| Sunday 31 July 2011 |
Sri Lanka’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva said that the Channel 4 broadcaster in London has been gathering information on him, which can endanger his life. He added that the LTTE’s international leader, Visvanathan Rudrakumar lives less than a kilometre away from his office.
“The Channel 4 team has been gathering information about my daily routine in the recent past, and if something happens to my life, Channel 4 should be held responsible,” Silva told LAKBIMAnEWS. Silva claimed that the latest Channel 4 video was created to slander him because of his exposure of the first video. The latest video quotes an alleged officer of Silva’s 58th Division stating Shavendra Silva gathered his troops in the last days of the battle, claming that the Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had ordered him to ‘kill selected LTTE leaders.’ Another alleged Sri Lankan soldier in the same division alleges that mass decapitation, rape, torture and mutilation took place in the final days of the war.
“The latest video mainly targets me and I believe that this is due to the fact that I took on the director of ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields,’ Callum Macrae, and the team of the first video and exposed their fabrications, inconsistencies and bias in the video. Despite my open challenge for a debate, Macrae has avoided me since. Instead of facing me and proving me wrong he has stooped to creating another biased, haphazardly created video,” Silva said, speaking to LAKBIMAnEWS.
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A hiss and not a kiss as answer to Gota from British High Comm. Offic
Sunday 31 of July 2011(Lanka-e-News -31.July.2011, 4.00A.M.) Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse had made a request to the British High Commission in Colombo to take action against channel 4 on the ground that the video report is detrimental to Sri Lanka and himself .The request made by Gotabaya on the belief that like in SL ,the media there is under the control of the Govt. was met by an answer which carried with it a hiss and not a kiss for Gota. Dominic Williams had this to say in answer for Gota :
“ Channel 4 is an independent free media channel. The Commonwealth believes that a free independent media is an essential ingredient of a viable and vibrant Democracy. Besides there is a clear mechanism established by the Commonwealth to probe the ethical and legal conduct of the media . Hence , the British Govt. has no way to interfere with the media programs and exposures.. In the existing mechanism there is a free independent representative Board and an independent Board for Press complaints. Hence , complaints against the media have to be channeled through them.”
