Human Rights
Why the media sometimes has to shock
The documentary shows harrowing scenes from Sri Lanka that its makers say are evidence of war crimes. Photo courtesy Independent.uk
If there is one absolute justification for the media to publish or air horrific images of war, of inhumanity, of senseless killing it would be in the hope of urging to moral action a jaded society. The images of war can often serve as a catalyst for moral action. They can help disclose the truth and debunk propaganda.
Take a disaster situation. Though people worry about panicking in such times they ought to be more worried about freezing up, says one expert on the subject. Predators sometimes abort their attacks when their prey fails to fight back, and freezing up is a survival instinct deeply rooted in the human’s evolutionary past. There are numerous examples of passengers on ships who did absolutely nothing while their ship sank, or people who just watch transfixed as horror and mayhem unfolded around them. This catatonia may not always be due to moral cowardice or indifference or even approval of the horror.
Indeed it is well known that loud shouting can help people in a disaster to snap out of a trance and spur action to save themselves and others. Flight attendants are trained to shout or even scream crisp clear messages during disaster.
Sometimes the world needs to be shouted at.
It needs to be shouted at because despite Human Rights Charters and Protocols there is in reality no such thing as a human rights foreign policy. What is international law except an empty promise? Competitive economic diplomacy governs the international community and the less at stake commercially the more likely a country would scold another with vim and vigour and the more concentration of resources of any kind in a country (either in and of itself or through the company it keeps) the less likely to be reprimanded it would be.
Sometimes it is through such images that outrage can be achieved. And without human outrage there can be no call to justice. While the debate about ethics in publishing imagery rages on still, there is a desperation that accompanies the compulsion by journalists to disclose and such desperation implies hope. Hope that one day justice will be served.
On January 14 (Tuesday) Britain’s Channel 4 will broadcast the documentary Sri Lanka’s killing fields.
Indeed Channel 4 has sanctioned the broadcast of the most graphic and disturbing images that the network has ever screened, showing summary executions and the corpses of women who appear to have been sexually abused, to highlight evidence of alleged war crimes by Sri Lankan soldiers. The footage, much of it taken by the troops themselves on their mobile phones as war trophies at the end of the 2009 conflict with Tamil rebels, has been identified by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Christof Heyns, as evidence of “definitive war crimes”.
Britain’s Independent newspaper says the Channel $ documentary will most likely put pressure on the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, to order an investigation into war crimes by Sri Lankan armed forces and Tamil Tiger fighters, which he has so far resisted.
In a radio discussion on the ethics of airing the documentary on “Sri Lanka’s killing fields” which contains what Channel-4 calls “probably the most horrific images it has ever shown” Channel-4’s Head of news and current affairs, Dorothy Byrne, explained that the absolute justification for showing the program is that nothing has yet happened after the UN expert panel’s report revealed that there was credible evidence that massive war-crimes were allegedly committed by the Sri Lanka military on Tamil civilians. “People, and ambassadors to UN have to see the documentary and can decide for themselves if they are prepared to do nothing,” Byrne had said. Dorothy Byrne discussion on BBC Radio
When asked if C4 held back any images, Dorothy Byrne responds that the private parts of naked bodies of men and women were blacked out, and adds that “it is disturbing to think of these images being available widely in the internet, and that’s why you have to have an overwhelming justification for showing the images.
“The overwhelming justification for me is the need for justice for 40,000 innocent people who are not being given justice anywhere in the world, and where people are denying that these events ever even took place. It is terrible to see women being executed and it is terrible to see bodies of women are thrown around after being killed,” Byrne says.
Channel-4 screened the hour-long film on Sri Lanka’s killing fields at UN on 3rd June, and UN special investigator into extrajudicial killings, Christof Heyns, presented a video footage to the UN Human Rights Council .
“It’s very rare that you have actual footage of people being killed,” Mr Heyns, a lawyer by training, had earlier told The Associated Press. “This is different from CCTV. This is trophy footage,” Heyns had said, adding, the video showed “definitive war crimes”, believed to have taken place in May 2009 – that require both domestic and international proceedings to be launched.
The Independent quotes Dorothy Byrne defending the decision to broadcast the images but actually warning viewers against tuning in. Byrne, tells the newspaper, “I don’t urge you to watch this programme. It’s horrific. The images will remain in your mind, maybe for years.”
Last week, the film was shown at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and watched by an audience that included the United States, the United Kingdom and Indian ambassadors to the UN. The Independent also said that a motion has been tabled in Parliament by the Conservative MP Lee Scott, calling “on the UN to establish an independent, international mechanism to ensure truth, accountability and justice in Sri Lanka”. It advises all MPs to watch the documentary, scheduled to be shown on Tuesday evening.
Byrne says that the programme has been made so that the most harrowing imagery is shown well after the watershed to protect children. “But there are probably many adults who shouldn’t watch; people who can’t watch horrible stuff on the news,” she said. “I would definitely say pregnant women shouldn’t look at it. I would rather I had never seen it.”
At the start of the programme, C4 presenter Jon Snow issues a warning to the audience: “This film contains very disturbing images depicting death, injury, execution and evidence of sexual abuse and murder, much of it filmed on mobile phones or small cameras.” Last night he told The Independent that the film was “the most important I have ever reported”. He said: “I have reported civil wars before, not least in Central America in the 1980s but I have never seen such graphic evidence, often at the hands of government soldiers themselves, of what have all the hallmarks of war crimes.”
At one point in the film, one soldier tells his comrade: “Pose with the bodies!” The programme also contains footage shot by Tamil civilians on personal cameras and mobile phones showing systematic shelling of hospitals.
It contains testimony from UN officials, including Gordon Weiss, the UN spokesman on Sri Lanka, who alleges that there had been “roughly 65 attacks on medical points that were treating civilians”. He says: “It probably constitutes a war crime.” Vany Kumar, a British biomedical technician who was caught up in the fighting when visiting Tamil relatives and was under fire in the hospitals, gives witness evidence of the attacks.
The Independent reports Sam Zafiri, Amnesty International’s director for Asia Pacific, as saying he hoped that the broadcasting of the new evidence would ensure that there was no cover-up of the atrocities. “The Sri Lanka government really tried very hard to make sure this was a war without any independent witnesses,” he said. The programme also contains footage of atrocities committed by Tamil Tigers against civilians.
Channel 4 first showed images of Sri Lankan troops committing alleged summary executions in 2009, soon after the end of the war. The Sri Lanka government accused the broadcaster of fabricating that footage. In a statement issued to Channel 4, it also rejected the new evidence of atrocities and claimed that the broadcaster failed to meet “the ‘standards and fairness’ expected of a responsible TV channel”.
2 Comments to “Why the media sometimes has to shock”
June 21, 2011 at 5:58 am
THIS MORNING WHILE GOING THROUGH MY E MAILS I FOUND AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY J.B.MILLER TITLED ‘GOOD OLD DAYS’ ON THE BRITISH COLONIAL RULE IN SRI LANKA.Miller states: ‘After 62 years of Independence we still have in our midst persons who not only admire but also hunger for colonial rule by Britain’.Miller ends his article with a quote from Samuel.P.Huntington which states’ The West won the World not by superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.’
The above article on the Channel 4 video immediately came to my mind and how true the said statement is.
The Channel 4 video and the Darusman Report form parts of the conspiracy of the West fuelled by the funds of the Tamil Diaspora to bring the regime in Sri Lanka to its knees.The next step would be a UN Resolution to arrest the leaders and if they do not heed just as in Libya they could commence a massacre of the innocents using NATO.The Sri Lankans all over the World must unite with the friendly Nations to defeat this sinister machination of the West.NATO HAS BEEN GIVEN AN OPEN LICENSE BY THE UN TO MASSACRE THE INNOCENTS IN LIBYA.NATO SAYS BY A MISTAKE ONE OF THEIR MISSILES HIT A RESIDENTIAL AREA.SO THEY EXPRESS THEIR REGRET FOR THIS MASS MASSACRE OF INNOCENTS AND CHANNEL 4 HUMAN RIGHTS CRUSADERS KEEP MUM.THIS REMINDS ONE OF HITLER SENDING MILLIONS OF INNOCENT JEWS TO THE GAS CHAMBER WHILE THE ENTIRE WORLD WATCHED HELPLESSLY IN HORROR.IT IS ABOUT TIME THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD RISE FROM THEIR DEEP SLUMBER AND SPEAK ON BEHALF OF OUR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS PERSECUTED BY NATO.
June 20, 2011 at 11:57 am
Under the horrible photograph is the statement’ The documentary shows harrowing scenes from Sri Lanka that its makers say are evidence of war crimes.’
This statement itself shows that the writer of the above article is not certain of the authenticity of the Channel 4 video.We have seen worse footage in various war films.Anyone can make and fabricate false evidence.
What is the guarantee of authenticity of these scenes?It is an open secret that the rich Tamil Diaspora are engaging persons to concoct evidence to embarrass the Sri Lankan Government.
Where is the Channel 4 footage on NATO bombs devastating residential areas in Libya and bombing hundreds of civilians including women and innocent children? Why don’t they show how NATO bombed Gaddafi’s youngest son and his grandsons,who were innocent children?I DO NOT HOLD A BRIEF FOR GADAFFI BUT ARE THE INNOCENT CHILDREN DEPRIVED OF THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS?These murders are happening now and all the human beings are watching helplessly in disgust at the massacre by the cowards from the air massacring innocent people.People of the World it is time that we told these monsters where to get off.As the writer of the above article quite rightly states ‘sometimes the World needs to be shouted at’.This is exactly what I am doing in my small way with anguish in my heart. What gives these rascals the authority to massacre innocent helpless unarmed women and children?Where are the crocodile tears of the Channel 4 team for these innocent human beings.These rascals should know that when they point one finger at Sri Lanka thousands of fingers are pointing at these hypocrites who are collecting money to put up a bogus show against the heroic forces of the Sri Lanka Army who looked after their Tamil brothers and sisters with great care and liberated them from the clutches of the barbaric LTTE.