinhalese and Muslim settlers under Sri Lankan state-sponsored colonisation schemes in Trincomalee district. They were denied of water for drinking and also cultivating over 30,000 acres of paddy and other crops. The fighting resumed after a four-year ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and LTTE. Continued fighting led to several territorial gains for the Sri Lankan Army, including the capture of Sampur, Vakarai and other parts of the east. The war took on an added dimension when the LTTE Air Tigers bombed Katunayake airbase on March 26, 2007, the first rebel air attack without external assistance in history.
The war was waged for over a quarter of a century, with an estimated 70,000 killed by 2007. Immediately following the end of war, on 20 May 2009, the UN estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. However, in 2011, referring to the final phase of the war in 2009, the Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka stated, "A number of credible sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths." The large majority of these civilian deaths in the final phase of the war were said to have been caused by indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.
There were war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the Eelam War IV phase in 2009. The war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; sexual violence by the Sri Lankan military; the systematic denial of food, medicine, and clean water by the government to civilians trapped in the war zone; child recruitment, hostage taking, use of military equipment in the proximity of civilians and use of forced labor by the Tamil Tigers.
The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission was a commission of inquiry appointed by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May 2010 after the 26-year-long civil war in Sri Lanka to function as a Truth and reconciliation commission. The commission was mandated to investigate the facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the ceasefire agreement made operational on 27 February 2002, the lessons that should be learnt from those events and the institutional, administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities. After an 18-month inquiry, the commission submitted its report to the President on 15 November 2011. The report was made public on 16 December 2011, after being tabled in the parliament.
The Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka was a 2011 report produced by a panel of experts appointed by United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The report is referred to by some as the Darusman Report, after the name of the chairman of the panel.
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields is an investigatory documentary about the final weeks of the Sri Lankan Civil War broadcast by the British TV station Channel 4 on 14 June 2011. Described as one of the most graphic documentaries in British TV history, the documentary featured amateur video from the conflict zone filmed by civilians and Sri Lankan soldiers which depicted "horrific war crimes".
Lies Agreed Upon is a documentary produced by Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence in response to a documentary aired by Channel 4, named Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, about the final weeks of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The documentary gives the Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence response to war crimes accusations and rebuts points made by the producers of the Channel 4 documentary, who presented it as "a forensic investigation into the final weeks of the quarter-century-long civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the secessionist rebels, the Tamil Tigers." Lies Agreed Upon was first aired at an official function held at Hilton Colombo on 1 August 2011, one and half months after the broadcasting of "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields". Ministry of Defence released another report named Humanitarian Operation – Factual Analysis : July 2006 – May 2009 on the same day.
Callum Macrae is a Scottish filmmaker, writer and journalist currently with Outsider Television, which he had co-founded with Alex Sutherland in 1993.
No Fire Zone: In the Killing Fields of Sri Lanka is an investigative documentary about the final weeks of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The documentary covers the period from September 2008 until the end of the war in 2009 in which thousands of Tamil people were killed by shelling and extrajudicial executions by the Sri Lankan Army including Balachandran Prabhakaran, the 12-year-old son of the slain Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. The Sri Lankan army has denied the allegations in the documentary. However, on 21 October 2015 the BBC reported that Maxwell Paranagama, a government-appointed Sri Lankan judge, says allegations the army committed war crimes during the long conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels are "credible". He went on to say there was evidence to suggest that footage obtained by the Channel 4 documentary No Fire Zone - showing prisoners naked, blindfolded, with arms tied and shot dead by soldiers - was genuine.
Shoba also known as Shobana Dharmaraja was a Sri Lankan Tamil journalist and television broadcaster for the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. She died in the final days of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 with video evidence that she was captured by the Sri Lankan military before being raped, tortured and murdered. A senior United Nations official deemed the footage to be authentic. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also verified that it was her.
Sri Lanka's Unfinished War is a 2013 documentary examining the alleged genocide and crimes against humanity against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sri Lankan Government. It was presented by Frances Harrison former BBC correspondent to Sri Lanka, and was first screened on the BBC World News on November 9, 2013. Sri Lanka's Unfinished War which presents harrowing cases of testimony from interviewees, brings to light evidence on the systematic post-war rape and torture in detention, organized by the State on the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Government denied the evidence that was put forth to them from the video..
This Land Belongs to the Army is a 2014 documentary film by Indian journalist and filmmaker Maga.Tamizh Prabhagaran. This film shows Sri Lankan civil war and shows the current post-war status of Sri Lanka. It also shows several controversial acts by the Sri Lankan government and the armed forces including Sinhalization and Land grabbing by the military. The film also features new testimonies from Tamil victims and an exclusive interview with a who is said to be a Sri Lankan Army officer, who speaks about the use of chemical and heavy weapons during the civil war.
Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day is a remembrance day observed by Sri Lankan Tamil people to remember those who died in the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. It is held each year on 18 May, the date on which the civil war ended in 2009, and is named after Mullivaikkal, a village on the north-east coast of Sri Lanka which was the scene of the final battle of the civil war.
There are allegations that chemical weapons were used by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the Sri Lankan Civil War. No strong evidence for indicating the consistent use of such weapons during the war have been found thus far.
Terrorism in Sri Lanka has been a highly destructive phenomenon during the periods of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) and the first and second JVP insurrections. A common definition of terrorism is the systematic use or threatened use of violence to intimidate a population or government for political, religious, or ideological goals. Sri Lanka is a country that has experienced some of the worst known acts of modern terrorism, such as suicide bombings, massacres of civilians and assassination of political and social leaders, that posed a significant threat to the society, economy and development of the country. The Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1978 is the legislation, that provides the powers to law enforcement officers to deal with issues related to terrorism in Sri Lanka. It was first enacted as a temporary law in 1979 under the presidency of J. R. Jayewardene, and later made permanent in 1982.