INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA
Censorship, Disinformation & Murder of Journalists

The Killing of Pirapaharan!
Tamil Voice International Editorial, 1 June 1990

" The Killing of Pirapaharan! - New Delhi's RAW & the Media... What do Karuna, Ram's Hindu, Lanka Truth, Asian Tribune, B.Raman, & Chandrika Kumaratunga have in common? - a RAW commitment to truth?"

"In India, (there is) the widespread suspicion that RAW has been planting "stories" with the help of obliging editors and reporters in order to wean away popular sympathy from the Eelam Tamil cause. Where they failed to suppress Eelam Tamil nationalism through cloak and dagger methods on Eelam Tamil soil, they now resort to a continuous campaign of disinformation through the Indian media.

The most audacious attempt at disinformation was of course the widely circulated story of the killing of Prabaharan last year. One Tamil daily in Madras (the Dinamalar) even ran a 2-page report giving a blow-by-blow account of how Prabaharan's deputy Mahendrarajah (Mahathaya) had killed his leader in a shoot-out, how the LTTE leaders ashes were being brought to Jaffna, giving specific names of little-known locations in Vavuniya jungles.

Such knowledge of place names in the north could not have been available to that particular newspaper unless they were  furnished by an outside agency which had direct knowledge of the northern topography. But such is the power of the printed word that there are still weak-minded readers in India who are unable to disbelieve that fabricated concoction despite all evidence to the contrary. One does not have to like Mr Prabaharan in order to feel angry over being cheated by false information. But it is the fallibility of the human mind that it believes what it likes to believe. "