CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Simon Gardner has done his reporting again!!

Sisira Pereira, Panadura

The Reuters alertnet published a report on 20th October titled “INTERVIEW-Sri Lanka can't crush Tigers, says terror expert”.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL82479.htm

This report is based on a “sideline interview” Gardner has reportedly had with Dr. Gerard Chaliand, who had earlier spoken at the International counter-terrorism conference held in Colombo and the report carries a significant comment reportedly made by Dr. Chaliand on the following lines.

"No way, you can't crush the Tigers. Technically speaking they are the most efficient movement at present in the world. Before them, I've seen two others which were outstanding. The Vietnamese, and the EPLF from Eritrea -- they won. (The Tigers) are the third one. You don't crush those guys with the Sri Lankan army, which by the way is not the best in the world."

Now this report by Mr. Gardner is worth consideration due to a few reasons. On one hand, Dr. Chaliand’s words (as reported by Gardner) clearly voice the superiority of the LTTE military strength as against the military might of the Sri Lankan state in the back of all the recent victories notched up by the Sri Lankan defense forces against the LTTE terrorists making them abandon most of the captured land in the East and in parts of the North. The reported comments of Dr. Chaliand come in the backdrop of the LTTE’s worst debacles in both the battlefront and its international smuggling and propaganda work in the history of the Sri Lankan conflict. In this sense, it is very important to see if a counter terrorist expert of the caliber of Dr. Chaliand did actually made these negative comments privately to Gardner on the “sidelines” of the recently concluded conference, as reported by Mr. Gardner.

Why?

It is simply because that Mr. Gardner’s style of reporting has not tried in anyway in the past to hide its subjectivity towards the LTTE. Once when the LTTE failed to inflict some tangible damage within the city limits of Colombo for a long time, he wrote a famous line in one of his reports as follows.

“it is high time that the LTTE did something in Colombo for parity”

Then when the LTTE’s inability in the battlefront to counter the successful Sri Lankan military thrust in the East continued, blowing to peices the LTTE morale, convincing the world that the LTTE’s supposed invincibility was a mere myth and propaganda, he started interviewing the relatives of dead LTTE suicide terrorists in Wanni to write about the LTTE songs and folklore and tales of garlanding of dead terrorists, bestowing a venerable martyr’s image to the ruthless terrorists.

And this time, when the counter terrorism conference held in Colombo unanimously voiced the opinion of some of the best terrorist experts in the world that would draw the attention of the world community plagued by terrorism to its true nature, and which would further doom the propaganda image of the LTTE terrorists depicting them as nothing but pure blood thirsty terrorists, Simon Gardner’s pen may have started writing again. This time he chose to interview on the “sidelines” and report a terrorist expert who spoke at the Colombo conference.

Since the Reuters Alertnet report by Simon Gardner does not carry the full interview letter to letter, it is hard to fathom whether Dr. Chaliand actually said what Gardner says he did or it is just that Gardner quoted parts of the interview he would have liked most or “twisted” Chaliand’s words and quoted him here and there to distort the integrity of the interview to suit his (Gardner’s) personal longings.

Since I did not have the chance of listening to Dr. Chaliand when he made the speech at the conference, it is hard for me to know if he could have expressed the same comments there that Gardner says he did to him in private, or whether Dr. Chaliand had reserved his “best” thoughts to be told to Mr. Gardner until the aftermath of the Conference.

Even if the latter might be the case, having noticed Simon Gardner’s continued keen interest to uplift the image of the dying LTTE through his reporting, I seriously doubt that he will ever publish the full interview that he claims to have had with Dr. Chaliand on the “sidelines” of the Colombo conference, letter to letter in print with no deleting and scrapping,.

I challenge him to do so, if he may. Either he or I will be proven wrong if he does.

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