Written by: Human Rights Advocacy Council
Britain’s Channel 4 will be releasing its second documentary regarding the horrific war crimes abuses and violations in Sri Lanka of Tamil civilians towards the end of the brutal civil war in 2009. This documentary is a follow-up to the award winning documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields that was released in 2011.
The first documentary displayed some of the most graphic and disturbing images of a war ever shown on television. It was a completely different perspective of the Sri Lankan war which was heavily censored by the Sri Lankan Government at the time to prevent any international intervention. Video footage and images in the documentary showed shelling of civilians in government designated “no fire zones”, hospitals, evidence of sexual abuse of female combatants, and horrifying executions of naked and bounded Tamils. With over 700, 000 views in Britain alone of the first documentary, the release of the release of second documentary is strongly awaited.
The follow-up documentary titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields War Crimes Unpunished will be broadcast on March 14, 2012 in the United Kingdom. It will examine forensically four specific events of the war:
1) Deliberate shelling of Tamil civilians and a hospital in the government declared “no fire zone”
2) Denial of food and medicine to thousands of civilians in areas of the war
3) Systematic execution of Tamil prisoners
4) Killing of civilians during what the government called a “rescue operation”
So what happens now?
We are over 200 000 Tamils strong in Canada alone. Harnessing the powers of social media such as Twitter and Facebook to our advantage, think of the impact we can create in the world with the spread of this documentary. With the recent popular documentary Kony 2012 which deals with human rights issues as well, Tamil youth can unify with human rights activists everywhere to bring forth our issues.
Call your local radio station, write to your morning newspapers, talk to your local MPPs, MPs, and City Councillors, educate your fellow peers, and inform the world of internet about the gruesome suffering that Tamil civilians endured in the 21st century despite the many protests around the world in 2009. We are a community that has shown the world that we will never give up in our fight for equality, justice, and self-determination.
In the coming days, the Human Rights Advocacy Council of CTYA would like to hear your comments on the documentary after its release. We would like to publish some of these comments to show the strong unified call of youth all across Canada for the justice of our Tamil people.
Send your comments into humanrights@ctya.org
