Media institutions must seek out accuracy of the facts before publishing stories that can seriously harm a nations credibility, Sri Lankas Ambassador to US Jaliya Wickramasuriya said.
Responding to a programmed aired by US based PBS NewsHour copying of Channel 4 falsehood over Sri Lanka, Ambassador Wickremasuriya asked journalists of the caliber of the NewsHour to seek out accuracy, and to verify the reporting it borrows from other sources.
The story has attempted to portray Sri Lanka as Pol Pots Cambodia which is malicious distortion of Sri Lankas actual situation, the Ambassador said.
The following is the full text of the Ambassadors response:
Dear NewsHour,
I would like to respond to your June 15, 2011 reporting on the "Killing Fields of Sri Lanka," as one of your hosts, Judie Woodruff, put it.
First of all, that phrase is remarkably inaccurate, loaded and unfair, as the Channel 4 report from Britain is in its entirety.
Second, Ray Suarez stated that the UN has determined that 40,000 people were killed in the final days of the conflict in Sri Lanka. This, too, is simply wrong.
The UN has, in fact, said that it cannot confirm casualty figures because it monitored the conflict from Colombo, hundreds of miles away (this was stated several times by UNHCR in Sri Lanka during the conflict).
The 40,000 figure is a wild estimate given by Gordon Weiss, who once served as a UNHCR spokesman in Sri Lanka. Weiss made this estimate after he quit his job. UNHCR was asked about Mr. Weiss estimated in early 2010, after it was made public.
On Feb. 16, 2010, the agency issued a statement which said, "While we maintained internal estimates of casualties, circumstances did not permit us to independently verify them on the ground, and therefore we do not have verifiable figures of how many casualties there were."
During the conflict, Weiss again gave a casualty estimate that UNHCR said could not be supported. At that time, he said that 7,000 civilians had been killed between January and April 2009 during the final days of the conflict against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorist group.
Back then, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sir John Holmes again stated that the UN was unable to stand by these numbers as they did not have a presence on the ground and are hence unverified.
Weiss, incidentally, is apparently the source of much of the material on the Channel 4 video, portions of which you chose to air, including interviews with Weiss. But Weiss, as Under Sect. Gen. Holmes noted, was far from the battle front using information that could not be verified.
The "panel of experts" who in April 2011 gave a report to UN Sect. Gen. Ban ki-Moon, borrowed Weiss 40,000- casualty estimate, even though the UN had dismissed it as unsupportable by fact. This is not an official UN report. There is no justification for this number, and the panel of experts report offers none - an indication of how sloppy and inaccurate this report truly is.
The Channel 4 report you aired also states bluntly that the government of Sri Lanka declared no fires zones in northeastern Sri Lanka and then "herded" civilian into those zones and shelled them in the final days of the conflict.
This is an incredible distortion of the facts, which are plainly available in news reports, had you cared to look.
The government established the no-fire zones in January 2009 - four months before the conflict ended - so that civilians could escape from the LTTE. UNHCR and foreign governments such as the U.S. encouraged both sides of the conflict to honor the no-fire zones, which Sri Lanka did repeatedly and publicly.
The LTTE, however, took thousands of civilian hostage from their homes and pushed them at gunpoint into these areas. The government did not herd civilians -- the LTTE did. Civilians were shot by the LTTE if they tried to escape. The LTTE fired artillery from these no-fire zones.
As for shelling, government forces were instructed not to use artillery. The LTTE, however, often used mortar on the borders of its civilian hostage zones to keep civilians in the zones. LTTE artillery is seen on overhead imagery.
Even Mr. Weiss stated during his tenure at the UNHCR in the spring of 2009 that it was not clear who is doing the shelling, as he did in one Feb. 4 UNHCR report:
"We dont know who is responsible or how many shells hit," Weiss said.
The government, in fact, opened up pathways for the civilians to be rescued, once in April and again in May. A good many government troops were lost in this effort, as I pointed out to Mr. Suarez during our interview.
Weiss, in his Channel 4 interview, suggests that this effort was intended to kill civilians. The narrator, John Snow, says the civilians were taken into "custody."
This is also a great distortion. The civilians, once a safe pathway was open, came flooding to the government lines. The 300,000 civilians were placed in welfare centers that the government established. They lived in the centers until their homes, which were destroyed and heavily mined by the LTTE as it retreated with its civilian hostages, could be made safe. The centers had medical clinics, schools, ATMs and three meals a day for all inhabitants.
Though Weiss and others criticized the Government of Sri Lanka for putting civilians in these centers - when there was really no alternative - nearly all of the civilians were returned to their homes within a year. The 5,000 or so who remain today do so voluntarily. UNHCR, the World Food Program and ICRC have been instrumental in helping to administer the welfare centers and were ever-present.
Your report also fails to note these developments. Furthermore, at least 11,000 LTTE militants escaped the conflict by posing as fleeing civilians. The Channel 4 report, and the NewsHour, fail to note that these terrorists have since been given amnesty, job training and educational tutoring and are being placed back in society - more than 6000 have been returned and the rest are being freed during this year. How many countries offer terrorists rehabilitation?
Another 1,000 child soldiers who were kidnapped by the LTTE have also been given rehabilitation and returned to their families.
This is a very different portrait of Sri Lanka than the government your segment portrays as involved in "killing fields" - an outrageous comparison to Pol Pots Cambodia where more than 1 million civilians brutally perished.
The conflict in Sri Lanka was undoubtedly a complex one. But I expect journalists of the caliber of the NewsHour to seek out accuracy, and to verify the reporting it borrows from other sources.
Channel 4 and Mr. Weiss have consistently misrepresented the facts of the conflict in Sri Lanka, Mr. Weiss so much so that his own agency had to issues corrections. By borrowing their reporting without verifying it, you simply repeat the falsehoods and libel that it is based on.
I would ask that you immediately correct the falsehoods that I have identified.
Sincerely,
Jaliya Wickramasuriya