http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20120214_03

Sri Lankans Protest at screening of documentary supporting LTTE terrorists
(By:
Hassina Leelarathna)
Are Arizona taxpayers subsidizing screening of Tamil Tiger
terrorist 'documentary' at ASU?
Will Arizona State University permit on its premises the
screening of a documentary supporting Al Qaeda terrorists?
Rhetorical questions fired at ASU President Michael Crow in
emails by Sri Lankans incensed that the university being used by Amnesty
International as a venue on February 12 to screen a blatantly fraudulent version
of the separatist war that ended with the crushing of the Tamil Tiger terrorist
outfit in 2009.
'Killing Fields of Sri Lanka,' the video 'documentary' made two
years ago by British Channel 4 television, should by now be lying at the bottom
of the junk pile of hoaxes and distortions perpetrated by the defeated terrorist
outfit, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Instead, Amnesty is screening it this weekend, with some help from Arizona
taxpayers no less, at Arizona State University.
The screening comes in the midst of an international scandal
involving Amnesty International. The London-based rights group has admitted accepting a
$50,000 donation from the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC), a
pro-LTTE group whose director of communications is serving a 25-year prison term
in the US for providing material support to the Tigers, a designated terrorist
group. Sahilal Sabaratnam pleaded guilty and was sentenced last year by a New
York court for providing material support to a proscribed terrorist group. The
FBI nabbed the CTC official in 2006 when he attempted to buy Russian made
missiles and firearms and have them shipped to the Tigers.
None of these details, of course, will be revealed to
unsuspecting students and others who gather at ASU on Sunday to view what they
believe is an authentic version of the Sri Lankan war. They will walk away no
wiser because of their implicit trust in Amnesty International. Despite facing
growing public criticism for sacrificing its principles for political ideology
and financial gain, the organization manages to hide behind its former
reputation as a leading champion of human rights.
The video claims to be a 'forensic' account of the last days of
the war that documents atrocities by Sri Lankan troops against unarmed
civilians. Since the reporters themselves were not witness to the events
reported, the video depends largely on hearsay, interviews with sources
sympathetic to the Tigers, and unidentified witnesses. Following its 2011
screening by Channel 4 in London, British journalist A.A. Gill summed up the
content of 'Killing Fields' as follows:
" The channel has accumulated a large collection of samizdat
amateur footage from mobile phones and video cameras - mostly unattributed and
uncorroborated. It mixes this footage with comment from unnamed sources with
distorted voices and shadowed faces. And human rights lawyers. It was brutal, it
was shocking, but it wasn't journalism. Not a second of this has been shot by
Channel 4; none of the eyewitness accounts comes from journalists."
Shyam Tekwani, an expert in terrorism & media at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies who has
extensively covered the Sri Lankan conflict wrote:
"The documentary, in its attempt to provide a stomach-turning
narrative (in the filmmaker's words, 'this is the only way to make people to
take this seriously'), is on shaky ground. The end result is as similar in tone
and tenor as documentaries produced by the LTTE's information warriors, the
Truth Tigers, the camera teams that went into battle to record footage for
propaganda and posterity. The Tigers would have been proud of this production.
Clearly an effort to sensationalise and shock with carefully selected and edited
footage, the documentary weakens its case and invites an investigation into its
own credibility and accountability to journalistic norms. The volume of
testimony it uses as evidence is not enormous and most of it is derived from
leading questions. The slant is pronounced. Somewhere in the documentary, a
human rights lawyer says, "The only exception (to attacking a hospital) will be
if there was some evidence that the hospital was actually being used for
military purposes" and the script glosses over the use by the Tigers of every
such medical base." (Tekwani, Shyam, "The long afterlife of war in teardrop isle", Tehelka
Magazine)
Its amateurishness and bias notwithstanding, the video has been
eagerly embraced and promoted by Amnesty and others who are raring to Sri Lanka
to the International Criminal Court. Among the documentary's many blatant
lapses, one that makes its LTTE ties prominently undeniable, is its central
character. Claiming she's a civilian who was caught in the crosshairs of the
war, Channel 4 identifies the woman variously as Vany Kumar, Dr Tamilvani,
Damilvany Kumar and Damilvany Gananakumar. Kumar had previously appeared in a
September 2009 Channel 4 News interview, introduced as Damilvany Gnanakumar.
At the end of that interview with her, Channel 4 admitted "We
are unable to vouch for the independence of her testimony." But that apparently
didn't prevent it from making her a central figure in the controversial 'Killing
Fields' video and presenting her claims against Sri Lankan forces as authentic!
Sri Lankan authorities have since made this shadowy character's
identity public. She has been exposed as an active member of the
London Branch of the Tamil Youth Organization who linked up with the LTTE,
received military training under one of its female cadres identified as 'Durga
of the Soydyia Regiment, and went to work for the Tigers as a translator and
coordinating LTTE foreign media and propaganda work. During the last stages of
fighting in Vanni, Kumar provided commentaries to the outside world from behind
the lines. The case against Sri Lanka for war crimes is built partly on her
'credible' testimony that the military targeted hospitals and civilians.
Among the documentary's numerous other credibility failings is
the evidence of the doctoring of the original footage showing the coldblooded
execution of non-combatants, which Channel 4 claims were recorded on mobile
phones (by unidentified sources) . Siri Hewa, the former head of Cisco's global
broadcast and digital video practice, at Present I am executive Director at IPTV
System, who currently serves as the chief architect of Optus' Network Systems
Design Broadcast and Satellite TV operation, has provided expert evidence
showing the doctoring of the video and stating that the original footages comes
from commercial quality equipment, not from a mobile device. http://www.dailynews.lk/2011/06/07/fea04.asp

With such huge credibility gaps, and its unscrupulous acceptance
of funds from supporters of a group that used child soldiers and carried out
indiscriminate suicide bombings on civilian targets, Amnesty International is
clearly living up to its growing reputation as an internationalist 'fraud' and a
'vehicle for violating human rights.
As a taxpayer funded organization and a center for higher
education, Arizona State has a responsibility to ensure that its premises are
not hijacked by political agendists who have lost their integrity and become
paid servants of human rights violators.
(Hassina Leelarathna is based in San Francisco,
California, United States of America, and is a Stringer for All voices).