Point of view:

BBC parrots Tiger propaganda without checking

H. L. D. Mahindapala

Believe it or not, BBC has a set new standard in reporting stories which they admit cannot be confirmed, verified or reveal from where and when they originated.

The hourly news bulletins of Monday 11, 2009 ran pictures of a house burning along with the wreckage of bus in No Fire Zone which it’s Colombo-based reporter Damian Grammaticus said was sent by a “Tamil pressure group purported to be within the (No Fire) zone and claims to be the aftermath of shelling on Sunday (May 10, 2009).” (See bbc.com/news (video) — Monday May 11, 2009).

Then he makes the next stunning statement: “It is impossible to confirm where or when it was taken.” So when a news agency runs pictures sent by the Tamil Tiger propagandists, with the reporter saying that “it is impossible to confirm where or when it was taken” what does it say of the news agency running it? Irresponsible journalism? Propagandists for Tamil Tigers?

This reporting of Grammaticus is typical of the slanted standards of BBC reporting. It is ever ready to run anti-Sri Lanka stories which it admits “is impossible to confirm”, or reveal “where and when it (the picture) was taken.” Imagine for a moment what the response would be if the Sri Lankan State-run TV station ran doctored pictures and fabricated stories against the Tamil Tigers saying that it is “impossible to confirm where or when it was taken”. Even the discredited Free Media Movement would raise a howl of protests, quite correctly too, saying that the State media is abusing its powers to mislead the people with mischievous propaganda.

The fundamental responsibility of a news agency is to quote or source their stories to credible and verifiable authorities who are not necessarily neutral but who are knowledgeable. If all media agencies start producing news quoting sources that cannot be verified or authoritative what is going to be its reputation as a reliable news source? So when Grammaticus admits that “it is impossible to confirm where or when it was taken” (though he knew it came from the Tiger camp which means it was pure propaganda) what can the public deduce from such reporting? Are we to call it the British Broadcasting Corporation? Or are we to call it the British Bull-dust Corporation? BBC should have enough expertise to adhere to the elementary principle in journalism which says: when in doubt leave it out.

Global sympathy

There are limits to passing unverified pictures and stories from one side as news. These horror stories come at a critical time when the last weapon available to the Tamil Tigers and its agents is to whip up hysteria about the humanitarian crisis in the last strip of land occupied by them. In the past, when the Tigers were having the upper hand, they used to send either suicide bombers or unleash violence to coincide with the arrivals of Yashushi Akashi, one of the Co-Chairs, or the Norwegians just to impress that their military clout is greater than that of the government.

Now that they have halted those suicidal operations (temporarily, no doubt) they are producing stories in the form of humanitarian tragedies on a mass scale hoping that the international community would step in to halt the war and save the Tigers.

As in the past, the Tamil leadership is relying on Tamil corpses to survive. They need corpses and tragedies to survive now.

This is the way they can crank up propaganda to win global sympathy, however limited and ineffective it may be. The BBC is playing the role of a willing partner, going to the extent of reproducing pictures sent by the Tamil Tigers within the No Fire Zone which are bound to cast serious doubts about their veracity and intent. BBC is struggling to paint a grim picture with colours, brushes and themes borrowed from the Tamil Tigers. Even if the pictures are authentic the borrowings from suspicious sources make BBC look like willing agents for peddling Tiger propaganda.

Anonymous, unidentified, unknown sources can produce anything that suits anyone’s sinister agenda. It is the responsibility of a news agency to check, check and check — the three key words in reporting events. If reproducing unverified stories and pictures is the best that Grammaticus can come up with what is the need for the BBC to have him posted in Colombo? Grammaticus could sit in London and produce any number of stories which are “impossible to confirm” by visiting the local Tiger centre in and around London!

Military balance

This is a classic example of Tamil Tigers feeding the gullible media person parachuted into Sri Lanka. They will swallow any muck fed to them and pass it off as news. The Tamil Tigers, it must be admitted, have been successful in manipulating the Western media with tear-jerking stories of the underdog being oppressed the aggressive Sinhala-Buddhist majority. Every sensationalised story of the humanitarian crisis has been used not with an eye to save the helpless victims from the clutches of those using them for their political ends but to perpetuate and prolong the agony of Tamils trapped in the clutches of the Tigers.

The tactic of using the humanitarian crisis as a political weapon is demonstrated clearly by the TamilNet - the mouthpiece of the Tigers. In the past when the Tigers had the upper hand they were crowing about the “military balance” held in their favour. Now that the Tigers are on their knees they are cranking up their propaganda machine to provoke international intervention to save the skins of the Tigers. Human rights have suddenly become the holy mantra chanted to save the Tigers from extinction.

No one denies that there is a massive humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. But before rushing to pass media judgments there is the elementary need to analyze the crisis to assess as to who is primarily responsible for it and what can be done to remove the obstacles exacerbating the crisis. No sensible analysts would expect all killings to stop in the middle of a war.

War is about killing and destroying and however cruel it may sound the best that can be expected in a war situation is to minimize death and destruction. If, however, any party to a war is deliberately putting the lives of civilians at risk to save the skins of the war-mongers then the guilt and the total responsibility for the deaths and destruction lie with that party.

The final tactic of the Tamil Tigers is the worst in their criminal records.

Their future depends on hiding behind the people and sacrificing them to gain the advantage of international sympathy for them to survive.

Last hole

After the military operations that breached the embankment of the Tigers opened the way for the mass exodus of Tamil civilians on April 20 the Tigers have now adopted the latest tactic of herding them to the centre and fencing them with a ring of their cadres to prevent them from escaping the conflict zone.

D. B. S. Jeyaraj, a Tamil columnist who has access to Tamils trapped in the last hole of the Tigers between the Lagoon and the Indian Ocean, has revealed the latest criminal act. Jeyaraj reported: “The 58 division under Brig. Shavendra Silva was moving in a south-eastern direction further into the Vellaimullivaikkal region.

“Likewise the 53 division under Gen. Kamal Gunaratne was also moving further into the region in a north-eastern direction.

“Col” Velavan of the LTTE was in charge of Tiger defences in this front.

“The LTTE has moved the civilians into the middle at both ends in a bid to avoid a repetition of the April 20th operation in which more than a 100,000 civilians fled from the LTTE controlled area.

“This was due to the Army reaching the “Bund cum Trench” defences of the LTTE. The people living within proximity to the bund were able to escape easily.

“Now the LTTE has moved the people inwards and keeps the area around its forward defence line devoid of civilians.”

Inhumane act

This means that the Tamil Tigers have tightened the grip on the Tamil civilians by taking them away from places where they can escape into safe havens outside the war-zone. Instead of releasing the civilians the Tigers are going all out to keep them within their grip for what? Not to save them but to sacrifice them. The Tigers also refused to heed the request of Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, to release the Tamil civilians.

The inhumane act of using helpless Tamil civilians as the human shield is a crime of unforgivable magnitude. It is absolutely humiliating for the Tamil Tigers which boasted of defeating the fourth largest army of world, India, to hide behind the helpless civilians. It also blows the myth that they were the invincible force with the Tamil people behind them. The propagated myth was that the Tigers were sole representatives of the Tamils. With the abject failure of the Tamil Tigers to hold back the fleeing the Tamil civilians, even after shooting them in the back, it is pretty plain that the Tamil people have nothing but loathing for the Tamil Tigers. The mass exodus means that the futile and aggressive politics of Tamil Tigers do not have the popular support it claims. At this critical stage the Tigers can only hold the people by force, if at all. That is why the Tigers have turned inward ferociously to attack the very people who had given succor to Prabhakaran and his gang of wanted criminals. Their despicable savagery has eroded the moral base of Jaffna-centric politics which began with the promise of a political heaven for Tamil only. It has all ended with the wild beasts in the jungles having better peace and security than the Jaffna Tamils.

Hell-hole

It is barbaric for armed saviours to hide behind unarmed civilians. The Tamils in the diaspora who are worked up about the plight of the Tamils trapped in hell-hole of Prabhakaran, are refusing to ask the simple question: who is saving whom? The plight of Prabhakaran, the rooster of yesterday on his way to become feather duster tomorrow, would have been a hilarious comedy if not for the tragic consequences to the Tamil people. All along it is the helpless and misled Tamil people who had to pay for the colossal follies of their over-ambitious leaders.

Now that their political myths of invincibility, the creation of Eelam and “eating the flesh of soldiers who dare to enter Kilinochchi”, (according to a broadcast of Tamil Tigers in Melbourne), have been blasted to smithereens the Tiger leadership and their agents in the disapora should have the nous to admit that the time has come to let the Tamil people go in search of their freedom.

Like the Tamil Tigers they have now adopted the tactic of putting children in front to face the Police in Western capitals. Their obstructionist tactic is drawing a severe backlash against them in the West. The youth in the Tamil diaspora are driven primarily by the emotional fizz of ignorance and ethnic extremism. Clearly, they haven’t the faintest idea of how the wheels of global and Sri Lankan politics work.

If they think that stopping the traffic in West is going to stop the war in Sri Lanka then they must get their heads examined. Nor is their counter-productive tactic of disrupting the smooth flow of daily life in the West going to win them sympathy. Their climbing the Westminster Abbey in London only increases the height from which they are going to fall.

These are laughable stunts of desperadoes that are as comic as Karunanidhi launching a fasting protest in an air-conditioned room surrounded by his cronies.

Nothing they do can save Prabhakaran now. But then, as they say, none are so blind as those who refuse to see.