By Blind Spot
Jonathan Miller of Channel 4 notoriety is shedding tears for the difficulties that he says the journalists in Sri Lanka are facing. His concerns are touching. Reading his note last week, one gets the impression that British journalists are completely independent and not influenced by anyone or anything. Miller’s “holier than thou” attitude seems to suggest that the journalism he and his colleagues in Britain are practicing, is far superior to that practised by Sri Lankan journalists. Perhaps, therefore Miller would do well to digest some outstanding issues relating to his own firm Channel 4’s behavior in the face of certain UK-connected issues, as well as live up to the saintly reputations that he claims for himself and his colleagues, by taking a few actions as suggested in this column.
When over eight hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children whose names have been documented in Iraq, were killed by indiscriminate bombings and deadly ground attacks by the US and UK forces and the streets of Baghdad flowed with the blood of innocent civilians, Jonathan Miller, Callum Macrae and Channel 4 were deafeningly silent.
Although Miller and Macrae pretend not to know, the rest of the world is today fully aware that the British and US governments collectively concocted the story of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq, invaded that country and converted many cities of that country into terrible killing fields.
In June 2009, the UK Government, very reluctantly, in the face of a huge public outcry, initiated an inquiry by a respected civil servant, Sir John Chilcot. This inquiry was to report on the UK forces’ behavior in the Iraq war. The final round of public hearings for this report concluded in February 2011.
But thereafter, successive governments of the UK, including that of Prime Minister David Cameron have not revealed its contents. However, acting true to form, Miller and Macrae have had no inclination to seek the publication of the Chilcot report and to discover as to who is responsible for the genocide in Iraq. In fact, the Macrae/Miller duo seems to be quite comfortable with the Chilcot report being hushed up in their great city of media freedom, London. As to whether Macrae and Miller are silent because of threats from their government, or other inducements, or simply because nobody paid them to do a story, is anybody’s guess.
While Macrae and Miller display such apathy at home, they are however, deeply concerned and highly charged when it comes to the last stages of the internal conflict in Sri Lanka. In that situation, Channel 4 goes to the extent of introducing an anonymous shadowy person who claims that 40,000 persons were killed during the last stages of the war, to explain “events” in Sri Lanka, and show some unsubstantiated video footage which many experts have claimed as being doctored. Macrae and Miller use these references to provide, what they call “proof” of killings in Sri Lanka. Based on such footage and narrations of unknown persons, the Miller and Macrae duo go on a spree to suggest that various persons in the Sri Lankan hierarchy must be held responsible for crimes which they claim as being committed against humanity.
However, in the face of a direct request by the Sri Lankan authorities to make a complaint to the law enforcement agencies with facts and figures, Channel 4 backs off and ignores such accountability, on their part.
At the same time, everyone other than Macrae and Miller know that there is overwhelming evidence, with live video footage, that the Tamil IDPs got away from the Tamil Tigers towards the Sri Lankan forces, on every occasion they could do so. In order to do so, the IDPs sometimes had to even risk the direct shooting attacks by the deadly Tigers as well. In this regard, it is obvious to any sane and unbiased person, other than of course Macrae and Miller, that 300,000 Tamil IDPs would never have escaped and gone towards the
Sri Lankan forces, if it was the Sri Lankan forces who were responsible for killing their fellow citizens.
In that background, it is abundantly clear that Miller and Macrae are simply not credible journalists, but are fictional story tellers who are obviously carrying out an assignment for the proxies of the former terror group, Tamil Tigers.
In the meantime, there is also growing evidence that terror backed funds belonging to the successor groups of the Tamil Tigers are still abundantly available, and are being lavishly used today to oil certain global propaganda machines. Macrae and Miller are obviously the beneficiaries of that generosity, which in a way, makes them willing accessories to the terrible misdeeds of the Tamil Tigers. In this background, Macrae and Miller too, are indirectly responsible for the terror, violence, mayhem, destruction and death that the Tamil Tigers inflicted upon Sri Lanka, which would go down in world history as one of the most brutal and bloody episodes since civilization.
In that context, the role of David Cameron who had obviously been misguided by some groups who have links to the Tigers, must even at this late stage, be highlighted. Hopefully, Cameron still has time to change his stance, and not go the same way as David Miliband, whose connections to the Tamil Tigers has now been confirmed in certain WikiLeaks reports, which indicated that cash had been paid to Miliband, obviously with the intention of influencing him to take the anti-Sri Lanka position that he took, in the final stages of the conflict.
Miller and Macrae, please note that there are many Sri Lankan journalists who are journalists in the true sense of the word, and who diligently practice the high ethical standards of journalism. Such Sri Lankan journalists certainly do not need an apologist for a terror group to offer them advice. Macrae and Miller should also know that British governments of the past and present have had their hands heavily soaked with the blood of the peoples of many nations. The people of Uva and Wellassa in Sri Lanka in 1818, the Maories of New Zealand, the Aborigines of Australia, and the native Red Indians of the USA could probably relate enough horror stories about the killing fields and genocide that the ancestors of Miller and Macrae inflicted upon them. Perhaps, even at this late stage, the Sri Lankan public should create a fund and pay Miller and Macrae to do films of the various killing fields that Macrae/Miller’s ancestors were responsible for.
If and when Macrae and Miller start doing that, perhaps they could also be persuaded to produce more films on the killing fields of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Vietnam as well. Those would surely be brutal and horrible stories of terrible events, even by Macrae and Miller’s deadly standards.
But then again, they may never be able to do that for fear of reprisals from their own UK government, and the loss of income from their current sources. In that background, the final short advice that Sri Lankan journalists would give Miller and Macrae is to keep their hypocritical comments to themselves, and continue to enjoy their filthy lucre.