Did the Sri Lankan Army kill LTTE chief V. Prabakaran's son, Balachandran, in cold blood on May 18, 2009, around the same time that Sri Lanka won the last Eelam War?
This is the main question raised in a new Channel 4 video, to be aired on Wednesday.
Writing in United Kingdom's Independent newspaper Callum Macrae, the maker of Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, narrates the scene: “A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran, and he is the son of the LTTE leader, Vellupillai Prabakaran. He has been executed in cold blood.” Mr. Macrae says the footage “seems to have been shot [as] a grotesque trophy video by Sri Lankan forces.”
The video is a sequel to the earlier Channel 4 film, The Killing Fields . In that too, Channel 4 showed executions of LTTE cadre.
Asked about the new video, and specifically about the execution of Balachandran, Sri Lankan President's spokesperson and International Media Advisor Bandula Jayasekara said he had not seen the video.
LTTE rump across the world were busy preparing such videos to embarrass and bring disrepute to Sri Lanka, he said and added that their bluff will be called, just as Sri Lanka had frame-by-frame rebutted the first Channel 4 video.
“We can produce thousands of videos where LTTE has killed children, infants and women. We have proof of them banging heads of children against walls and killing them. Sri Lankan forces do not indulge in these things. We conducted a humanitarian operation,” he said.
