Channel 4; accomplice in destabilization
 Addressing a group of journalists, Mark Twain once said, “First get
your facts right and then you can distort them as you please”. Twains
satire in journalistic ethics fits quite well into the comedy of errors
now being enacted by British Channel 4 news in the name of ‘Sri Lankan
killing fields’ except that Channel 4 has not got their facts right in
the first place.
Rajiv Gandhi |
Mark Twain |
The original video which was filmed from a video camera, as against
their claims of being filmed by a mobile phone camera, is now doing
rounds in the e-mail circles and the dialogue in that original is
unmistakably Tamil. From the time the video was released, one of the
first things the viewers noticed was that the dialogue appeared somewhat
out of place with the lip movement and therefore it now become clear
that the video that was released has been dubbed with some Sinhala
subtitles in to the original that was in Tamil.
Western news channels
It may be that Channel 4 itself has been taken for a ride by the
producers who have taken advantage of Channel 4 personnel’s non
familiarity with the Tamil and Sinhala languages but the reality however
is that Channel 4 has abused its position as a news broadcaster worthy
of basic journalistic ethics by blowing up ‘Killing fields’ out of their
proportions.
The stark reality of the 30 year conflict between the LTTE and the
Sri Lankan state has always been that it was fought more in the Western
news channels in the form of propaganda than in the battlefields of Sri
Lanka. Tamils who migrated to England soon after Independence, the
colonial baggage of the English, made sure as far back as the 1960s that
they cultivate a set of lobbyist in mainly in Britain that was
sympathetic to the Tamil interests.
The British too in turn were obliged to help the Tamils for the loyal
service they rendered during their time of the empire.
A Tamil expatriate community was thus born in England and initially
they were cultural and economic alienates of the new nation but their
numbers multiplied in heaps and bounds after the publicity that was
given to the July ’83 riots. Tamils, like Jews have migrated and settled
down in all parts of the world from India during the time of the British
Empire but of all those it is the Sri Lankan Tamil community that was
the most educated and resourceful. That being the case the Sri Lankan
Diaspora, having realized the importance of good relations with European
nations, tailor made their propaganda to catch the fancy of the
Europeans.
Initially this was done to facilitate the migration of more members
of their community from Sri Lanka but eventually with the LTTE setting
up shop the propaganda took a new dimension where the atrocities of the
LTTE and the funding the movement was justified in the name of ‘Tamil
grievances’. In today’s world propaganda has replaced arms as the means
of capturing power and even in the control of world affairs it is
propaganda that holds sway.
Diplomatic missions abroad
Sri Lankan diaspora, being educated, were quick enough to realize
this and they worked their way with propaganda right up to the heart of
Western society.
Thus the over one million strong motivated Diaspora spread throughout
the Western world had not been a match for the mediocre performing Sri
Lankan diplomatic missions abroad and thus in the perception of the
Western nations Sri Lanka was more a nation ‘discriminating against it
minorities’ than a nation trying to rebuild after 400 year of
colonialism. This served the needs of the expatriates in two ways.
On the one hand it helped them to bring more of their community to
the prosperous West. Many a Westerner has fallen pray to this modus
operandi over the years and thus it is not surprise that Channel 4,
willing or unwillingly became another of those victims.
The LTTE had this practice of videoing every one of its operations.
This was done with a dual purpose; to study the mistake they make in
those operations so that they could carry out the next ruthless
operation to precision and; to use selective videos to entice and train
the new recruits. It was this practice of the LTTE that betrayed them
when they assassinated Rajiv Gandhi of India.
Propaganda videos
The LTTE however, were masters in this craft of creating propaganda
videos that they even videoed their attacks on helpless Sinhala villages
in remote corners in their ‘army like’ uniforms and distributed those
videos in the West labelling them as ‘atrocities committed by the Sri
Lankan army against Tamil civilians’. They have even videoed Hindu
devotees piercing their bodies and hanging themselves from iron hooks at
Hindu shrines and propagated those as ‘torture received by Tamils in the
hands of the Sinhala state’. Therefore the Diaspora has stooped down to
very low levels in their strategy to denigrate the Sri Lankan state in
the perception of the average Westerner.
However the question now is; is this Channel 4 that appears to be so
hostile towards Sri Lanka, a victim of years of LTTE/diaspora
propaganda, or is it a party that has stakes in destabilizing and
decimating Sri Lanka?
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