Channel-4 wins trophy for Sri Lanka's war-crimes documentary

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 February 2012, 05:51 GMT]
ITN for Channel 4 scooped the trophy for best international coverage for the documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Fields at the prestigious Royal Television Society (RTS) awards in UK, BBC reported. Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, a special one-hour investigation which features devastating video evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Sri Lankan government forces and the Tamil Tigers, was first broadcast on 2nd December 2010, edited versions were replayed on 4th and 5th December during Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa's visit to London.

"The footage screened by Channel 4 ranks among the most horrific yet shown on British television. Naked prisoners shot in the head; the dead bodies of women who had been raped, dumped on a truck; the immediate aftermath of a shell landing on a hospital – images caught on mobile phones of the atrocities committed by government soldiers in the final months of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war," UK's popular daily The Guardian commented on the video.

The film, directed by Callum Macrae, provides powerful evidence - including photographic stills, official Sri Lankan army video footage and satellite imagery - which contradicts the Sri Lankan government's claims of a policy of ‘Zero Civilian Casualties'. The film raised serious questions about the failures of the international community to intervene and prevent the deaths of up to forty thousand people and lends new urgency to the UN-appointed panel of expert's call for an international inquiry to be mounted.

The UN investigator, South African law professor Christof Heyns said of the footage first shown by Channel 4 News: "What is reflected in the extended video are crimes of the highest order - definitive war crimes...The overall conclusion reached by the experts is that the video is authentic and the events reflected in the video footage occurred as depicted," Channel 4 reported.

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Newsnight wins programme of the year award