Sri Lanka asks UN rights body to block screening of British film on alleged war crimes
Submitted by Walter Jayawardhana
BERLIN – Sri Lanka has warned the United Nations against allowing a British-made documentary about the Asian country’s civil war to be shown on the sidelines of a human rights meeting.
The island nation’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva says the Channel 4 documentary, titled “No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka,” contains a narrative that is “discredited, uncorroborated and unsubstantiated.”
The film alleges Sri Lankan troops engaged in war crimes during the final stages of the conflict with the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.
Sri Lankan ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha told the head of the U.N. Human Rights Council in the letter dated Sunday that the global body could be violating its own rules if the film is screened Friday in Geneva at a meeting hosted by rights groups. (AP)
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If the UN fails to accede to Ravinatha’s request, we should, as a measure of support to Ravinatha, withdraw from the ongoing UNHRC sessions.
Ravinatha’s performance in recent times has been shockingly deficient and Hon Mahinda Samarasinghe had to be jetted into Geneva to protect our interests in the last minute.
Thank heavens we have Hon Mahinda Samarasighe at the UNHRC sessions. The peanut career diplomats we have over there at immense cost to the taxpayer are miserable human beings incapable of defending our motherland.
Well done Mahinda, you were handpicked for this noble task because of your unsurpassble patriotic instincts. You will shine dear Mahinda, as you have in the past. The thoughts and prayers of the Sinhala Buddhists are with you.
GOSL should have a proper person to address any such issues in outer world. The person who can speak in any situation without getting pee on pants.
I hope its not so had to find such person as we have many prominent educated people in the country. This post should not be any political appointment in my view.
I fully agree with Niyamasinhala. Have been living in the West for a quarter of a century, have never seen SL government being able to send anybody who can speak clearly with comprehensibly in English other than Prof. Rajiva Wijetunga and the woman who presented the documentary last year in response to Channel 4 killing fields.
The war with the LTTE continues for SL in the media front now. It is PRESENTATION,PRESENTATION AND PRESENTATION to the stupid hypocritical International Community that matters! LTTE has hired native western English speakers to put their version and against that GOSL is doing pathetically. Either GOSL take that lesson from the LTTE book (or Israel) when it come to deliver a message clearly with authority and conviction to the world or lose all that achieved so far.