Sri Lanka war zone: 'The Scene at First Light Was Devastating' - UN

Frances Harrison

New photographs have emerged five years after the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka showing the aftermath of government attacks on a United Nations food distribution centre inside the war zone. The pictures, shot by a Tamil working for the media unit of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), show corpses, destroyed tents and damaged UN vehicles inside the "no fire zone" declared by the government supposedly to protect civilians.

British Council “Colomboscope”Arts Festival Panel Discussion Turned Into Pro- Sri Lanka Govt Propaganda Stunt on War

Frances Harrison

Perhaps most shocking was that they came in military uniform to an arts festival. It could have been a bold move to include a session on war reporting in the latest literary event in the Sri Lankan capital – Colomboscope. Sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank and organised by the British Council and Goethe Institute, the boundaries of freedom of expression should at least have been nudged forward a little.


But three of the four-member panel were government spokesmen. The only dissenting voice a very articulate German war correspondent, who didn’t seem to have actually reported on the end of the war in 2009 (another journalist was invited, but later pulled out).

If half of what Frances Harrison has uncovered on Sri Lankan state action to crush the Tamil Tigers is true, then Colombo's political and military leadership can be in the dock for war crimes

M.R. Narayan Swamy
Book: "Still Counting the Dead"; Author: Frances Harrison; Publishers: Portobello Books; Pages: 259; Price: Rs.399
If even half of what Frances Harrison has uncovered about what the Sri Lankan state did to crush the Tamil Tigers is true, then Colombo's political and military leadership can be in the dock for war crimes.

The former BBC journalist talks to a few who got trapped in the LTTE war zone until the Tigers were vanquished and later made their way to the West -- with revolting stories of death, destruction, savagery, torture, rape and humiliation of an entire community heaped in the name of a war on terror.