The controversial British broadcaster Channel 4 has decided to leave Sri Lanka due to “unacceptable intimidation” that prevents them from reporting, the channel’s news editor says.
Channel 4 Editor Ben De Pear
A Channel 4 crew headed by Ben de Pear has been in Colombo since last week where they have been bombarded with protests and placed under severe surveillance by the defence authorities.
“As it is impossible to operate as journalists due to unacceptable levels of control and intimidation @channel4news are leaving Sri Lanka”, De Pear tweeted a short while ago.
It is also reported that Channel 4 Correspondent Jonathan Miller was pelted with stones earlier in the day.
The crew were dogged by demonstrators accusing them of being LTTE mercernaries and prevented from travelling North by protestors who flooded the railway tracks in Anuradhapura last week. Police shoved them into a vehicle and forced the crew to return to Colombo. The driver of their vehicle later accused the team of not paying the van hire and filed a police complaint at Slave Island police.
CloudGamer / November 18, 2013
I bet all the people writing all these comments are not even in Sri Lanka. What a joke. This whole thing is a joke. THE WARE IS OVER PEOPLE! The dead are dead. The missing are probably dead too. BUT IMPORTANTLY NO ONE IS DYING ANYMORE. C4 is picking at a wound which is trying to heal. MOVE ON PEOPLE. THE FUTURE IS BRIGHTER.
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Mr Upadhya / November 18, 2013
Sri Lanka is in the spotlight for killing innocent Tamil Hindus who could not protect themselves. Well done David Cameroon for giving an ultimatum to the government of Sri Lanka to come clean. Truth will always previal. Ch 4 tried to expose the truth and the bad Sri Lankan government who knows that they have committed crimes against the humanity is trying to destroy the CH4 news team. Ch 4 news tells the truth and will always have a place in true reporting. It is time the world put the perpetrators of Sri Lankan in front of the World court.
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Piranha / November 18, 2013
Thanks Channel 4 for coming to Sri Lanka. You helped to expose Rajapaksa’s lies about democracy in Sri Lanka with your failed attempts to do your job. The whole world saw what happened to your team at the hands of Rajapaksa’s thugs at Anuradhapura. And most of all thanks for exposing Rajapaksa brothers and the Sri Lankan military as war criminals.
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I am no muslim / November 18, 2013
I like Ch4 coming to Sri Lanka and accusing Sri Lankans as war criminals for majority in Sri Lanka have lined up firmly behind Rajapakse policies now.
You’ll see this in the coming up elections.
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Burning_Issue / November 18, 2013
It does not matter whether MR or some one else wins the next election; the music they have to face is the same. If no investigation before the March 2014, then there will be a push for an UN based investigation.
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kris / November 18, 2013
[Edited out]
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JimSofty / November 18, 2013
These guys had not paid the VAN DRIVER for bringing them from Anuradhapura to Colombo.
IS that fair ?
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truth / November 18, 2013
After CHOGM and after reading MRs tactics of inviting C4 team and telling them they are free to go anywhere they like, but at the same time sending a bunch of thugs behind him with orders to protest and send him back from A’pura. Practically the govt. made so much hurdles for the C4 team.
Does the international community need any more proof about Sri Lankan govt’s war crimes, white van abductions, murder, rape, arson etc. The Govt. itself has made it clear that they have a lot of SKELETON in the cupboard!!
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Truth / November 19, 2013
When any one enters a train from Colombo,there are plenty of people who hate the Tamil Tiger disinformation chief to text others that their worst enemy is on his way by train to Jaffna. The reception he received was as expected. He is lucky that some Channel 4 hater did not repeat what a soldier tried on Rajiv Gandhi!
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shiromie / November 18, 2013
Why did’nt you come for the TV Talk show.It only goes to show that you do not have proper evidence to have a face to face argument. Bankrupt you are.
Try to promote your channel 4 to some one else
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hela / November 18, 2013
Good bye….hope you have paid the airport taxi fare.
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Anpu / November 18, 2013
An open letter to Sri Lankan journalists from CH4 Jonathan Miller http://blogs.channel4.com/miller-on-foreign-affairs/open-letter-sri-lankan-journalists/524
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Mikhael / November 18, 2013
The funny thing is how they portrayed Sri Lanka in their documentaries, the average viewer who does not know anything about the country would assume that it was the government committing terrorist attacks for 26 years. Perhaps their next documentary should be on the Killing Fields of Kandahar and if they can convince people that the Taliban are freedom fighters, then they can convince anything!
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Bandulatha / November 18, 2013
Srilanken Journalists reported this situation in the country repeatedly.
But none of them took it that serious. Not even few weeks ago, one journalists of sunday leader left the country without being able to bear the threat applied on her. She was Ms Ismail. Then again, some months ago, sunday leader editor was attacked by secretary of defence himself and she thought the country not safe place to continue her life with two kids any more and left for the states.
Today you the journalists from the UK – report it having being able to watch it by yourself…
This is the sad situation in the country. They allow journalists to raise question, but more of the responses are not being kept on the local news papers. There is a filter personally handled by DEFENCE units of thecountry. It is all the show that MR admin has been doing.
His smile out world people would not get it easily. How can they, all the folks in the southern areas are being cheated for their votes. They reiterate about growing middle class but the reality is growing poverty in SL today as any other times in the past.
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nimal dunuhinga / November 19, 2013
Alas!During the World war II I heard they played the World cup Soccer games? What happened to the cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda?
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m.c.spencer / November 19, 2013
I trust this piece will equally apply to most of the backward, mentally retarded, disparagers and detractors of the controversial British broadcaster Channel 4 led by Ben de Pear as well.
I doubt if any man or woman has ever trod this planet without some if not as many detractors, disparagers and enemies. As we Humans are almost unchanged genetically for the past many millennia’s are predominantly the ongoing by-product like proto-type experimental creatures mostly of nurture, social-environment and upbringing. We do contrast very much with the infinitude of other living forms on this planet that are predominantly pre-programmed in their genome even with a few hundreds or thousands of neuronal connections as creatures predominantly of nature, instinct and the physical environment. Even though some of these creatures are bestowed with super senses yet they too are mostly driven by the above.
The monarch butterflies are s famous for their southward late summer/autumn migration from the United States and southern Canada to Mexico and coastal California and then the return northward in the spring. This occurs over the life-spans of three to four generations of these butterflies. Such are super powers of nature and super codes in their respective genomes amidst the rest of the animal kingdom to control and restrict some behaviour patterns as well as sometimes lock them in their particular environmental niches.
Where as we humans who born not so free and/or equal mental and/or physical endowments are heavily dependent on our mothers and fellow humans of that particular clan, tribe, community and/or nation in our early years are left almost all to our nurture to gather our beliefs and values from the moment of our birth. It is mostly due to these that we are conditioned, reconditioned and even some rabidly, sub-consciously and unconsciously brain-washed into their parochial and prejudiced “frogs in a well” like communities in certain patterns of thought, feeling, belief and behaviour and are bound to be exploited by our cultural-viral memes to eternally disagree and be at each other’s throats that nature may have this feature too to balance the populations of a multitude of life forms along with other many types of natural disasters from within the planet as well as from space.
Hence all these backward, mentally retarded and handicapped, disparagers and detractors too cannot help themselves but are merely unfolding as their genes and memes permit them to be mini and micro robot like creatures of the great super-mistress or super-master nature.
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Fathima Fukushima / November 21, 2013
Likewise all Tamils in SL must quit SL.
Then it will be fantastic. No disgusting people in Colombo.
But unlike C4 people, Tamils don’t have dignity. Despite 1958, 1977 and 1983 Tamils still lick the booties of the majority and parasite in Colombo.
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