Feeding the world with hogwash on SL

by Janaka Perera

Last week the Daily News reported Canada's CMR/TVI feeding the Tamil Diaspora with the blatant falsehood that Sri Lankan Security Forces opened fire and killed five innocent civilians after the LTTE assassination attempt on Defence Ministry Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

Vilifying Sri Lanka seems to have become a force of habit in some foreign media organizations in the context of the crisis in the North. They seem to be reveling in this kind of media distortions that give Tiger sympathizers a perverted satisfaction. The latest to join this bandwagon is the Al Jazeera television channel.

There was a time when Al Jazeera earned a reputation for unbiased reporting after it commenced operations in 1997. This was especially so in 2003 when it reported the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, where the CNN, Fox TV and other Western channels were indirectly promoting the American agenda.

But lately Al Jazeera has miserably failed to live up to its much vaunted claim: "Yes we do mirror the truth. Yes, we do connect with our audience." (The 'Middle East' February 2003).

Deplorably in Sri Lanka's case this TV channel has mirrored nothing but a blatant falsehood. In fact its bosses should go before a mirror themselves and see their own nudity. Telecasting a report on Sri Lanka's child soldiers on November 28 at 11.30 p.m., Al Jazeera's Correspondent Rajesh Sunderam sounded as if he had descended on this earth from another planet. There was not a single word on the LTTE's recruitment of child soldiers - a well-proven fact that has earned international condemnation. Instead he focused on hearsay - perhaps encouraged by UN's Tiger sympathizer Allan Rock's wild imaginations and slanders - or with an ulterior motive. (In less than two weeks of arriving, Rock arrogantly concluded that Sri Lankan Army is abducting child soldiers to help Karuna). This gross distortion in the Al Jazeera report aroused much anger and concern among Sri Lankan expatriates in West Asia.

The real issue here is not whether the Karuna Faction is recruiting children for combat but the totally unfounded and unsubstantiated allegation that Sri Lanka's Security Forces are rounding up Tamil children to be handed over to Karuna. Have the Al Jazeera directors asked themselves the simple question why Karuna should seek the help of Government troops to recruit Tamil children from the areas his cadres operate from? Karuna an experienced ex-Tiger was born and bred in Eastern Sri Lanka. Is he not therefore in a far better position to do it rather than Government troops?

Not only does Al Jazeera bosses have no commonsense but have failed to realize that its correspondent is using Al Jazeera to promote the Tiger agenda. Have any of these journalists drawn their attention to Prabhakaran's mindless little brutes who were sent to so-called border villages, slaughter innocent Sinhala and Muslim civilians and their children including babies even when they were being breast fed.

The Tigers' recruitment of teenage children has been well-documented. Yet Al Jazeera has been blind to this well-known fact.

A few years ago the Amnesty International reported the case of an 11-year-old LTTE cadre dashing a Muslim baby against a wall and killing it while the child's mother screamed. The murderer had later said that he enjoyed the mother screaming! (Children in South Asia Amnesty International Index - 04/01/1998- summary of extract from page 38)

A whole generation of such children is now growing up in LTTE dominated areas. When they do return to civilian life, they are walking ghosts - damaged, uneducated.

Does the TV channel's management check the credentials of persons before employing them as correspondents? Will Al Jazeera employ a pro-Israeli journalist to report on the Middle East?

Coming back to the BBC - better known as the Tigers' European Voice among patriots here - again proved to the world its highly questionable credibility on covering Sri Lanka. The BBC's first report on the December 1 LTTE suicide bomb blast said: `Blast in Sri Lanka injures defence minister.'

The first mistake was to identify Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as Defence Minister, whereas it is the President who is in charge of defence. The second error was the failure to mention that the LTTE's target was the Defence Ministry Secretary.

Needless to say this is not the first time they have exposed their pro-Tiger bias. Two days after the Kebithigollewa massacre the BBC having carried the Tigers' denial of committing the crime fished out some unknown reporter on June 17 and asked for his opinion on the claymore mine blast that killed 54 civilians. When the man said that the explosion had all the hallmarks of the LTTE, the BBC news reader tried to save the Tigers' image by attempting to put words into the reporter's mouth.

"Could it have been an accident - was it an old mine placed during the war years?" the news reader asked. The reporter, who appeared to be a Tamil but not scared of LTTE responded with words to the effect that the Kebithigollewa road was in daily use for over 25 years and nothing had happened before so it was unlikely to be an accidental blast.Even if the LTTE massacre's over half of Sri Lanka's population, it will not make the Tigers terrorists in the BBC's eyes. It will still continue to call them ``Tamil Tigers fighting to liberate their homeland.

Not surprisingly the NGO anti-war clowns here almost never condemn these foreign media inaccuracies since such distortions help to boost the `peace' agendas that advocate least resistance to Tiger terrorism. Strangely however in response to the assassination attempt on the Defence Ministry Secretary, we are yet to hear the usual NGO rhetoric:

"Cease offensive operations immediately and get back to the negotiating table!"

Perhaps they feel it is safer for them to make no such demands from the government considering the mood of the country. It is these groups that fuel foreign media double standards on LTTE terrorism. They are the unseen enemy who is digging the ground right under our feet to make matters far easier for LTTE propagandists here and abroad.

Will the *Rawaya*, which highlighted several months ago the Washington-based Foreign Policy magazine listing Sri Lanka as a failed state, give the same prominence to the Human Rights Watch condemning the Tigers' HR violations and recruitment of child recruitment or to the U.S. State Department further extending the ban on the Tiger gangsters in the U.S.? Will such prominence be given in the so-called alternative press to Prabhakaran's son and daughter pursuing higher studies abroad, while poor Tamil youth are brainwashed to go on LTTE suicide missions?

In contrast the President's son has joined the Sri Lanka Navy to do his duty for his country. But LTTE sympathizers in the South are blind to all this.

On November 5 the Daily News reported a Sri Lankan woman who made the outrageous allegation against this country by saying that it stands next to Darfur and Lebanon as "one of the most dangerous places in the world for civilians caught up in armed conflict".

She is the same woman that accuses the Sri Lanka Government of a fascist regime. We wonder how she can make such allegations openly and demonstrate against the government if this country is a fascist state. But she has made no such accusations against the real fascist regime in the Wanni under the `Sun God' Prabhakaran convicted mass murderer wanted by the Indian Government and the Interpol. We all know that she is working overtime to get the United Nations declare Sri Lanka a failed state and invite direct foreign intervention.

Any Sri Lankan journal, radio or TV channel that attempts to pursue a `neutral' policy on LTTE terrorism here has to be publicly treated as an organization serving the Tiger needs and thereby undermining national security. How can any citizen be neutral with any group trying to dismember his/her country?

There ought to be absolutely NO freedom to any Sri Lankan citizen to express sympathy for those who try to bisect the country and establish a totalitarian rogue state that recognizes no freedom of expression. Such sympathizers should be banished to Tiger held areas at least for the time being.

The problem with some local journalists here is that they tend to forget that first they are Sri Lankan citizens and media personnel only second.