‘Sri Lankan Tamil journalist was captured, killed’

A video clip from No Fire Zone , a Channel 4 documentary to be released on November 3, has put the spotlight on Sri Lanka yet again, weeks before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

According to a report on the website of the British television channel, the young woman shown in the footage as being captured by men in army fatigue, and later lying unconscious or dead with a gash across her face is Isaipriya, a newsreader for LTTE’s television channel who, the Sri Lankan government reportedly maintained, had died in combat.

When contacted, Sri Lankan army spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya termed the video clip a “completely false creation by Channel 4”. Commenting on the significance of the new footage, with Callum Macrae, director of the feature documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields observed in the video: “Taken along with all the other evidences of executions and mistreatment of prisoners at the end of the [Sri Lankan civil] war, it suggests something systematic.”

In February 2013, Channel 4 released photographs of Balachandran Prabakaran, the 12-year-old son of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabakaran before and after he was reportedly shot dead. These images sparked fierce criticism on the Sri Lankan army over its alleged war crimes.