Western media dirty tricks ( I )

"The fact of the matter is that Nick Paton Walsh, rooting for damaging information about Sri Lanka had become an easy mark of some LTTE con men. They must have have befriended the Channel 4 crew looking for ‘critical’ guides and translators."
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By Nalin Swaris

(June 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In this two part article I take a look at two reports on Sri Lanka that appeared in the British media. The first by Britain’s ITN Channel Four and the second by the London Times. These were uncritically accepted and given wide publicity by Western print and electronic media, sad to say, even by Al Jazeera TV.

Foreign Minister Bogollagama vehemently rejected the allegations made by Channel 4. The Foreign Secretary Kohona also rejected the allegation based on a leaked UN Satelite photo that the Air force bombed the No Fire Zone. These reports are available on several websites providing ammunition to ‘post-mortem-LTTE’ supporters. More importantly, they create confusion among Lankans and foreigners who supported the government’s war against the LTTE. State media reported only the verbal reactions of government officials. But it would have been far more effective if the government took the battle into the enemy’s court a la Dayan Jayatileke, and demolished these cooked up or doctored video reports. The Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) could have called press conferences, shown blow-ups of the UNOSat photo, the Channel 4 and London Times video reports, got a media expert to analyse and demolish them. It would have also helped educate Lankans about the way the Western media functions to support the West’s geo-political interests, through resort to tendentious reporting and dirty tricks. Today it is futile to try and keep the people from knowing what’s happening in the world. A significant number of people have access to the internet and information and pictures are shared by Email. They have a choice of print and electronic media outlets. Sri Lankans are not gullible babes in the woods needing protection from knaves. Show what the allegations are and expose their falsehoods. When government media merely report vehement denials and ad hominem rebuttals, people tend there was some substance to the accusations.

The following comments on the Channel 4 (Part I) and London Times news reports (Part II) are an informed layman’s attempt to defend our armed forces, who were subjected to malicious accusations. This exercise is still relevant because this country’s foes will not stop at anything to denigrate Sri Lanka’s armed forces.

Sex, Lies and Video Tape

Nick Paton Walsh’s damaging TV report about conditions in IDP camps was broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4 prime time news on the evening of May 5 2009. His earlier reports too were equally biased and cynical about the government’s efforts to meet the needs of the displaced Tamil civilians. Conditions may be not be as ideal as in some of the show case camps shown to visiting VIPs. In some they may be miserable. But in all his reports Nick Paton Walsh had little if not nothing positive to say about the efforts being made by the government on behalf of the displaced people.

Nick Paton Walsh’s written report in the Channel Four website is headlined "Grim Scenes". The accompanying close-up photo however shows two healthy looking middle aged women. One has a small, taped bandage on her left forehead. The page also has Walsh’s video report broadcast the previous evening in Channel Four’s prime time news. Introducing his report Walsh says "This programme obtained the first independently filmed pictures from the internment camps set up by the Sri Lankan government to house Tamils who have fled the country’s civil war… Channel Four News managed to send a cameraman into the camps who filmed these scenes without army escort." Walsh claims that the report was filmed in a refugee camp in Vavuniya town. But the visuals show a tent camp in the country side. Cleverly interspersed among these visuals are three statements made in Tamil, with voice-overs in English added later. They create the impression that the video recording took place somewhere in that camp. Walsh’s report made headline news in many Western newspapers. The video was carried in several websites. Walsh was hailed for his "courageous journalism"!

All three statements have been filmed in a darkened room – too dark to discern the faces. However, a white plastered wall and the closed door of the room is visible. The first speaker, a young man is identified as an "aid worker’ in the camp. He says he saw "four rotting corpses - three women and a man. Worms were coming out of their mouths. A child was sitting beside one corpse not knowing it was dead. People were too weak and listless to do anything about it." One wonders why Walsh’s ‘aid worker’ did nothing about it. The stench of four rotting corpses must have been unbearable. How did it not attract the attention of other workers of other aid agencies or of any army personnel, even if Nick Paton Walsh’s ‘aid worker’ had done nothing about? Surely even if the Sinhala army cared nothing for Tamil dead they would have done something about the stench. Sinhalese, Tamil or British - putrefying bodies stink to high heaven.

The second statement was by a man who said his relatives had been killed in army shelling. He spoke of starving people rushing to grab food handouts and trampling little children underfoot. "We don’t have a life here," he says, "this is a prison." Another aid worker has a more alarming story, says Walsh. The time it is a woman ‘aid worker’. Walsh’s voice over in English tells us what she says in Tamil, "Soldiers sexually harass and abuse Tamil women". She says she heard a woman crying inside her tent. The woman told her, one night soldiers had come and abducted her daughter. She’s been missing since. "Women are subjected to the indignity of having to bathe in public." Paton Walsh would not have stupidly swallowed that one had he known that women, Tamil and Sinhala, bathing in public are a common sight in rural Lanka. Wrap-arounds were known for centuries in Lanka before they became fashionable beach wear for Western women. "The bodies of three dead women had been found close to the bathing area of Zone 2 camp. People are living in fear, they have no one to turn to", says the young woman ‘aid worker’. Walsh says he was told by a UN source in Colombo that the UN, had got to hear of the three dead women. "They have asked that the soldiers guarding the bathing area be replaced by twenty police women." If this is true the government must surely know. Otherwise Walsh is making it up.

Ministerial Blunder

In a report filed after his expulsion, Nick Paton Walsh writes, "The government’s vehement reaction made, the statement made to us - the claims of aid workers at the camp - all the more credible and something we surely should air quickly." In fact no such statement was made to Walsh or his team. It was a recording made by someone who, Paton Walsh claims had got the camera into the camp, past the army check posts.

Walsh says he tried to get a government response but that the army spokesperson, Brigadier Nanayakkara, twice refused a request to go on camera. He had, however, succeeded in getting a cabinet minister - Keheliya Rambukwella – "who on camera accepted that if such things had happened, the perpetrators should be punished, but reminded us this was a new camp and instances of such abuse could be expected in any population of a hundred thousand people." Rambukwelle’s response is included in Walsh’s TV report. Walsh had lured the incautious Rambukwelle to make a damning admission. Walsh cunningly did not refer to allegations of sexual harassment or rape of Tamil women but mentioned reports of harassment of IDPs in general.

Here’s Rambukwelles’ reaction: "Don’t forget, the LTTE has a huge propaganda machine but as I have told you before, when you have to handle (sic!) 200 to 300 thousands IDPs, things will not be perfect. [At that time, 05/05/09, the numbers were nowhere close to 300,000 –NS] "That’s an absolute fact. I would not be telling the truth if I deny it." Walsh pounced, "If these allegations are true, would you act on them?" "Of course" assures the eager minister, "Due legal process will be followed." What he said next made little sense after this admission, "The Sri Lankan army is the most disciplined army in the world."

Rambukwelle should not have conceded anything on tape. He should have asked "What is the basis of these allegations? Give us the evidence and if it is credible we will investigate".

When the Defence Secretary got to know of Walsh’s allegations, he hit the roof. He called the man and thundered, "What’s this I hear? You say my soldiers rape women? Your visa is cancelled, you will be deported. You can report what you like from your own country, not from here."

The fact of the matter is that Nick Paton Walsh, rooting for damaging information about Sri Lanka had become an easy mark of some LTTE con men. They must have have befriended the Channel 4 crew looking for ‘critical’ guides and translators. At that time, even more than today, the army would have strictly screened individuals brought in as aid workers. The recording had obviously been made in a room outside the camp.

Late in the evening of the day Walsh and his crew were deported, an ITN Lanka programme was interrupted for ‘Breaking News’. Lakshman Hulugalle, Director General, MCNS, announced that a group of British journalists had been expelled for making false reports. Before being expelled he said;"E gollo varadak kala bava piligattha"! The same thing said in English: "They admitted they did something wrong", created the impression that it might have been a minor misdemeanor; as if Nick Paton Walsh was a little boy caught with his fingers in a cookie jar. By the time Hulugalle made his announcement, Walsh was in Singapore telling journalists that Hulugalle’s claim was "utterly absurd". It is only when I saw the report on the Channel Four website that I understood the Defence Secretary’s outrage.

What Nick Paton Walsh and Channel Four had passed on to their viewers and the world was a total hoax. There is no proof that this was 1), a recording made inside an IDP camp; with milling crowds and soldiers everywhere as Walsh himself kept reporting, it would have been impossible to find a building and a room in that tent camp to make a recording behind closed doors. 2) The camp visuals into which he cleverly mixed the statements showed no "Grim Scenes". These were shots of people in and around tents and a few boys standing at a barbed wire fence. The boys did not look starved or petrified. 3) the claim by the ‘aid worker’ that he saw unburied corpses rotting for days was sensational news and might be bought by some Westerners who think that Sri Lankan noses are so savage they can live with the stench of corpses for days on end. Channel Four should be made the laughing stock of the world. Does its news anchor, 61 year old Jon Snow with 20 years of broadcasting experience with ITN Britain, not have a nose to smell the stench of a cadaverous story dumped on his desk by a gutter journalist like Nick Paton Walsh? I hope the Defence Minister will find a prominent Sri Lankan in London to expose Channel Four’s chicanery. It is rank yellow journalism which is defined as "Journalism that exploits, distorts, or exaggerates the news to create sensations and attract readers"(Wikipedia). Nick Paton Walsh’s report had all the ingredients: Sex, Lies and Video Tape.

-Sri Lanka Guardian