NEW YORK, December 6, 2011 — Documentary filmmaker CallumMacrae, Malinda Seneviratne, Editor-in-Chief of Sri Lanka's TheNation, and Bob Templer of the International Crisis Group present and assess both the Sri Lankan government and international community's perspectives on that country's decades-long sectarian conflict. Tunku Varadarajan, editor of Newsweek International, moderates the discussion. (1 hr., 16 min.)

http://vimeo.com/33391688

http://asiasociety.o...il-war-complete

Edited December 12, 201114 yr by akootha

December 8, 2011

Dear Friends,

A couple of our associates attended a gathering at the Asia Society in Manhattan last December 6. At this gathering there were about 100 attendees, mostly south Asians with a handful of others. The meeting was called to screen and discussed two videos: “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields,” which gives a clear picture of Sri Lankan government atrocities, and “Lies Agreed Upon,” which is intended to be a GOSL rebuttal of the first video.

After the movies there was a panel discussion followed by Q& A. During the panel discussion Bob Templer of the International Crisis Group (ICG) said that based on satellite imagery all of them estimated that 80,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the closing week of the civil war, not the 40,000 that the UN and others have been citing. He explained that all of them finally went along with the smaller figure because it was conservative and safe.

Then, people mixed and got to talk to each other and to the panel members. One of the panel members was Callum Macrae who is the director of “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.” Our associates got to talk to him. They thanked him for his good work, and he was pleased to see that our friends were passing out DVDs of “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.” He looked at the art work on the front of the DVD and asked for one for himself, which our guys very happily gave him.

The other members of the panel were Malinda Seneviratne (Editor of the Sri Lankan newspaper The Nation); Bob Templer (International Crisis Group’s program director for Asia); and Tunku Varadarajan (Editor, Newsweek International and moderator of the panel).

When we asked them if there was anyway that they could foresee of saving the Tamils in Sri Lanka, one of them replied “Only autonomy.” Our associates thanked them for their work in exposing ethnic atrocities all over the world, and told them that they hoped that exposing the ones who commit these atrocities will be a step toward keeping them from happening again. All of them agreed.

Our friends distributed about 50 DVDs of “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.”

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Tamils for Obama