28 July 2011 10:03 pm Views - 8951
Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday said that the British Government should take action against Channel-4 for airing what he called ‘irresponsible videos’.
In the fresh documentary broadcast on Wednesday night over Channel-4, two people claiming to be soldiers had alleged that Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had ordered Brigadier Shavendra Silva to execute those who had surrendered.
“Will Shavendra Silva tell everyone what he is doing and what he is going to do?. They quote two people claiming to be soldiers and alleging that the executions were done by us. These are false propaganda”, the Defence Secretary told the Daily Mirror.
“The United Nations Country Representative at that time Neil Burhne never informed us about people who were surrendering to the security forces. How can they say that the United Nations estimated that 40,000 civilians were killed during the last days of the war? The Mullaitivu Government Agent had 300,000 registered civilians and at the end of the war it was 294,000. The rest, most of them LTTE cadres were killed during confrontations with the security forces and some of them managed to flee to Canada and India”, Mr. Rajapaksa said.
“We are protecting the families of Soosai and Thamilselvan. Soosai’s family was caught when they attempted to flee the country. We could have killed them as Soosai was responsible for the death of all the sailors. We are taking care of them now. We took good care of Prabhakaran’s parents as well”, he added.
“More than 11,000 ex combatants who were mass murderers and suicide cadres surrendered to the security forces. We rehabilitated and educated them and released them back to the society”, he said.
“We have evidence that the woman who appeared in the previous video was a former LTTE cadre. She was among the 200,000 civilians who were rescued by the security forces”, Mr. Rajapaksa said. (Supun Dias)