Warning – Disturbing Images: The Last Hours Of The Son Of Prabhakaran
February 19,
2013
New photographs have emerged which raise fresh questions
about the conduct of Sri Lanka’s armed forces during the final stages of the
operation against Tamil rebels and have led to claims the 12-year-old son of the
militants’ leader may have been summarily executed.
A
series of photographs taken a few hours apart and on the same camera, show
Balachandran Prabhakaran, son of Villupillai Prabhakaran, head of the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). One of them shows the boy sitting in a bunker,
alive and unharmed, apparently in the custody of Sri Lankan troops. Another, a
few hours later, shows the boy’s body lying on the ground, his chest pierced by
bullets.
The
images were taken in May 2009 at the very end of the Sri Lankan government’s
operation to crush the LTTE, which had launched a bloody, decades-long
insurgency against the state that led to the deaths of perhaps 70,000 people.
The authorities always said Prabhakaran’s son was killed in cross-fire, as
troops moved in to take the LTTE’s last stronghold, located on a scrap of
coastline near Mullaitivu in the north-east of the country.
But
the images, contained in a new documentary, No Fire Zone, which will be screened
at the Geneva Human Rights Film Festival during the UN Human Rights Council
meeting in March, suggest the boy was captured alive and killed at a later
stage.
A
forensic pathologist who examined the later images for the film-makers, said the
boy was shot five times in the chest. Furthermore, propellant burns around the
wound suggest he was shot at very close range.
“The
new photographs are enormously important evidentially because they appear to
rule out any suggestion that Balachandran was killed in cross-fire or during a
battle. They show he was held, and even given a snack, before being taken and
executed in cold blood,” claimed the film’s director, Callum Macrae.
“It
is difficult to imagine the psychology of an army in which the calculated
execution of a child can be allowed with apparent impunity. That these events
were also photographed and kept as war trophies by the perpetrators is even more
disturbing.” The 12-year-old’s father, Prabhakaran, was killed along with most
of the senior leadership of the LTTE as Sri Lanka’s army advanced on the rebels’
position. There were reports at the time that several LTTE officials were shot
and killed as they tried to surrender.
“No
substantive evidence have been presented for us to launch an investigation,” he
added, referring to alleged human rights abuses.
Sri
Lanka has always insisted it did what it could to ensure no civilians were
killed during its operation against the LTTE. Yet a team appointed by UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon found that up to 40,000 civilians may have been
killed. The team said there were credible allegations both sides committed war
crimes.
The
photographs will place additional pressure on David Cameron to announce whether
or not he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM), e in
Sri Lanka in November. A Downing Street official with Mr Cameron on his visit to
India said on Monday that no decision had yet been taken.
NGOs
and organisations, among them the cross-party Commons Foreign Affairs Committee,
have called on him to boycott the meeting.
Courtesy
the Independent UK
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