COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan army would soon release a video documentary on the controversial last phase of the 2006-2009 war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Army Commander Lt Gen Jagath Jayasuriya announced here on Monday.
The video is expected to rebut the allegations of war crimes made by Britain’s Channel 4 TV in two documentaries in the past year. The second is to be telecast this Wednesday, even as there is an anti-Sri Lankan US resolution on the table at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Media spokesman Brig Wanigasuriya said that it would give a picture of what truely happened. Asked if it was meant to rebut the allegations made in Channel 4 videos, Wanigasuriya said that it would definitely deal with the issues raised by the British videos, but would not be restricted to them.
Channel 4’s latest video shows the bullet-ridden body of LTTE supremo Prabhakaran’s 12-year-old son, Bal-achandran. A British forensic expert and academic had certified that the boy was sh-ot at point blank range. He had also been made to witness the killing of his body guards, whose naked bodies were shown to be in the immediate vicinity.
Channel 4 claimed that the footage was based on pictures taken by Sri Lankan soldiers with their cell ph-ones. When Channel 4’s first video Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields came out last June, the Lanka said that the images were fake. However, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission has asked the government to investigate the claims.