Alston racially prejudiced on Channel 4 fallout

What Alston is really saying is this is a video that has been tampered with, but the tampering isn’t significant - Rajiva

By Ranga Jayasuriya

It was a blast from the past for the government that came in the run up to the presidential election. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Prof Philip Alston issuing an expert report says the execution video —which depicted alleged Sri Lankan soldiers killing naked, bound and blindfolded prisoners, is authentic. He says experts commissioned by him have concluded that apparent shootings in the video were consistent with firing live ammunition, and not with shooting blank cartridges and that there is no evidence of image manipulation.
We asked Secretary to the Ministry of Human Rights and Disaster Management, Prof Rajiva Wijesinghe about Alston’s report and government’s response.

What is the government position on Prof Alston’s report?

Foreign Ministry has dealt with it pointing out that it is irregular. Normally when a Rapporteur writes a private letter, he does not go public with it. Alston is a bit peculiar in this way because last year I had to take issue with him, because he sent us a letter and then issued a statement. I told him, “Alston why did you do this, this is not correct” and he said, “No, no, you didn’t reply my letter.” Then, I pointed out to him that I replied and there were two holidays. Alston was pressurizing us. These were the times when they tried to stall things before May (before the Army finished off the LTTE). Alston isn’t a politician. Poor fellow. This time also he has done the same. I think, what is strange of Philip Alston is that he went on the Channel 4 three months ago. We pointed out to him, “why are you going public, when you don’t know even whether this is authentic”.Navanethem Pillay (UN Human Rights Commissioner) told us that she would never have issued a statement on the strength of such a video. Radhika Coomaraswamy (UN Under Secretary General) also told us that the first thing she would have done as the Special Rapporteur was to check the authenticity of the video. In that sense, I think Alston has, three months later, done what he should have done before making a public statement.

But, he says he has been challenged by the Sri Lankan government to conduct his own investigation.

No. Sri Lankan government told him from the first instance that, perhaps, he should check the authenticity of the video. That wasn’t the point. He went public before checking the authenticity in the first place. He is now doing what he should have done earlier.

What happened when he initially requested Sri Lankan government to conduct an independent local investigation?

What happened was, he sent us a a query, which is a typical Alston query and it wasn’t clear whether he was asking us to investigate an incident or a video. One point we made to him was, “look, if you want us to investigate some incident, tell us something about the incident.” Normally what happens is that as Americans
(State Department Report on the final phase of the war) did, they say such and such a day such and such things happened. Alston rather peculiarly said, “I have seen a video on Channel 4”. So I pointed out to him that you should have checked the authenticity of the video before going public. Now belatedly, he had done that. But he had not addressed issues raised by some of our experts or if he had addressed he had addressed to say that ‘I can’t address them’, because these are not important.

But Alston’s report states that his experts have addressed issues raised by the Sri Lankan government experts.

Same thing what I mentioned with regard to Times report (which conducted an inquiry into the video) had taken place. The Times expert whom they paid is saying that acting (in the video) is very authentic, therefore it is not acting. Here also they are talking, ‘smoke went this way and guns went this way and they were very authentic, therefore, it is not acting.’ That isn’t the point. You know, if people see a performance on the stage, some say how real it is, while others say how false it is. It is not the point. As Mr Hewa (Siri Hewawitharana, an Australian domiciled Sri Lankan expert hired by the government) said these are all subjective.

Even the professional credentials of Mr Hewa have been questioned by Prof Alston because the government hasn’t submitted him a proper resume of Mr Hewa...

We had provided a brief introduction about him. If Philip Alston wanted he could have asked more from the Foreign Ministry. As far as I know, Siri Hewa was not the one we commissioned. We didn’t pay him a single cent. He wrote to us out of blue, and said, I think ‘all this is false’, what he said ‘false’ was technicality. He made three distinct points. One of the points he made was look at the date on the video. I think Philip Alston has admitted it now. The embedded date was July, not January as we were told earlier.

But, he gave some explanation as to how that could have happened...

He said that could be explained. Very easy to say that can be explained. Anything can be explained. Second point was several seconds were clearly imposed. Alston says there are extra seconds in the end of the video that cannot be explained. What he is really saying is this is a video that has been tempered with, but the tampering isn’t significant. When the foreign ministry sent him the shortened version of the reports by out experts he said, our experts are not genuine, because they are Sri Lankans.

Wasn’t there an issue of impartiality related to the government hired experts?

Well, he said, because they are Sri Lankans, they are not impartial.

He said they were not impartial because they are paid by the Sri Lankan government?

Well, then, these people are paid by Alston. Same thing applies. We are not saying they are saying what Alston wanted them to say. It was a bit crude for him to say our army experts were not genuine, without listening to what they have said. The whole point about Siri Hewa which Alston goes on and on about is that he is a Sri Lankan. That’s sheer racial prejudice. Are we going around saying these fellows are Australians or Americans? Alston’s experts don’t seem to have addressed issues raised by Siri Hewa. All they have said was we can’t explain this issue or the other.

Issuing the report, has Prof Alston asked the government to conduct a fresh investigation?

What needs to be investigated is an action, not a video. We can go on and on investigating the video and different expert would tell different things. If Alston were to tell us that on such and such dates Sri Lankan forces killed naked prisoners in such and such a place, then we can launch an investigation. But you can’t have an investigation into a statement that on an unnamed date, Sri Lankan forces executed 9 prisoners. Only a rough account of date we have been told. That is in January, but it is at odds with what is embedded in the video.