Thread: Sri Lanka : Isaipriya

Sri Lanka: Tamil family’s distress over footage of daughter
Saturday 09 Nov 2013

The family of a young Sri Lankan Tamil separatist woman killed by government forces four years ago had no idea that she had been captured alive until Channel 4 News broadcast the pictures last week. Our Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Jonathan Miller, met them.

Three women are sitting on a bench. Two of them are staring into space, their demeanour: deadly serious and balefully sad. The other, older, her lined face wet with tears, sits there, sobbing. More than four years on from her violent death, they are mourning a daughter and a sister. A young woman, called Isaipriya, who was born the year Sri Lanka’s civil war began and died the very day it ended.

“I really cannot watch the video,” says Vethavanjini, her mother. “I cannot bear to see her. I want to remember my daughter as she was.” We told her she didn’t have to.

Vethavanjini leaves the room as her other two daughters gaze glumly at the grainy footage. I need them to positively identify their sister. They’re the last pictures of Isaipriya alive, before her alleged sexual assault and murder on Sri Lanka’s northeastern coast some time on Monday, 18th May 2009, at the hands of government forces.

“Yes,” they say. “That’s definitely her.” Their eyes well up with tears. “And that is her voice.”

The three women – the two surviving sisters and their mother – have claimed asylum in the United Kingdom, having recently been smuggled into Britain. The mother and one daughter arrived here just last week.

The mobile phone footage depicts the capture by government forces of Isaipriya – 27-year-old sweetheart pin-up of Sri Lanka’s Tamil separatists and newscaster on Tamil Tiger TV. Sangeetha, the youngest of the sisters, was also with the Tamil Tigers, working in their administrative unit. All four women had been trapped on a tiny stretch of beach along with 100,000 civilians and the rump of the rebel army under relentless shellfire as government forces closed in.

The Tamil Tigers – also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – were a brutal separatist army which recruited child soldiers, used suicide bombers, targeted civilians and were proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Britain. Isaipriya was a nom de guerre. Her real name was Shoba. She worked in the Tigers’ propaganda wing. As a well-known personality and singer, she was reportedly much-loved in her homeland.

In the “new” video, obtained by the director of the feature documentary “No Fire Zone,” Isaipriya is sitting in a swamp. She is only partly clothed. She looks dazed and confused. There’s no clue as to how on earth she got there and why she’s all alone. Some speculate that she’d been trying to escape the bloody final showdown. She’s helped to her feet and looks completely uninjured. This is an important observation, because she was not to remain so for long.

The soldiers think she’s the Tamil rebel leader’s daughter. She’s not, she says. They find a length of white cloth to wrap around her. It’s the same cloth that shrouds her in a photograph Channel 4 News later obtained from a Sri Lankan soldier. In his photograph, dated later that same day, 18th May, Isaipriya is dead. Her hands are tied behind her back.

It’s the same cloth that in another video is shown pulled up to reveal her naked body among a tangle of other dead Tamil women. Lawyers and forensic pathologists who have examined this footage say there’s no doubt she – and the others – have been sexually assaulted.

There’s also now a long and jagged cut across her face. That grim footage comprises part of the notorious ‘executions video’ which shows the shooting dead of naked, bound and blindfolded Tamil prisoners in “mopping up operations” by Sri Lankan soldiers.

You don’t need much of an imagination to figure out what’s happened. And that’s what’s caused such pain to Isaipriya’s mother and two sisters. Until Channel 4 News broadcast the pictures of Isaipriya last week, her family had had no idea that Isaipriya had actually been captured alive.



Even though Sri Lankan forces are accused of killing at least 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of the 27-year-long war, the death of Isaipriya, a separatist militant, is important because it appears to have been an execution, and, as such, a violation of the laws of war.

The Sri Lankan government was swift to dismiss the latest video as “fake.” A military spokesman told the BBC it was “a complete fabrication,” and claimed that none of the 12,000 Tamil Tiger combatants who surrendered or were captured had been killed.

The regime has similarly dismissed as fake past video evidence broadcast by Channel 4 News. This includes the executions video, which has been independently authenticated by experts commissioned by the UN.

The new video has also been verified by independent experts who concluded that the images of Isaipriya in the swamp had not been subject to any digital manipulation. Isaipriya’s positive identification by two members of her family serves to reinforce the evidence of a war crime.

After the end of the war, the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence website claimed Lt. Col. Isaipriya had been killed in combat by the army’s 53 Division, along with 30 other identified LTTE leaders, on 18th May 2009. Now we know that wasn’t true. Isaipriya was not killed in combat.

The Commander of 53 Division was Major General Kamal Gunaratne who was later rewarded with his appointment as Commander of Security Forces Headquarters in part of the now-occupied Tamil north of the island, based in Vavuniya. He was promoted to full General.

much since the war ended, but by July 2009 he had 652 Facebook “Likes”.

Here, he addresses his “fans,” as he calls them, and tells them about the “warriors” who had been under his command.

As the General Officer Commanding of forces who, by their own admission, killed Isaipriya, international criminal lawyers say Maj-Gen Gunaratne would likely bear command responsibility for her apparent murder.

Isaipriya’s mother, Vethavanjini, and her surviving sisters Dharmini and Sangeetha, do not deny Isaipriya’s role in the insurgency. Sangeetha had been the last of them to see Isaipriya alive. It was 7.30pm, she said, two nights before Isaipriya was captured and killed. Sangeetha had just been seriously wounded when a government artillery shell exploded next to her in the area the regime called the “No Fire Zone”.

“I asked her to accompany me, because I had been so badly injured,” Sangeetha told me. But, fearing the imminent advance of government forces, Isaipriya told Sangeetha to stay with their mother instead. “She left me, saying she was scared of the army.” Within hours, the army had indeed over-run the place in which the injured Sangeetha lay. Isaipriya’s fear of the Sri Lankan army would shortly be realised.

As she related her account, Sangeetha started weeping. Dharmini, her eldest sister, took over. “She did not come because she was so scared of the army, but now I see her on the news entirely in the hands of the army…”

Dharmini’s voice tailed off and all three women broke down in tears again. Four-and-a-half years on, and their experience is raw. What for lawyers is powerful evidence of a possible war crime is to them another painful chapter in a prolonged bereavement which is clearly proving hard to bear.

blogs.channel4.com

Published on 1 Nov 2013
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http://www.channel4.com/news/fate-of-...

Fate of Tamil propagandist: new Sri Lanka evidence - video

New video showing the fate of a Tamil propagandist & TV presenter is a stark reminder of Sri Lankan government cruelty. Until now they insisted Is Aipriya died in combat. Warning: distressing images.

Channel 4 News can name a woman journalist as one of the victims in the Sri Lanka execution video along with damning new details of the date and location where the video was filmed.

After extensive investigations Channel 4 News can reveal that one of the victims was a high profile member of the Tamil Tigers press and communications wing.

Shoba - whose nom de guerre was Isaipriya - was aged 27 when she died, and was identified by a friend speaking on condition of anonymity.

The distressing execution video footage, screened by Channel 4 News last week and originating in Sri Lanka, shows a number of incidents of soldiers in uniform shooting in the head people who appear to be unarmed -- described as "cold-blooded killing" by an international expert. The video also shows the bodies of other men and women lying on the ground.

Leading war crimes lawyer Julian Knowles, from Matrix Chambers, told Channel 4 News the video was "astonishing evidence" of a type he had only seen "a handful of times" showing the mass killing of civilians or unarmed combatants, a serious war crime.

The video was shot towards the end of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war, which ended in 2009, between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) group, known as the Tamil Tigers.

Read more from war crimes lawyer Julian Knowles on the 'astonishing evidence' of the Sri Lanka video
Channel 4 News can now reveal that one of the victims was a high profile member of the Tamil Tigers -- but her role was as a journalist rather than a direct fighter as a result of a heart condition.

Identity of the victim

One of the women shown in the video has been identified by a close colleague and friend, speaking to Channel 4 News, as the Tamil journalist, Isaipriya (pictured above).

Isaipriya was part of the Tamil Tigers, her former colleague told us. She identified that Isaipriya's body appears in the "war crimes" video, partially covered by a sheet, with cuts to the face.

"Isaipriya never carried a gun and her physical condition did not permit her to go to the battlefield."

Friend and colleague of Isaipriya

She said: "Isaipriya joined the LTTE. Because of her physical condition, she was deployed to the media unit. She was in the production team. She did some acting. She was a TV presenter. She was a dancer.

"She never carried a gun and her physical condition did not permit her to go to the battlefield. She always had either a camera, a pen or a notepad."

Evidence of who may be responsible

While Isaipriya's body is seen in a video which includes footage of executions, it is unclear how she died. The identities of the soldiers - who look directly at the camera at times in the video - are also unclear from the video, although the fact that they speak Sinhalese suggests they are government troops rather than Tamil fighters.

However, it has emerged that the date of her death and the soldiers who killed her are both listed on the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence website, fixing the date of the video more accurately and indicating which troops were active at that time.

Sri Lanka infographic

The list says she was killed, along with 31 other LTTE leaders, on 18 May 2009 by 53 Division troops, an "offensive" attack force of the Sri Lanka Army commanded by Major General Kamal Gunaratne.

The Sri Lanka High Commission told Channel 4 News: "The High Commission of Sri Lanka wishes to reiterate that 'Lt. Col. Issei Piriya' was engaged in a hostile operation against the Sri Lanka Security Forces when she met her end.

"Sri Lanka has established the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission the mandate of which is to look into matters relating to the conflict from 2002 to 2009.

"The testimony being presented to the Commission by people from all walks of life, especially from the North and from the East is proof of their confidence, in the workings of the Commission.

"Therefore, it is important that we allow this domestic mechanism to achieve its objectives."

Photographs separately obtained by Channel 4 News also appear to suggest that Isaipriya was captured by soldiers on 18 May 2009

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