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As many as 40,000 civilians could have been killed during the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war, according to someone with detailed knowledge of the conflict – the former United Nations spokesman in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss. Mr Weiss has resigned from the UN after 14 years and returned home to Australia. He’s now free to speak openly about the situation in Sri Lanka, for the first time and does so candidly and unflinchingly.

He tells reporter Eric Campbell that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians died during the final desperate battles last year, of one of the world’s longest running and bloodiest civil wars.

“About 300,000 civilians, plus the Tamil Tiger forces, were trapped in an area of territory about the size of Central Park in New York,” says Weiss. “They were within range of all the armaments that were being used, small and large, being used to smash the Tamil Tiger lines … the end result was that many thousands lost their lives.”

Gordon Weiss says his information comes from reliable sources who had a presence inside the battle zone, not Tamil civilians or fighters.

"The Sri Lankan government said many things which were either intentionally misleading, or were lies", Weiss tells Campbell. He says that after the war ended, a senior civil servant openly admitted that the authorities had deliberately underestimated the number of trapped civilians “as a ploy to allow the government to get on with its business.”

He acknowledges that the Tamil Tiger forces were also regularly and ruthlessly killing people, to stop them from leaving the battle zones.

Campbell talks to Tamils who were caught trying to flee to Australia by boat. Despite facing criminal charges in Sri Lanka as a result, one of them admits he’s going to try to make the journey again, as soon as he can. He says he can’t live in Sri Lanka any more.

Claims of Tamil persecution are denied by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who tells Campbell asylum seekers are criminals – drug dealers and arms traffickers. The President says the problem will disappear and national unity will prevail now that the Tamil Tigers have been destroyed. Tamils prepared to farewell their home, friends and extended families to make the dangerous journey to seek a better life, are a clear indication rhetoric and reality are a long way apart.

Tamils on fishing boat

Music 

00:00

CAMPBELL: In November last year, 150 Tamils made a daring bid for freedom. They left the southern port of Matara in small fishing boats like this bound for Australia,

00:05

Handcuffed Tamil prisoners

but their journey ended in chains. A Sri Lankan naval patrol spotted the men in Sri Lankan waters. They were taken back to Matara and thrown in jail. Now they’re being taken to court to face charges of illegal migration, but many, like Krisanth Pathmanathan, are already planning their next escape.

00:20

Freeze frame b&w Krisanth with prisoners

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: If there is an opportunity to leave Sri Lanka –

00:50

Prisoners loaded on to bus to court

to flee Sri Lanka by any means – I will not hesitate, even if it poses a risk to my life.

CAMPBELL: This is the Catch 22 for young, ethnic Tamils. They face suspicion of involvement in the civil war, so it’s dangerous to stay in Sri Lanka, but it’s dangerous to leave.

00:56

Relatives outside court

Hundreds of relatives have come to the court, including Pathmanathan’s mother, Nesemelar.

01:20

Nesemelar

NESEMELAR: There is no money here. We have no land, no food, no house… nothing. Just go to Australia… take money.

01:29

Crowd of relatives

CAMPBELL: They tell stories of daily harassment from a government and military dominated by ethnic Sinhalese.

WOMAN: Not safe in Sri Lanka.

01:39

Prisoners into court

Music

01:50

Inside court

CAMPBELL: Inside the court, the proceedings are held in Sinhala, Sri Lanka’s official language. The Tamil prisoners barely understand a word of it and there’s no translation.

02:01

Prisoners outside court back to bus

It’s only when they’re led back to the bus that they realise the judge has granted bail. Their relatives must now scramble to find three thousand dollars to release each man, a sum many simply can’t afford.

02:20

There’s a lot of talk about whether they’re fleeing persecution or are simply economic migrants, but the reality is that for these people it’s one and the same. The war has destroyed their livelihood, their sense of safety, any hope they had of a decent life for their families.

02:35

Man outside court

MAN: The Tamil people cannot stay here. He has to pay money, then go to Australia to save the humans.

CAMPBELL: But Australia says if people come by boat.

02:52

Woman outside court

they will be sent back to Sri Lanka.

WOMAN: Because there is no government help to go by the flight that’s why they went by boat.

03:01

Jail at night

03:13

Nesemelar with Krisanth

CAMPBELL: By nightfall, Nesemelar has found someone to guarantee the bail bond to get her son released. She hugs him for the first time in two months.

03:20

Krisanth

Do you still want to go to Australia?

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: Yes. I like it, I try again… maybe.

CAMPBELL: On a boat?

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: I can’t tell anything, that’s it.

03:29

Women crying

CAMPBELL: But not everyone was celebrating. More than thirty were denied bail on suspicion of being Tamil fighters.

03:40

Battle vision ex FC Tiger story

Tamils have been fighting for a separate homeland since 1983. The Tamil Tigers, or LTTE, was both a liberation army and a terrorist group, using child soldiers and suicide bombers. Many Tamils supported their goals even if they deplored their methods.

03:51

Stills. Fighting, injured

Last year the Sri Lankan army wiped them out in a bloodbath that shocked the world.

GORDON WEISS: A population of some three hundred thousand people, plus the Tamil Tiger forces were caught in an area about the size of Central Park in New York City. They were within range of all the armaments that were being used to smash the Tamil Tiger lines.

04:20

Gordon Weiss in Newcastle

CAMPBELL: Gordon Weiss was the UN spokesman in Sri Lanka for the past three years. He resigned in December to return to Australia and can now speak openly for the first time.

04:48

GORDON WEISS: [Former UN spokesman, Sri Lanka] A lot of civilians died inside the siege zone. I

05:01

Gordon interview. Super:
Gordon Weiss
Former UN spokesman, Sri Lanka

have heard anything between ten and forty thousand people, and that’s from reliable sources who had a presence inside the zone.

05:05

CAMPBELL: So up to forty thousand civilians could have been killed in those last battles?

GORDON WEISS: That’s right.

05:17

CAMPBELL: That’s a shocking figure.

GORDON WEISS: Yes, it’s a terrible figure.

05:21

Stills. Injured

CAMPBELL: What’s more, he says the Sri Lankan Government knowingly misled the international community about what was really going on.

GORDON WEISS: They repeated a number of things that were either intentionally misleading or were lies.

05:25

One senior government civil servant remarked at the end of the war

05:38

Gordon

that the government insistence that the figures were very low was a ploy. It was a ploy to allow the government to get on with its business.

05:43

Fighting. Government forces in jungle

CAMPBELL: That business was finishing off once and for all one of the world’s most ruthless guerrilla movements. The Tigers had little compassion for civilians, using them as human shields.

05:53

GORDON WEISS: We have pretty good testimony that the Tamil Tigers were killing people consistently to stop them from getting out.

06:10

Photos. Injured civilians

Music

06:19

CAMPBELL: Foreign Correspondent has obtained photos taken in the last days of fighting that show how unarmed men, women and children bore the brunt of the attacks.

06:23

Photos. Dead and injured civilians

GORDON WEISS: If one looks at the numbers of civilians who died during this time, I think it speaks for itself that not enough

06:36

Gordon interview

care was shown in order to preserve the lives of the innocent.

CAMPBELL: Do you think senior government officials, even President Rajapaksa himself, should be investigated for war crimes?

06:44

GORDON WEISS: Well, I think as is the case with war crimes,

06:54

Photos. Injured children

it’s a question of the chain of command and where the buck finally stopped.

07:00

President arriving by helicopter/ Cheering crowd

07:05

CAMPBELL: But to most Sinhalese, the army’s victory was a triumph over almost three decades of terrorism

07:11

President waves to crowd

and the man who ordered the campaign has become a national hero. President Mahinda Rajapaksa was comfortably re-elected two weeks ago after taking full credit for defeating the Tiger army of the LTTE. He denies that civilians were targeted or that Tamils are now fleeing from reprisals.

07:22

President on stage

Sir, we’re from Australia television. There is much concern about Tamils coming to Australia in boats. Will that problem be solved?

07:50

PRESIDENT RAJAPAKSA: Yes, don’t worry, I think it is solved… most of the problems… because it was organised by the LTTE because that was the way of… you know… they were drug dealers and traffickers… drugs, arms and smuggling humans.

07:57

Campbell meets with Krisanth and family in Batticaloa

CAMPBELL: But the asylum seekers tell a different story. We caught up with the mother and son we’d met at prison back at their rented home in Batticaloa in the north-east. They had to sell their house and land to raise twenty thousand dollars for the people smugglers. Pathmanathan told me he had taken the boat to avoid being killed.

08:20

Krisanth

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: Fearing for my life I wanted to go somewhere to live happily. No-one in my family could get work. I wanted to go so I could look after the family.

08:48

Photo of father

CAMPBELL: In 1992 as the civil war waged around them, his father was abducted and murdered. Four years ago, his uncle disappeared.

09:00

Krisanth at photocopy shop

Last year while running a small photocopying business, he says anonymous phone callers told him he would be next.

09:14

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: When I was in that shop I received threats. I’d already lost my father.

09:22

Krisanth

My uncle also disappeared. I didn’t want this to happen to me as well.

09:30

Woman cooking

09:38

Family eating

CAMPBELL: The shop provides barely enough income for the family to eat. As the only breadwinner, he felt a responsibility to try to find work in Australia. Despite the family’s history of persecution, he saw no point in applying for a visa from the Australian High Commission.

09:45

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: My elder brother applied but was rejected. He went to Colombo for an interview, and a lot of money was spent. Therefore we were a bit sceptical and did not reapply. He also applied to the Swiss Embassy but that was rejected too.

10:03

Krisanth

After all this we gave up.

10:22

Krisanth, mother and Campbell in garden

CAMPBELL: There have been a lot of changes to the immigration law in Australia and a lot of debate in our Parliament about migration, were you aware of any of this?

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: Yes.

10:25

Not much, but to some extent. I’d heard other people talking about it.

10:38

CAMPBELL: Did that influence your decision to go to Australia?

10:43

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: Yes. It would make it easier because of the problems we have here. The only way to be granted the appropriate status for our problems was to reach Australia… we just wanted to reach Australia.

10:46

Boats going out to sea

We departed believing that our problems would be solved. We fully believed it.

11:02

Music

11:11

CAMPBELL: They waited ten days for a promised ship to pick them up. It never came. Instead, the navy found them.

11:16

Navy boat approaches fishing boat

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: When they surrounded us, two people who were navigating the boat were beaten up by the navy.

11:29

Krisanth

They beat them up and put them in their boat. They put them in prison after interrogating them for one day in the navy camp.

11:39

Exterior. Prison

CAMPBELL: Even in prison, they were second-class citizens. He claims they were crammed into the worst cells and were beaten and bullied by Sinhalese prisoners.

11:53

Prisoners to bus

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: When we got our meals they said that we were Australians. They would say, you Australians stand behind – others can stand in the front. We’d be given our meals last. When they served us, the food was almost gone. We were over 100, but there was only food for 20.

12:03

Krisanth playing cricket with friends

CAMPBELL: Since his release on bail, he’s been getting back to his one passion, cricket. This is the one time he and his friends can forget their troubles, but even here, they’re nervous about the continuing presence of police and soldiers.

12:23

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: I’m 24 years old and I’ve never felt that we have rights. Now today if we go to a ground to play cricket we can’t stay out after 5 or 5.30 pm. Even now it is scary.

12:45

CAMPBELL: Cricket was once one of the few institutions that bound the country together. Now these Tamils no longer see Sri Lanka as their country.

13:04

So who would you rather play for? Australia or Sri Lanka?

13:13

Campbell with cricketers

MAN: Australia and South Africa.

CAMPBELL: You don’t support Sri Lanka?

MAN: I can’t support Sri Lanka.

13:17

Krisanth and mother at Hindu temple

13:23

CAMPBELL: Tamils like the Pathmanathans aren’t just separated from their Sinhalese neighbours by race and language, but also religion. Their ancestors migrated from southern India and they’ve maintained their Hindu beliefs.

13:32

Moon Festival celebrations

13:48

The Sinhalese who make up three quarters of the population are overwhelmingly Buddhist. In many societies this wouldn’t be a problem, but in Sri Lanka Buddhist faith goes hand in hand with Sinhalese identity and nationalism.

13:59

GORDON WEISS: There’s a long history of political Buddhism in Sri Lanka. The extreme Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka holds that Sri Lanka has always been dominated by the Sinhalese and by the Buddhists you know for as long as recorded history.

14:22

Gordon interview. Super:
Gordon Weiss
Former UN spokesman, Sri Lanka

They exclude totally the claims of the Tamils or the Muslims or any other segment of society to any sort of role in government which would threaten, as they see it, the Sinhalese hegemony there.

14:44

Monks on podium at Rajapaksa rally

CAMPBELL: At any public event, President Rajapaksa is shadowed by senior monks. Many urged him publicly to crush the Hindu Tigers.

GORDON WEISS: The Rajapaksa administration is seen as being closely tied to Sinhalese nationalism and to Buddhism

15:01

Gordon

and I don’t think that the administration feels inclined to deliver any serious reconciliation for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, but we’ll have to wait and see.

15:26

Performance for president

15:35

CAMPBELL: So far the President’s rule has seen increased authoritarianism, not just against Tamils, but against his Sinhalese critics, too.

15:41

Armed guard at newspaper office

An armed guard is now an essential companion for any independent newspaper.

16:03

Frederica in office

Frederica Jansz is editor of The Sunday Leader, one of the few newspapers still critical of the President. It’s a dangerous business. She was promoted last year after her predecessor, Lasantha Wickrematunge was murdered.

FREDERICA JANSZ: I hold the current government, the Rajapaksa government, completely responsible.

16:09

Frederica interview. Super:
Frederica Jansz
Editor, The Sunday Leader

Whether they initiated the attack I don’t know. We have no proof. Whether they killed Lasantha I don’t know. Again, we have no proof. However, the fact that Lasantha’s investigation has gone nowhere is proof, I believe, that his killers are close, or are known to the highest authority in this land.

16:32

Photos. Lasantha’s funeral

CAMPBELL: Wickrematunge was only one of dozens of journalists to be killed, beaten or abducted since Rajapaksa came to power. Not a single case has been solved.

FREDERICA JANSZ: We have continued to be threatened and harassed. We have continued to receive death threats,

16:51

Frederica interview

both myself and my news editor and editor of investigations desk, all women.

17:14

Photos. Lasantha’s funeral

The reality is that there is very little press freedom practiced in this country. Most of the press has been

17:19

Frederica

cowed into submission. They’re too afraid to be free anymore or to write without any kind of self-censorship.

17:28

Military parade

17:35

CAMPBELL: The President’s unbridled power was on display at Sri Lanka’s annual celebration of independence, held days just after his re-election.

17:42

Army in jeeps

But in recent months more evidence has emerged of army atrocities in last year’s offensive.

17:52

Mobile phone footage of execution

This mobile phone footage, smuggled out of the country, shows Sinhalese soldiers executing prisoners. The government simply dismissed it as a fabrication, even after a UN investigation authenticated the video.

18:02

GORDON WEISS: The government reacted in its typical fashion with hysterical denunciations. This is what happens in war. It’s not a surprise,

18:22

Gordon

but it was in line with the very consistent government denials that anything was ever wrong inside the war zone.

18:33

Performance for president

18:44

CAMPBELL: Thanks to the support of countries like China, Rajapaksa has escaped censure from the United Nations. The Security Council ignored reports from its own officials of massive civilian casualties. The UN Human Rights Council even praised Sri Lanka’s actions.

GORDON WEISS: Personally I think that was a disgrace, especially when it stacked up alongside the 12 or 13 resolutions condemning the Israeli invasion of Gaza that was going on at the same time.

18:51

Fireworks. Fonseksa on bulletproof podium.

CAMPBELL: One man who could tell all is the former army chief, General Sarath Fonseksa, who commanded the offensive. He stood against the President in the last month’s election after he was demoted to a ceremonial position. On February 8^th, the general offered to give evidence to any war crimes inquiry. Within hours he was arrested and charged with unspecified military offences.

19:32

Internment camps

Civilians who survived the offensive have continued to suffer. Up to 290,000 people were interned in camps so the government could search for Tamil fighters.

20:02

GORDON WEISS: The first month that people were in those camps the conditions were truly terrible. When it was really critical

20:15

Gordon interview

to reach people, to ensure that unnecessary numbers of people weren’t dying as result of lack of care, there was not sufficient access to those camps.

20:23

Internment camp

CAMPBELL: Journalists have not been allowed to investigate conditions, but on election day we were allowed a brief visit to one of the most developed camps. Eights months on, tarpaulins and disease ridden tents have been replaced by semi-permanent dwellings.

20:32

Under international pressure the government had agreed to empty the camps by now, but tens of thousands of people remain, simply because they have nowhere else to go. Either the military has sealed off their villages, or their homes have been destroyed.

20:54

Tamils in Colombo

Music

21:11

CAMPBELL: For many Tamils, the events of the past year have destroyed any reason for staying in Sri Lanka. Pathmanathan goes back to court later this month to face fines or further jail, but when it’s over, he plans to leave. Police have already branded him a traitor.

20:21

KRISANTH PATHMANATHAN: They said, “No matter what you say, you’re terrorists. We will prove this, if not now then at a later stage.” I’ve never been a Tamil Tiger.

21:47

Krisanth

Later they said, “Your father and your uncle died because you all supported the group. That’s why we killed them, one after the other. They both died because they supported the group in one way or another.” I said, “They never provided any support. That was our situation.” They also accused me of treason – the simple fact that I’d left the country amounted to treason.

21:59

Shots of sea

They looked at me as a traitor. They said, “As long as you are here you’re a traitor.”

22:24

Sri Lankan flag/ Fishing boats

Music

22:34

CAMPBELL: Sri Lanka and Australia are relying on their navies to stop the boats. Their success will determine how many reach Australia. But one thing is sure – unless the situation for Tamils inside Sri Lanka changes, the boats will keep on coming.

22:44

Reporter : Eric Campbell

Camera:  David Leland

Editor:  Nick Brenner

Research: Ian Altschwager

23:01

23:06