{"id":117352,"date":"2013-12-24T06:02:18","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T00:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=117352"},"modified":"2014-01-07T05:07:09","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T23:37:09","slug":"the-fog-of-war-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-fog-of-war-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fog Of War In Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Michael+Roberts&amp;x=9&amp;y=4\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Michael Roberts<\/span><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Padraig+Colman&amp;x=10&amp;y=4\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Padraig Colman<\/span><\/a> &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_101329\" style=\"width: 115px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Michael-Roberts.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-101329\" class=\"size-full wp-image-101329\" alt=\"Dr. Michael Roberts\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Michael-Roberts.jpg\" width=\"105\" height=\"116\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-101329\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Michael Roberts<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Although Western media have been critical of both sides in the conflict between the Sinhala-dominated government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=LTTE+&amp;x=11&amp;y=3\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">LTTE<\/span><\/a>), they tend to see Tamils (and thus the LTTE) as underdogs.<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lankan Tamils have been emigrating since the fifties. There is a substantial body of intelligent and prosperous Tamils abroad alienated from Sri Lankan politics and governments. The patriotism of expatriate Tamils increased when the government defeated the LTTE in 2009. They are receptive to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/opinion\/commentary\/2013\/05\/17\/%20dangerous_game_of_diaspora_politics_is_here_to_stay.html.\">the propaganda of Tiger activists<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Tamil nationalists or sympathizers now hold key positions in the west. Sri Lankan government PR is ineffective in comparison with the coordinated campaign<b> <\/b>of the Tamil diaspora<b> <\/b>using<b> <\/b>such <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=z5O1JAfRXew.\">outlets<\/a> as the BBC, ABC, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/1168312\/sri-lanka-cameron-urged-to-raise-atrocities.\">Sky<\/a>, Channel Four,<i> New York Times<\/i>, <i>Der Spiegel <\/i>and their like.<\/p>\n<p>The result has been <a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/bbc-blind-misreading-the-tamil-tiger-strategy-of-international-blackmail-2008-13\/\">distortion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Western media <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hindu.com\/%202009\/04\/25\/stories\/2009042558390100.html.\">erroneously<\/a> describe it as \u201ca war without witnesses\u201d even though a restricted number of foreign reporters were transported to the rear battle front on several occasions.(1)<a href=\"file:\/\/\/C:\\Users\\Ian\\Downloads\\FACTOIDS-MR%20+Padraig%20(1).docx\"><b><br \/>\n<\/b><\/a><\/li>\n<li>The received wisdom is that at the end of war there was \u201cmerciless shelling\u201d and \u201cextermination\u201d and that subsequently some 300,000 civilians were \u201cinterned\u201d in \u201cconcentration camps\u201d. Both claims are exaggerations, the latter being quite gross.<\/li>\n<li>Ban Ki-Moon\u2019s Panel of Experts (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/News\/dh\/infocus\/Sri_Lanka\/%20POE_Report_Full.pdf.\">Darusman Report<\/a>) said that \u201ca number of credible sources have estimated that there \u201c<i>could have been<\/i> as many as 40,000 civilian deaths\u201d. Despite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.margasrilanka.org\/Truth-Accountability.pdf.\">the questionable methodology<\/a> pursued by this panel, (2)\u00a0its guesswork became a definite figure of <i>at least<\/i> 40,000 civilian dead; and, in the indelible words of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm201314\/cmhansrd\/%20cm131118\/debtext\/131118-0001.htm#1311188000001\">a British parliamentarian<\/a> named Lee Scott, 40,000 \u201cslaughtered\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>British parliamentarians <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/bbc-blind-misreading-the-tamil-tiger-strategy-of-international-blackmail-2008-13\/#more-11221\">did not allow for the following factors<\/a><\/span> during the last five months of the war in the patch of LTTE territory we term the \u201c<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dtic.mil\/dtic\/aulimp\/citations\/gsa\/2009_157395\/156554.html\">Vanni Pocket<\/a><\/span>\u201d:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It was difficult to distinguish between civilians and combatants;<\/li>\n<li>The LTTE often fired on Tamil civilians;<\/li>\n<li>US Ambassador Butenis <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/wikileak-disclosures-of-secret-us-despatches-on-the-last-phase-of-eelam-war-iv-in-2009-appendix-iii-for-bbc-blind\/\">confirmed the government\u2019s claim<\/a> <\/span>that they made a conscious decision to prolong the war and risk more SL Army casualties in order to protect civilians. Red Cross representative Jacques de Maio, Robert O Blake of the US State Department and Jim Grant of UNICEF echoed this in their secret memoranda during the height of the war;<\/li>\n<li>The Sri Lankan authorities knew that USA and India were tracking the battles on satellite and would spot any inordinate use of force;<\/li>\n<li>Satellite imagery indicates that most of the craters in the Last Redoubt were <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.satp.org\/satporgtp\/countries\/shrilanka\/document\/TheNG.pdf.\">from mortars not artillery<\/a>;<\/span><\/li>\n<li>While <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/estimates-of-the-tamil-civilian-death-toll-during-the-last-phase-of-eelam-war-iv-in-2009-appendix-i-for-bbc-blind\/#more-11226\">a wide range of estimates<\/a><\/span> of civilian dead have been presented in the past few\u00a0 years <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/estimates-of-the-death-toll-among-the-fighting-forces-of-the-ltte-and-government-of-sri-lanka\/\">the most grounded<\/a><\/span> of these are from Narendran Rajasingham (<strong>3<\/strong>)\u00a0and IDAG-S<a href=\"file:\/\/\/C:\\Users\\Ian\\Downloads\\FACTOIDS-MR%20+Padraig%20(1).docx\">[iv]<\/a> and yield a range of dead from 10,000-18,700. The number of survivors \u2013 295,873 civilians and LTTE \u2013 is astounding <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/09\/congestion-in-the-vanni-pocket-january-may-2009-appendix-iv-for-bbc-blind\/\">considering the circumstances<\/a>.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For the Tiger high command, the mass of their people served as a:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>pool of labour for defensive works (bunds, ditches) and logistical support;<\/li>\n<li>source of new conscripts: and a<\/li>\n<li>human shield<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The LTTE strategy was to utilize the citizens of <i>Thamil\u012blam<\/i>, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/09\/congestion-in-the-vanni-pocket-january-may-2009-appendix-iv-for-bbc-blind\/\">a body of some 320,000 or so people<\/a><\/span>, to stay within their territory \u2013 eventually only the Vanni Pocket &#8211;\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/bbc-blind-misreading-the-tamil-tiger-strategy-of-international-blackmail-2008-13\/\">as a bargaining tool for international intervention<\/a><\/span>. The \u201cimpending humanitarian disaster\u201d that was proclaimed by Human Rights Watch, a host of other civil rights organizations, sympathetic journalists and politicians was a creation of the LTTE. The secular fundamentalism and simplistic black and white thinking of INGOs made them useful idiots for the LTTE, as were several Western ambassadors.<\/p>\n<p>The thinking of British politicians, including Prime Minister <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=David+Cameron&amp;x=11&amp;y=5\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">David Cameron<\/span><\/a>, is one-sided and directed by sound bites that totally discount the temporal-spatial and strategic backdrop shaping the last phase of the war.<\/p>\n<p>After Cameron\u2019s return from CHOGM, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Ed+Miliband&amp;x=10&amp;y=7\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ed Miliband<\/span><\/a> tried in the Commons to outdo him in condemnation of Sri Lanka. Labour backbencher, Siobhan McDonagh, consistently tries to please Tamil voters in her Mitcham and Morden constituency. Despite having voted in favour of the Iraq invasion and against an inquiry against it, she <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.island.lk\/index.php?page_cat=article-details&amp;page=article-details&amp;code_title=35385\">calls for an inquiry<\/a><\/span> into alleged Sri Lankan war crimes.<a href=\"file:\/\/\/C:\\Users\\Ian\\Downloads\\FACTOIDS-MR%20+Padraig%20(1).docx\"><br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p>WikiLeaks revealed that in May 2009 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=David+Miliband&amp;x=7&amp;y=3\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">David Miliband<\/span><\/a> said that he was spending 60% of his time on Sri Lanka because there were many Tamils living in marginal constituencies. Miliband and his aides wrote about \u201cratcheting up\u201d the case for humanitarian relief efforts.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement to the Senate subcommittee on the Middle East (West Asia) and South Asia <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Robert+O+Blake&amp;x=7&amp;y=6\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Robert O Blake<\/span><\/a> said: \u201cPositioned directly on the shipping routes that carry petroleum products and other trade from the Gulf to East Asia, Sri Lanka remains of strategic interest to the US.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The editor of the English Catholic magazine <i>The Tablet<\/i> wrote on December 7th 2013: \u201cWhy has the Prime Minister been so obsequious to the Chinese\u2026? He made it plain for all to see that China\u2019s indifference to most of the values that define a civilised society was of little or no interest to him, provided the British economy benefited from an increase in trade and investment. This was in strong contrast to his performance in Sri Lanka last month, when he made much of that Government\u2019s treatment of Tamil civilians at the end of the civil war\u2026The reason appears to be that Sri Lanka is not one of Britain\u2019s major trading partners, whereas China is. This takes political pragmatism too far.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Simon Jenkins was one of the few western journalists <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspensrental.com\/simon-jenkins-pulverized-milibands-assinine-foreign-interventions-in-2009\/\">who recognised that<\/a><\/span> a ceasefire was a one-sided benefit to a warring force on its last legs. He noted that \u201cin Sri Lanka a rudimentary study of the past three months of fighting would have told Miliband that a ceasefire would be pro-Tamil, not just \u201cpro-humanitarian\u201d (2009). The Fourth Estate in the West had been thoroughly alienated by <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/jdsrilanka.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/sri-lanka-thirty-four-journalists-media.html\">the intimidation, abduction and killing of several local journalists in Sri Lanka<\/a><\/span> in the years 2006-09, actions which could be credibly assigned to the government\u2019s intelligence services or its paramilitary Tamil allies.<\/p>\n<p>Jeremy Page of <i>The Times<\/i> told the world that 1,400 people were dying every week at the Menik Farm camp. There was no evidence because it was simply untrue. Within the space of his short article Page quickly moved on to deal with the Eastern Province where there were no camps and the war had ended two years previously. The government had asked the Red Cross to scale down its operations in the east because the situation was under control. Page elided this with the canard about deaths at Menik Farm to give the impression that the government was callously booting out the Red Cross while people were dying.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Channel+4&amp;x=12&amp;y=4\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Channel 4<\/span><\/a> News documentary, <i>Sri Lanka\u2019s Killing Fields<\/i>, contained a great number of factoids (a term coined by Norman Mailer and defined by the OED as \u201can item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact\u201d).\u00a0 This effect is similar to a term coined by Stephen Colbert, namely, <i>Veritasiness <\/i>or <i>\u201c<\/i>truthiness\u201d, common sense, received wisdom, truths that are self-evident in the gut regardless of reality. Thus, Stephen Sacker was full of truthiness in his <i>Hard Talk<\/i> haranguing of Rajiva Wijesinha. Everybody knows the SL Army was shelling hospitals so why are you denying it?<\/p>\n<p>Many journalists rely on Gordon Weiss\u2019s book <i>The Cage<\/i>, even though\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/webdesginottawa.me\/slembassyparis\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;%20view=article&amp;id=745%3Aan-unreliable-witness-gordon-weiss-the-cage-and-sri-lanka-&amp;catid=100%3Aheadlines&amp;Itemid=313&amp;lang=en.\">Weiss<\/a><\/span> makes the disclaimer that he <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-cage-by-gordon-weiss\/\">was not a witness<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0<i>Guardian<\/i> Asia correspondent Jason Burke, writing in the <em>Literary Review<\/em>, describes this book as a \u201ccomprehensive, fair and well-written work\u201d. Weiss was and is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2012\/01\/09\/the-torture-scene-in-killing-fields-and-gordon-weiss\/\">a major player<\/a><\/span> in the numbers game. When he was\u00a0working\u00a0for the UN in Colombo,\u00a0he said <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/07\/14\/numbers-game-reviewed-by-kath-noble-the-full-monty\/\">the number of civilian casualties<\/a><\/span> was 7,000. This became the official figure quoted by the UN General Secretary\u2019s New York spokesperson,\u00a0 Michelle Monas, who told <em>Inner City Press<\/em> reporter Matthew Lee, \u201cWe have no way of knowing the exact count\u201d. When Weiss left the UN, returned to Australia and began writing his book, he increased the figure to 15,000. Then he upped it to\u00a040,000, a figure that a whole range of media outlets, including BBC and NDTV, ran with.<\/p>\n<p>BBC journalist Waseem Zakir coined <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2011\/08\/17\/a-credible-evaluation-of-%e2%80%9cchurnalism%e2%80%9d-from-channel-4-and-the-moon-panel\/\">the neologism<\/a><\/span> \u201cchurnalism\u201d to describe the type of sensationalist reportage that is now in vogue. Nick Davies, in his book, <i>Flat Earth News<\/i>, presented an overwhelming weight of evidence that the British press lies, distorts facts and breaks the law. Davies\u2019s research proved that in <i>The Times<\/i>, in 70 per cent of \u201cnews\u201d stories, a claimed fact passed into print without any corroboration at all. It is interesting to note that Britain only has 47,800 PR people to 45,000 journalists.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The LTTE <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/transcurrents.com\/tc\/2010\/05\/proltte_diaspora_pursue_eelam.html.\">propaganda machine<\/a><\/span> took global advantage of this state of affairs as well the liberal currents of thinking that tagged the Tamils of Sri Lanka as a minority that had been put upon. The Sri Lankan government\u2019s own propaganda effort has been inept in spite of taxpayers\u2019 money draining away to PR firm Bell-Pottinger for no return on the investment. Even critics of Sri Lanka like Patricia Butenis and Robert O Blake <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/wikileak-disclosures-of-secret-us-despatches-on-the-last-phase-of-eelam-war-iv-in-2009-appendix-iii-for-bbc-blind\/\">have acknowledged that<\/a><\/span> the LTTE fired on their own people as they tried to flee; while Tamil civilian testimonies indicate that on the odd occasion in early 2009 the LTTE officers even directed artillery fire on their people as an aspect of <a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/bbc-blind-misreading-the-tamil-tiger-strategy-of-international-blackmail-2008-13\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">the grand strategy of demonstrating an impending humanitarian disaster<\/span><b>.<\/b><\/a> It is a pity that this message has not been disseminated. For whatever reason, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thuppahi.wordpress.com\/2013\/12\/08\/bbc-blind-misreading-the-tamil-tiger-strategy-of-international-blackmail-2008-13\/\">the Western governments chose to be blind<\/a><\/span> then. The Western media was mostly deaf, dumb and blind then and remains comprehensively mute now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":75728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,6968],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-editorial","category-popular-columns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Fog Of War In Sri Lanka  - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-fog-of-war-in-sri-lanka\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Fog Of War In Sri Lanka  - 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