Colombo, September 07: Sri Lanka on Monday said its technical investigations had shown a video purporting to show Sri Lankan soldiers executing Tamils was faked and challenged the British TV station that aired it to refute its findings.
The footage aired last month by Britain’s Channel 4 shows men in military fatigues appearing to shoot dead naked and bound men, which Sri Lanka had already rejected as fabricated.
The broadcaster said the video may be evidence of potential war crimes by Sri Lankan soldiers against Tamils in the final act of a 25-year war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatists, which the government won in May.
Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said four investigations by military and civilian experts from Sri Lanka showed the footage was staged and had its sound manipulated — hallmarks of LTTE’s longstanding propaganda operations.
“I call on Channel 4 to immediately retract what they had unfortunately broadcast without checking. We will make available the scientific findings to them,” Samarasinghe told reporters.
In the report, Channel 4 said it was unable to independently verify the video but repeated allegations it said were made by a group that passed it the footage, called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka.
The group runs a blog but has not made public its membership, except to say they are Sri Lankan journalists who have put themselves into exile in Europe.
—Agencies