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Sri Lankan president demands media toes the line on the war
Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse held a meeting with editors and heads of media bodies on Wednesday ostensibly to explain the “current situation in the country”. The real purpose of the meeting was to pressure those assembled to faithfully reproduce the government’s propaganda on its widening war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The fact that the meeting was called at all reveals a distinct nervousness. The media in Sri Lanka is already toeing the line. Virtually all reports of the war are based directly on government speeches and military statements. There is little first-hand reporting from the war zones and no opposition to the war in the editorials and commentary.
Yet some coverage of the military’s atrocities and its indiscriminate attacks on civilians has inevitably slipped into the Colombo and international media, not simply from pro-LTTE reports but the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and various non-government organisations. As a result, there have been concerns expressed in military circles about losing the propaganda war, and calls for the suppression of “LTTE disinformation”.
Appropriately, Rajapakse began his meeting with a lie, insisting that the military was engaged purely in defensive action. “There is no war,” he declared, “but only retaliatory attacks on the part of the forces in the national interest to protect our positions.” If there were a war, he said, government forces would “fight and march forward”.
The army has already fought and tried to march forward. Rajapakse initiated military action against the LTTE on July 26. In open breach of the 2002 ceasefire agreement, he ordered the military to retake the Mavilaru irrigation sluice gate. While the president claimed that the operation was “limited” and “humanitarian,” the air force bombed LTTE targets in other areas and fighting continued even after the LTTE opened the sluice gate and provided water to farmers downstream.
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/sril-a19.shtml
Yet some coverage of the military’s atrocities and its indiscriminate attacks on civilians has inevitably slipped into the Colombo and international media, not simply from pro-LTTE reports but the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and various non-government organisations. As a result, there have been concerns expressed in military circles about losing the propaganda war, and calls for the suppression of “LTTE disinformation”.
Appropriately, Rajapakse began his meeting with a lie, insisting that the military was engaged purely in defensive action. “There is no war,” he declared, “but only retaliatory attacks on the part of the forces in the national interest to protect our positions.” If there were a war, he said, government forces would “fight and march forward”.
The army has already fought and tried to march forward. Rajapakse initiated military action against the LTTE on July 26. In open breach of the 2002 ceasefire agreement, he ordered the military to retake the Mavilaru irrigation sluice gate. While the president claimed that the operation was “limited” and “humanitarian,” the air force bombed LTTE targets in other areas and fighting continued even after the LTTE opened the sluice gate and provided water to farmers downstream.
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/sril-a19.shtml
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This is another example of the disinformation campaign conducted by LTTE & their cohorts to sling mud at the Sri Lankan government. While these free media & journalists were deaf & dumb when clamores kill innocent travellers in Kabithigollawa, they cry bloody murder when Goverment decide to hit back against these torrorists.
Please bear in mind it is LTTE, who started this round of war by trying to assasinate Army chief, assasinating a very senior army officer, blocking the sluice in mavilaru, etc. Infact the list of procakations are endless. That is why the international community has been more silent about this than before. They can't pressure the government to pull out unless LTTE do so.
With that in mind LTTE embarks on sling mud at goverment forces by trying to stick various crimes on their name. When airforce successfully bomb a child soldier training base, they tried to show it as a orphanage! In the middle of
a jungle? The pathetic lie was exposed by the goverment & they are still to come up with a reply.
So when Mr. Rajapakse says to be more mindfull when reporting about the war, it doesn't mean the media have to preach what he says(even if he says, it won't happen!). It means to check the accuracy before you broadcast it. And be mindfull of the effects of it on the people, who mostly live in harmany in this multi ethnic country. Nothing more, Nothing Less!
Please bear in mind it is LTTE, who started this round of war by trying to assasinate Army chief, assasinating a very senior army officer, blocking the sluice in mavilaru, etc. Infact the list of procakations are endless. That is why the international community has been more silent about this than before. They can't pressure the government to pull out unless LTTE do so.
With that in mind LTTE embarks on sling mud at goverment forces by trying to stick various crimes on their name. When airforce successfully bomb a child soldier training base, they tried to show it as a orphanage! In the middle of
a jungle? The pathetic lie was exposed by the goverment & they are still to come up with a reply.
So when Mr. Rajapakse says to be more mindfull when reporting about the war, it doesn't mean the media have to preach what he says(even if he says, it won't happen!). It means to check the accuracy before you broadcast it. And be mindfull of the effects of it on the people, who mostly live in harmany in this multi ethnic country. Nothing more, Nothing Less!
Sameera - look at the matter intelligently. The article was about media censorship. Not about the LTTE being right or wrong. The people have a right to know all of the information from all of the sides - then they can decide who or what the want to believe. Otherwise, the government of sri lanka will be like the LTTE - they allow only their side of the story. In the case fo those children, UNICEF that is very critical of the LTTE for using child soldiers, has confirmed that there was no sign of any military training and that those there were kids who were undergoing first aid training. Just like high school kids in the south are given first aid training and disaster management. Remember the tsunami hit that part of the country very badly and this was also a government run training program. The director of education department has also confirmed it. The government obviously made a mistake - nobody wants to kill innocent children for the fun of it. The second mistake was trying to make up an excuse saying that the kids were child soldiers when they couldn't stop UNICEF from going there to verify. In Muttur they were able to stop SLMM from going to see the 17 aid workers who were killed. When our government behaves like the LTTE, it also becomes a terrorist organisation.
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