Parental Control must be enabled tp prevent children from watching this Video.
Considering the sensitivity of the Video and the efforts of Rajapakshe of Sri Lanka to wiggle out of War Criminal‘s charge, I understand that moves are afoot to censor this clip or ban it altogether as this gives concrete proof with Forensic evidence of Genocide.
I suggest this may be downloaded by those interested.
”
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: smoke billows from a civilian no-fire zone shelled in 2009. Photo: EPA
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished (Channel 4) was a follow-up to last year’s harrowing film about the end of the war against the Tamil Tigers — a film that came complete with footage of shelled hospitals and summary executions. Faced with the resulting global outrage, the Sri Lankan government promised a full inquiry. So, has it now admitted the truth?
The answer, you might not be startled to hear, is no. An official report has acknowledged for the first time that civilians died — but not that this was in any way the government’s fault. Last night, Jon Snow promised evidence both of more war crimes and of President Rajapaksa’s responsibility for them. In neither case did he break his word.
For a while, it felt as if the programme was proceeding almost too carefully. (At one point, a forensic pathologist was asked to study photographs of mutilated citizens so as to confirm that their injuries were “consistent with shelling”.) But the reason for such caution was soon clear. The original film had been denounced in Sri Lanka as a sloppy piece of reporting. Here, so little was left to chance that any similar objections will surely be impossible to sustain, although, as we saw when the Sri Lankan government was given the right to reply, that didn’t stop them trying.
Certainly by the end, there seemed no doubt that the government had indeed set up special no-fire zones for Tamil civilians — and then fired on them with heavy weaponry. According to a secret UN report, the “probability” that the government had done the shelling was “100 per cent”.
Even so, anybody hoping for the triumph of natural justice was in for a disappointment. When we last saw President Rajapaksa, he was cheerfully greeting the Queen at last year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Australia.”
A series of photographs taken a few hours apart and on the same camera, show Balachandran Prabhakaran, son of Villupillai Prabhakaran, head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). One of them shows the boy sitting in a bunker, alive and unharmed, apparently in the custody of Sri Lankan troops. Another, a few hours later, shows the boy’s body lying on the ground, his chest pierced by bullets.
The images were taken in May 2009 at the very end of the Sri Lankan government’s operation to crush the LTTE, which had launched a bloody, decades-long insurgency against the state that led to the deaths of perhaps 70,000 people. The authorities always said Prabhakaran’s son was killed in cross-fire, as troops moved in to take the LTTE’s last stronghold, located on a scrap of coastline near Mullaitivu in the north-east of the country.
Tiger leader Prabhakaran (pictured) plays with his son Balachandran and LTTE comrades on a beach
A BRUTAL END
Balachandran was the youngest son of slain LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran
Bala was 12 years old when he was shot dead allegedly by Lankan army officials
A documentary by the UK’s Channel 4 reveals as many as five bullet holes in the child’s body
He is said to have been grilled regarding the whereabouts of his father and then brutally executed
The film shows Bala’s body with five bullet holes on it
But the images, contained in a new documentary, No Fire Zone, which will be screened at the Geneva Human Rights Film Festival during the UN Human Rights Council meeting in March, suggest the boy was captured alive and killed at a later stage.
“Next on Channel 4: Wednesday 14 Mar 2012 at 10.55pm
In 2011 Channel 4 exposed damning evidence of atrocities committed in the war in Sri Lanka. Jon Snow presents this powerful follow-up film, revealing new video evidence as well as contemporaneous documents, eye-witness accounts, photographic stills and videos relating to how exactly events unfolded during the final days of the civil war.
“In 2011 Channel 4 exposed damning evidence of atrocities committed in the war in Sri Lanka. Jon Snow presents this powerful follow-up film, revealing new video evidence as well as contemporaneous documents, eye-witness accounts, photographic stills and videos relating to how exactly events unfolded during the final days of the civil war.
The film forensically examines four specific cases and investigates who was responsible.
LTTE Prabhakaran’s Son Shot
The four cases include: the deliberate heavy shelling of civilians and a hospital in the ‘No Fire Zone’; the strategic denial of food and medicine to hundreds and thousands of trapped civilians – defying the legal obligation to allow humanitarian aid into a war zone; the killing of civilians during the ‘rescue mission’; and the systematic execution of naked and bound LTTE prisoners – featuring new chilling video footage of a 12-year-old boy who has been brutally executed.
This painstaking investigation traces ultimate responsibility up to the highest echelons of the chain of command, asking questions of both President Rajapaska and his brother, the Defence Secretary.
What is more appalling is the information that the fresh Forensic evidence is available in the Documentary that Prabhakaran’s son Balachandran Prabhakaran was shot point-blank with telltale wounds in his chest at not less than five places.
To kill a child ..even if it were to be a terrorist’s is deplorable.
Even if it is war, what about Vienna Conventions? You can be tried like Milisovich of Bosnia or Nazis for The Final Solution.
On this Single count SriLanka’s war crime is proven.
Do watch Channel 4 programme today.
In a link quoted above you shall see how Sinhalese chauvinist defend their Government.
He said: ‘There is a speckling from propellant tattooing, indicating that the distance of the muzzle of the weapon to this boy’s chest was two to three feet or less.
‘So he could have reached out with his hand and touched the gun that killed him. After receiving this wound he would have fallen backwards and it’s then that he is likely to have received these two wounds.
‘It’s likely that the shooter was standing over him while he was lying flat on the ground after the first shot. So this is a murder. There’s no doubt about it.’
The programme has also obtained unofficial footage, which suggests that his father Velupillai sustained a massive head wound – when his body was shown on television his head was covered by a rag. Separate stills see him first in uniform, then stripped naked and finally smeared in mud.
Again Professor Pounder believes he was executed. ‘This would be very typical of a high velocity gun shot wound to the head,’ he said.
‘The short clip dates from the final hours of the bloody 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist rebels of the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE.
A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five neat bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran and he is the son of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. He has been executed in cold blood. Beside him lie the bodies of five men, believed to be his bodyguards. There are strips of cloth on the ground indicating that they were tied and blindfolded before they were shot – further evidence suggesting that the Sri Lankan government forces had a systematic policy of executing many surrendering or captured LTTE fighters and leading figures, even if they were children.
The footage – dating from 18 May 2009 and which seems to have been shot as a grotesque “trophy video” by Sri Lankan forces – will be broadcast for the first time on Wednesday night in a Channel 4 film, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished – a sequel to the controversial investigation broadcast last year which accused both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Spokesperson for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group said, “this precedent setting decision by the United Nation’s sponsored war-crimes tribunal will likely guide similar evidence admissibility determinations in ICC and ICJ proceedings. When geopolitical conditions converge and UN members haul Sri Lanka to the ICC, the alleged war-criminals then have to confront Ambassadors Butenis and Robert O’Blake’s statements in a legal setting.”
Ambassador Butenis
A January 2010 cable from US Embassy in Sri Lanka, made public by Wikileaks acknowledges that U.S. is cognizant of the fact that “responsibility for many alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka.” Ambassador Butenis further reasons the lack of progress in internal investigations: “There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power.”
A thin strip of land in northern Sri Lanka was the brutal theatre of war during the closing phase of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil conflict. Thousands of civilians were hemmed in as the government battled Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for a separate homeland.
The report by a UN-appointed panel of experts focuses on alleged war crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan armed forces and Tamil Tigers during the months leading up to the defeat of the rebels in May 2009.
Numerous allegations were circulating at the time and have emerged since. During that final stage of combat very few of the accusations could be independently verified. Journalists and most aid groups were barred from the region.
Civilian deaths
In March 2009, the UN said it feared actions by both sides might amount to war crimes. The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillaydescribed the level of civilian deaths as “truly shocking”, and warned it could reach “catastrophic” levels.
The government was accused of repeatedly shelling safe zones set up to protect civilians. The rebels were accused of holding civilians as human shields and firing on those who tried to flee. Both denied the allegations.
The UN estimated that up to 7,000 people had died by the end of April. The latest report now says it believes tens of thousands of civilians were killed in that final stage, adding that most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling.
Conduct of war
Civilians on a Red Cross ship are disembarked in 2009 as the conflict drew to its bloody end
Sri Lanka’s government was accused of using heavy weaponry and UN images obtained by the BBC appeared to show shelling damage in a government-designated “safe zone” for civilians.
The report claims the government shelled food distribution lines and near ICRC ships coming to pick up wounded civilians from beaches.
The government denied security forces had shelled the safe zone, saying there were a number of rebel suicide blasts in that area. The UN report is also said to condemn the rebels for killing civilians through suicide attacks.
Britain and France said the rebels had been “forcefully preventing civilians from leaving” during a 48-hour ceasefire. The rebels said the truce had not been long enough to allow civilians to safely leave the conflict zone. They rejected the charge that rebels prevented civilians from leaving the war zone.
The report also alleges the forced recruitment of children by rebels.
At the time, the Sri Lankan government denied the army had caused civilian casualties but said it had pierced rebel defences.
After the conflict ended, a group of doctors who worked in Sri Lanka’s rebel-held war zone were arrested on suspicion of collaborating with rebels. They later retracted their accusations against the government.
Extra-judicial killings
After the war more allegations emerged. One video obtained by Britain’s Channel 4 news purported to show the extra-judicial killing of what were thought to be Tamil rebels. Sri Lanka’s army spokesmanangrily rejected the video as a fabrication.
In late 2010, graphic video which apparently showed more footage from the same incident was aired by Channel 4 news. The pictures, which also showed bloodstained and blindfolded bodies, was rejected by Sri Lankaas an attempt by rebel sympathisers to tarnish Sri Lanka’s image.
And one senior army commander told Channel 4 news that orders for the killings came from the top – Sri Lanka denied those allegations.
The UN said independent experts concluded the footage was authentic, but the government rejects this. The images cannot be verified.
In the midst of the fighting, the BBC talked to civilians fleeing the war about their ordeal. They said they had lived under constant gunfire, intense shelling and an acute shortage of water, food and medicine.
They also confirmed accusations that the rebels were forcibly recruiting children. The head of the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in Sri Lankatold the BBC of shrapnel wounds to the limbs of civilians.
The BBC was part of a trip organised by the government to part of therecently captured front line, where refugees in a state of shock were listlessly standing. The army said it would work on developing the area.
The BBC has also heard numerous allegations from Tamils that their relatives are missing, among them a number of senior rebel fighters.
The government says that the military inflicted no civilian deaths during the final stages of its victory.
International human rights groups, however, say a comprehensive and independent war crimes inquiry is needed.
Sri Lanka conducted its own inquiry into war crimes but human rights groups refused to participate, saying the inquiry does not meet international standards.
Estimates say that as many as 100,000 people were killed during 26 years of war.
Report by the UN panel on Tamil massacre in Sri Lanka indicts Sri Lanka stating that
‘ “an independent international mechanism” to investigate what it called credible allegations that both the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels committed serious violations, including some that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, in the months before the decades-long war ended in May 2009…
“Most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling,…
Ban supported the recommendation, saying “that Sri Lanka should, first and foremost, assume responsibility for ensuring accountability for the alleged violations” and encouraged the government “to respond constructively.”
Under intense international pressure to investigate abuses, Sri Lanka did appoint a Lessions Learnt and Reconciliation Commission last year, but the U.N. panel said that body does not meet international standards and is compromised by the conflict of interest of several members.”
Ban Ki Moon’s spokesperson said he expects that a long-awaited UN report on alleged war crimes committed during the tail end of the Sri Lanka’s counter-insurgency campaign will go public. Bits of the report have been leaking out to local newspapers –and it paints a damning picture of the behavior of the Sri Lankan government’s final assault on territory controlled by the Tamil Tigers. Tens of thousands of civilians were likely killed. There is pretty strong evidence collected by human rights groups and journalists that the government deliberately targeted civilians.
Evidence points out to Executions,Point-blank shootings,Rape, torture and forcible eviction of Tamils from their property.
UN Secretary General is reported to have been informed of the killings of 20,000 people before his visit to Si Lanka and he has kept quiet (on this subject)
.Worse is the Chief of Staff Vijay Nambiar( An Indian)to Gen.Ban is said to be close to Rajapakshe and UN Chief was manipulated willingly or otherwise by him and his his Brother Sathish, a paid consultant to Sri Lankan Army and reportedly close to Gen. Sarath Fonseka.
Sri Lanka is adopting all methods to stone wall the UN report by calling the Report as inadequate and their Foreign Secretary G L Peiris, Sri Lanka External Affairs Minster resisting publication of the report saying the release of the full report would actually damage the UN system.
Net Result..
As the world waited on Thursday 21, April to finally see the official version of the UN Panel’s report in full, what it got was a late briefing from Ban’s, Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq telling the media that the Sri Lankan government “is being given another chance to respond.” This was contrary to Haq’s position just the previous day that the Rajapaksa regime’s lack of response, “doesn’t need to tie our hands down regarding when we are going to put out this report. As we have said repeatedly, we’ll put it out this week.”
India by not taking the initiative to publicize the report and bring Rajapakshe to book shall regret.
A leaked United Nations report indicates “credible allegations” of Sri Lanka war crimes. Video first broadcast by Channel 4 News, showing alleged Tamil executions, formed a key part of the evidence.
A leaked version of the long-awaited report by the United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) panel reveals “credible allegations” of war crimes which – if proven – suggest a “grave assault on the entire regime of international law”.
The report estimates that tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the final four months of Sri Lanka‘s civil war in 2009.
It indicates that actions by both the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 April 2011, 16:32 GMT] Over 100,000 Tamil civilians remain unaccounted for after Sri Lanka’s onslaught in 2009 into the northern Vanni region, Channel 4 reported Saturday. Government census forms obtained by Channel 4 show 430,000 residents in Vanni in mid 2008. However internal UN documents also obtained by Channel 4 show only 290,000 people coming out of the final enclave overrun by the government’s troops and being put into its militarized internment camps. Only 60% of the original residents have returned, a Channel 4 source who recently visited Vanni also said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.