[The film depicts terrifying scenes from the
territory held by the Tamil Tiger rebels just before their defeat in May 2009.
In the so-called "No Fire Zone" declared by the army, rights groups
say soldiers killed thousands of Tamil civilians by heavy shelling and
massacres yet perpetrators have gone unpunished.]
REUTERS
GENEVA: A documentary purporting to show the
execution of civilians and other war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan army
had its first public screening on Friday but was swiftly rejected by the government
as part of an "orchestrated campaign" against it.
The documentary "No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka" is
the third by British journalist and director Callum Macrae about the final
stages of the nearly 30-year civil war.
"We see it as a film of record, but also a call to action," Macrae
told a news briefing. "All of it is genuine. It is evidence of war crimes
and I have to warn you it is pretty horrific."
Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in 2009 in the final months the war,
a U.N. panel has said, as government troops advanced on the ever-shrinking
northern tip of the island controlled by Tamil rebels fighting for an
independent homeland.
The film depicts terrifying scenes from the territory held by the Tamil Tiger
rebels just before their defeat in May 2009. In the so-called "No Fire
Zone" declared by the army, rights groups say soldiers killed thousands of
Tamil civilians by heavy shelling and massacres yet perpetrators have gone
unpunished.
"The Tigers are guilty of war crimes, guilty of using child soldiers and
preventing civilians from leaving, so they are complicit in some ways in what
happened," Macrae told reporters.
Sri Lanka's government this week formally protested against the film's
screening on U.N. premises on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council. The
event, organized by activist groups seeking an international inquiry into
atrocities by both sides, was allowed to proceed.
"By providing a platform for the screening of this film which includes
footage of dubious origin, content that is distorted and without proper
sourcing and making unsubstantiated allegations, the sponsors of this event
seek to tarnish the image of Sri Lanka," Ravinatha Aryasinha, Sri Lanka's
ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told the audience on Friday.
Aryasinha - who did not attend the viewing but entered just after the 90-minute
film ended - said: "It will take a few days, possibly weeks, before
experts in the field would be able to ascertain the true facts about the
contents of this film."
Colombo considered the film as "part of a cynical, concerted and
orchestrated campaign that is strategically driven and aimed at influencing
debate in the council on Sri Lanka," he said.
Some footage of troops executing naked and blindfolded prisoners are from
"trophy videos" taken by government soldiers on mobile phones,
according to Macrae, whose two previous films on Sri Lanka's civil war were
broadcast by Britain's Channel 4.
Balachandran Prabhakaran, a 12-year-old son of the slain Tamil Tiger founder
Velupillai Prabhakaran, is shown in a series of photographs in the last hours
of his short life. He is first shown eating a biscuit while held captive by
soldiers, then shot dead along with other men presumed to be his bodyguards.
"There were five gunshot wounds indicating the distance of the muzzle of
the weapon to the boy's chest was two or three feet or less. This is a
homicide, murder, there's no doubt," forensic pathologist Derrick Pounder
says in the film.
Rights groups and a member of a U.N. expert panel set up by U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the footage corresponded to evidence they
had gathered from the conflict.
The panel, whose findings have been rejected by the Sri Lankan government, said
the army committed large-scale abuses and that as many as 40,000 civilians were
killed in the last months of the conflict.
"I believe that most of the footage in the film can be corroborated. In
fact in our report you find references to many things you see in the
documentary," Yasmin Sooka, a member of Ban's panel, told Reuters after
attending the screening.
Julie de Rivero, director of the Geneva office of Human Rights Watch, one of
the organizers, said: "The Human Rights Council cannot continue to ignore
the call for an independent international investigation into war crimes that
were committed.
"All our investigations corroborate what is shown in this film, that
civilians were indiscriminately targeted, that thousands and thousands and
thousands of them died unjustly."
CHINA SHOWS LIVE BROADCAST OF FOUR KILLERS BEFORE EXECUTION
[One magazine columnist named Lian Peng criticized the program as ghoulish propaganda, saying on China’s Twitter-like microblogs, “Even if it’s just the preparation before execution, the exclusive interviews before dying, the interpretation of experts and making the public watch, all of it humiliated people’s dignity without a doubt.”]
By William Wan
 |
CCTV/AFP/GETTY
IMAGES - This frame grab taken from
Chinese television
CCTV on March 1, 2013 shows convicted murderer Yi Lai being
transferred
for execution. The transferring of four convicted murderers from
was shown
on live television.
|
BEIJING — In an unusual action that quickly sparked debate online,
Chinese authorities showed a live broadcast Friday of four foreign drug smugglers in their last hours before execution for killing 13
fishermen.
A shocking form of reality TV for China, the program on state-run
television featured all the staples of modern current events coverage —
experts, pundits, instant analysis. It cut away as the convicted men were being
led from their cells, hands tied with rope, toward their lethal injections.
The reaction was immediate and polarized, with many online
questioning the ethics of the broadcast, as well as China’s use of the death
penalty. The number of annual executions in China is considered a state secret,
but Amnesty International estimates that it could be thousands, which would be
more than the rest of the world combined.
Some legal experts questioned whether the broadcast violated rules
against parading prisoners before their executions. Others simply said it was
inhumane.
One magazine columnist named Lian Peng criticized the program as
ghoulish propaganda, saying on China’s Twitter-like microblogs, “Even if it’s
just the preparation before execution, the exclusive interviews before dying,
the interpretation of experts and making the public watch, all of it humiliated
people’s dignity without a doubt.”
The four executed were convicted of killing 13 Chinese fishermen
on the Mekong River in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Their alleged ringleader
was a Burmese man. Two others were Thai and Laotian, and one’s nationality was
unknown.
Many Chinese comments online also heaped scorn on the four men for
the killings.
One blogger with the handle “A Good Citizen of Big Country” argued
such executions don’t happen enough: “Many so-called elites call for abolishing
the death penalty, saying it’s against human rights. Human rights should be the
right to survive first of all. Canceling the death penalty will cause people to
hurt others more fearlessly.”
Violence against Chinese working overseas has become a growing topic
in recent years, with large populations in sometimes dangerous hot spots in
Africa and the Middle East, and the government has tried to assure its citizens
of protection.
“That China chooses to send the message that attacks on its
citizens abroad will not go unpunished in this way is disturbing,” said
Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong.
Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
