http://www.france24.com/en/20110621-probe-urged-sri-lanka-tv-star-execution

21 June 2011 – 09H38  

Probe urged into Sri Lanka TV star ‘execution’

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Sri Lankan soldiers stand guard two kilometers from the front line on Puthukkudiyiruppu on April 24, 2009. A documentary by Britain’s Channel 4, "Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields", contained footage of what it said were prisoner executions in the final days of fighting between government troops and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.

AFP – A New York-based media rights organisation Tuesday called for an international inquiry into the death of a Sri Lankan television presenter who was allegedly executed by government forces.

A documentary by Britain’s Channel 4, "Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields", contained footage of what it said were prisoner executions in the final days of fighting between government troops and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.

The bullet-riddled body of a female TV anchor known as Issipriya was shown alongside men in Sri Lankan army uniform as they executed two naked blindfolded men who had their hands tied behind their backs.

"Channel 4 has provided solid evidence that Issipriya was murdered and that a war crime may have been committed," Bob Dietz of the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement.

"Moreover, she was reportedly working as a journalist. It is essential that an international inquiry make use of this and any other evidence to investigate and prosecute those responsible."

Issipriya was a popular presenter on a clandestine television station run by the Tamil Tigers in areas they held before its transmitting towers were brought down by air force bombers at the height of fighting.

Sri Lanka‘s defence ministry in a statement posted on its website maintained that the woman was not a journalist but a combatant of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who held the rank of "lieutenant colonel."

"It is unfortunate that Channel 4, ignoring evidence of her active involvement in terrorist activities… white washes her by claiming that she was just a journalist and not engaged in combat operations," the ministry said.

Sri Lanka‘s High Commission (embassy) in London said the images shown in the programme a week ago had not been verified as genuine.

The High Commission added that a local panel known as the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission was ready to take note of the claims and take remedial legal action.

However, there has been no firm word from Colombo if it will probe the allegations. Much of the Channel 4 footage had been broadcast in the past 18 months and Sri Lanka has dismissed all of it as fabrications.

The UN estimates that up to 100,000 people died in Sri Lanka’s separatist conflict between 1972 and May 2009 and about 7,000 civilians died in the final months of fighting alone.

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http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june202011/tamil-attack-tk.php

Sri Lanka‘s Violence Toward Tamil Minority Continues

Tim King Salem-News.com

Sri Lanka regime thumbs its nose at the world after Genocide; allows occupying soldier’s physical and sexual abuse of Tamil Hindu and Christian population to continue. When is enough, enough?


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topnews.in

(SALEM, Ore.) – Like a terrible scene from a past world war, the problems for the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka; victims of a massive Genocide just over two years ago, are far from over.

Reports dispatched to our news desk inform us that suffering is rampant among refugees who are still experiencing daily physical and sexual abuse from occupying soldiers.

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Visit the: Canadian Tamil Youth Alliance

What we know is that The Tamil Alliance’s Parliament members were holding a public meeting last Thursday in a place authorized for Tamil people, 16 June 2011, when more than two dozen Sri Lankan Army (SLA) soldiers entered the area and attacked the Tamil people in attendance.

The uniformed government soldiers are said to have entered the hall and attacked the participants with rifle butts and batons. We’re told 25 SLA soldiers also "used poles to beat up people" at the meeting.

Other information from various sources filtering through to the west and Salem-News.com specifically, describes the massive human rights violations that the Sri Lankan army is continually perpetrating against the survivors.

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It is, from the sounds of it, a real ‘free for all’ with no no holes barred for Sri Lanka’s marauding soldiers, whose acts are being compared to those that took place in Bosnia, where women and girls were savagely attacked, raped and killed, and clearly no recourse for Tamils.

It truly is a wicked game and the world without question, has really neglected its duties again.

Which begs the question; what happened in Sri Lanka to create such inhumane practices? Calls for expedient world attention are circulating.

During the 2009 Genocide, these Sinhalese majority Buddhist military forces under orders of the Sri Lankan president, Majinda Rajapaksa, may have actually murdered more than a hundred thousand civilians and the govt. highhandedly refuse to accept responsibility for the highly documented crimes.

However there is a lot of video that the Tamil people shot as the brutality and killings took place, and the SLA soldier video clips and photos begin immediately after the Tamil cameras end.

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The Set Up

Sri Lanka‘s president militarized rule of Tamil areas after taking office in 2005. It has all been part of a broad based and highly planned ethnic cleansing program that Hitler himself would likely have admired. All to make Sri Lanka a Buddhist country.

Prior to carrying out the brutal Genocide, the Sri Lankan government murdered and disappeared one reporter after another. Even Sinhalese reporters who were friendly toward the Tamil cause for liberation were targeted.

Then when that phase of their Tamil elimination plan was complete, Rajapaksa’s henchmen told United Nations teams on the ground that their lives would be in danger, which is curious because the Tamils were who the UN observers lived with, and they were by their own account never threatened by Tamils.

That clearly means the government warning meant that the UN would be in danger of being killed by the SLA soldiers and rather than object, the UN left and the killing sprees began and then went on and on and on.

Like the Horrors of WWII

Beyond the fact that I am in contact with so many Tamils; or the hundreds of hours I have been spending researching and writing about this tragedy; I am like so many other people, most haunted by the images.

You can’t shake some of them and those replaying scenes have to be making big appearances in the dreams of the perpetrators of these crimes.

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Shoba Isaippiriya- Sri Lanka Genocide victim

The SLA made some critical mistakes.

One was killing a beautiful and popular Tamil journalist, Shoba Isaippiriya, whose nude and surely sexually abused body was gratuitously photographed after her death on a soldier’s cell phone cameras. (I wish Channel-4 would have at least partly restricted the images of her nudity out of respect, but that was their call.)

Another was obviously allowing soldiers to photograph events and then release them to the public. Perhaps some still don’t fully comprehend the whole YouTube phenomena.

The worst, one that plagues every Genocidal government, is a belief that they can get away with something this bad without anyone finding out.

Our reports that detail this massive genocide carried out against Tamil Hindus and Christians in Sri Lanka will continue until the day justice is served, and that may be a long time from now.

All of the SLA’s horrors have been carried out against their own country’s men and women and children.

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UN observers packing up to leave the Tamils to their fate raised objections, but were
pulled out by the UN. This girl’s face was the image one of those officials said he could
never lose. Her look is tragic and resigned; as if she knows here fate will be sealed and
there was no one left to save them from the SLA or even record what would happen.

It seems minimal that sanctions should be enacted by the world body and the UN needs to send their people in on the ground in northern Sri Lanka where impoverished refugees are partly reintegrated and partly still the victims of rampant and egregious human rights abuses.

They deserve their day in court, at The Hague.

An independent observer with the United Nations Human Rights Commission, says the widely circulated video and photos of Tamils being executed by the SLA are indeed real. Channel-4 in London brought much of it forth. Their work deserves a Pulitzer, and at minimum they are in a light with the finest electronic journalists who ever lived.

And because of this media group in the UK, the matter has gained a great deal of momentum, particularly when world focus was called upon last week by Channel-4′s debut of the highly anticipated documentary "Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields" showing more obscene footage of the suffering and human slaughter than had ever been shown.

There are links below that will take you to the documentary, and also to a number of prior reports that convey many details that, as unpleasant as they are, scream for justice. If you have film or video evidence of the genocide that has not been released yet, send it to Jon Snow at Channel-4 or to Salem-News.com and we will get it in front of the right people at the UN.

Special thanks to http://jgladvin.blogspot.com/

Some of our past reports on the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka;