United Nations satelite images show bomb craters throughout the "No Fire Zone"

The following report contains United Nations satellite images of the "No Fire Zone" taken several days ago which clearly show the extent of bomb damage to the densely populated civilian areas. While viewing the images, note the fact that practically no permanent building has a roof, but the walls remain intact - a clear indication that the building was bombed.

Already a large amount of evidence has been gathered to be used against Sri Lankan government officials for war crimes against civilians. The complete report is available here in pdf format:

http://www.innercitypress.com/UNOSAT19April09.pdf

[Note: The file was originally on the United Nations website, but has since been password protected so the public cannot see the report. Thankfully Inner City Press had downloaded it and posted it on their website before the U.N. tried to hide the report.]

Rumors the Sri Lankan military used chemical weapons

There have been rumors going around that the Sri Lankan military used chemical weapons yesterday in its battle against the LTTE. We do not have proof one way or the other, but two odd points cast doubts on the government. For the first time ever, pictures of the dead LTTE bodies have unusual burn wounds and skin peeling off in many places. In the past the bodies have never had such wounds. Secondly, the Sri Lankan military has blurred out parts of the dead fighters' bodies, most commonly the face (but many faces are also left unblured, so they are not trying to hide the person's identity). There are no signs of blood in the blured out area, so the only logical conclusion is that they want to hide the oddly peeled and burnt skin, which would be most visible on the exposed face. Below are a few examples of these wounds:

In the photo above, why is his chest blurred out? There is no sign of a bullet wound, but you can see a rash or burn around his neck and the blurred area, plus his skin is peeling off on many places.

Why did the Sri Lankan government blur out the faces in the top row, but not the faces below:

What are they trying to hide by blurring out the faces? There are no signs of bullet wounds there, and they obviously aren't hiding their identity, because other faces are being shown. It is possible they are trying to cover up signs of peeling and burnt skin, which would be most visible on the exposed faces.

Defence.lk finally assembles gun "seized in combat"

Defence.lk finally managed to assemble the anti aircraft gun they claimed to have captured "while it was being fired in combat". In their latest picture, they attached the gun barrels, so that it looks like a functioning weapon instead of an unassembled weapon they brought out of a storage room.

Why would they have first shown the weapon unassembled if it was actually captured from the LTTE in combat. Obviously the LTTE would have been using it assembled. It would have been impossible to have been firing if it was unassembled as originally shown:

Originally, when they "seized" it in "combat" it had no gun barrels. Then a couple days later the army adds the gun barrels because many people, not only here, but even on Sinhala forums, had pointed out it was unassembled.

What does this look like? The army brought the weapon out of a storage room for a shocking photo shoot, but since it isn't a common weapon the soldiers forgot it was missing the gun barrels. After it was pointed out, they quickly added the gun barrels. From where? Obviously they had the gun barrels in their storage room from where they brought out the gun.

It is highly unlikely that the LTTE had left the gun barrels unassembled on the front lines. What the government wants us to believe is that the Sri Lankan military first recovered the main gun during direct combat, braving live enemy fire from the gun even though it was unassembled, and then subsequently recovered the gun barrels two days later.

BBC fooled by false Sri Lankan military story

Yesterday the BBC News had been fooled to publish a story provided by the Sri Lankan government that was clearly false. The story originated on the website Defence.lk, which is the Sri Lankan government's official military website. On this website, the government reported the following (http://defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20090404_02):

"According to the defence sources, troops engaged in mop up operations in the Anandapuram area seized the [artillery] weapon that was being fired by the terrorists on direct mode at the advancing soldiers. The soldiers have braved the raging artillery fire and captured the gun after attacking its operators. Also, this is said to be the first occasion where troops have seized an LTTE artillery gun in direct combat."

The BBC reproduced this information without caring to verify the facts of the story. For reasons that will become apparent, Defence.lk chose not to include any photographs of the captured artillery gun. But today the website Army.lk included the following photograph, which completely contradicts the story provided by the government:

The picture shows parts of an unassembled anti-aircraft gun, which they claimed was an artillery gun. Now compare that with the official government's story from Defence.lk, which was subsequently published by the BBC:

"According to the defence sources, troops engaged in mop up operations in the Anandapuram area seized the [artillery] weapon that was being fired by the terrorists on direct mode at the advancing soldiers. The soldiers have braved the raging artillery fire and captured the gun after attacking its operators. Also, this is said to be the first occasion where troops have seized an LTTE artillery gun in direct combat."

Please explain how these parts of an unassembled anti-aircraft gun were being fired by the LTTE? The Sri Lankan government's creative writers had even added fine details to the made up account, like that the LTTE were firing an "artillery gun" directly at zero degrees from short range. But when we see the pictures, there isn't even a complete gun, what to speak of an artillery gun! How exactly did the soldiers "brave the raging artillery fire" of a gun that is unassembled and incomplete? This is another case of the government hiring creative writers to provide fake stories to the media. It is unfortunate that a respectable news source like BBC could have fallen for these false accounts and published them without proper verification of facts.

The Sri Lankan government's website, Defence.lk, has a long history of publishing false stories made from staged and faked photographs. We hope the BBC will take this fact into consideration in the future and avoid reproducing anything this website says without first verifying it thoroughly. The good name of the BBC, as one of the finest media sources in the world, deserves to remain clean and above the dirt of the Sri Lankan government's false media reports.

Mystery of the Matching Machine Guns

Today the Sri Lankan government published an article on their official website (Defence.lk) titled "Army annihilates terror pocket in Anandapuram" wherein they claim to have killed a large number of LTTE fighters and recovered 50 T-56 rifles. There are a few obvious problems about the story that I would like to point out here. The first problem, which is a recurring theme in nearly all of the governments claims, is that they haven't shown any bodies of dead LTTE fighters. They claim to have recovered 31 bodies of LTTE fighters but instead they choose to show this photograph that highlights their day's victory:

We realize an old rusted container is a big accomplishment to highlight, but when they claim to have recovered 31 bodies of LTTE fighters, don't you think that would be more important to show? But we shouldn't criticize them too much, because that isn't all they showed. There was also this:

In case you can't figure out what it is, I will help you out. That's half a boat they recovered. It's basically as shocking and amazing as a full boat, but just divide that by two. Maybe they should have renamed their article to "Army annihilates half a boat and old rusted container in Anandapuram". That would have made it a little more clear for the readers, and would have removed any confusion.

But let us move on to the real point of this article, that is the picture of guns they claimed to have recovered. We already mentioned that they failed to show any pictures of dead LTTE fighters, even though they claimed to have recovered 31 bodies, but at least they showed us the picture of the guns they recovered, right? There is just one problem with the picture. They claimed to have recovered 50 T-56 rifles, but the picture shows over 90 T-56 rifles (you can click the photo for a bigger version):

In fact, there are more than 50 T-56 rifles in the first two rows alone. It was just a few days ago that we caught Army.lk posting a fake photograph of "captured weapons" that had actually been taken a year before. Unfortunately, in this case, the Defence.lk editors were smart enough to erase the exif data that shows the date a picture was taken, so we cannot know when this photo was actually taken, but we can be certain it is a fake because the number of rifles doesn't even come close to matching the story.

There is one more dead give away that shows this photograph is a fake, and I am sure the editors are too stupid to have figured this out. Just look at the model of gun that has been recovered. There are two types of T-56 rifles used by the LTTE. The most common rifle used is the regular T-56 (top of following photo), which has a wooden shoulder support, and the other version is the T-56-1 (bottom of following photo), which has a collapsable shoulder support:

Up till now whenever the security forces have recovered large numbers of T-56 rifles in battles, the majority have been regular T-56 rifles, with a smaller mix of T-56-1 rifles included. But in today's photograph, every single rifle is a T-56-1 model, which is almost impossible based on past experience. How can there be nearly 100 T-56-1 rifles without a single regular T-56 rifle included? The only way that would happen is if the guns were brought out of a storage room - not collected from a battlefield. In the Sri Lankan army's storage rooms they divide the guns based on model. When a soldier was sent to bring guns for this photograph, he foolishly took all the guns from a single pile, which contained the rarer T-56-1 rifles. So rather than being a mix of various guns (as would occur in a real battle), the entire collection of guns were identical - something that is statistically impossible in a real battle.

To give you an idea of what recovered guns should look like, here are several photographs from the government following large battles. Note the mix of guns, with most being regular T-56 rifles with wooden shoulder supports (you can click on the pictures for larger versions):

In literally every single case most of the recovered guns are regular T-56 rifles, but in today's photograph, every single gun is a T-56-1 model, nearly 100 of them. Please look at the original photograph again (see the enlarged version by clicking on the photo, it really highlights this point):

Such an occurence is statistically impossible, and the only way they could have 100 T-56-1 rifles together like this is if they brought them out from a storage room, where the rifles are stacked based on model.

Once again these two points prove the story created by Defence.lk is not true. They claim to have recovered 50 T-56 rifles, yet they show nearly 100 rifles in the photograph. And the fact that every single one of the 100 rifles is the rarer T-56-1 model proves this photograph is set up taking guns from a storage room.

Entire staff of Army.lk website team fired

Following many embarrassing cases of fraud by the official government websites Army.lk and Defence.lk being exposed, today we have received news that the entire staff of the Army.lk website has been fired and fully replaced by military personnel. This is the real reason there has been a sudden change to a "new" amateurish website design. The government has tried to claim it was due to upgrading to a new server system, but server changes have nothing to do with the complete website design and maintenance. The government could have easily switched to a new server while maintaining the old design, which was more attractive and user friendly. But instead the government has completely severed connections with the old team, as they have doubts the previous software system may be compromised by LTTE agents.

The government website made the following statement:

Your favourite www.army.lk website is back on track with a colourful re-design from today (2nd April 2009) onwards after it dispensed with previous technical failures, experienced under our former service-provider.

The Army is proud to announce that the Army Information Technological Unit has now undertaken its maintenance with the unstinted support, extended by Sri Lanka Telecom Ltd.

The actual reason the government has replaced the previous staff with full time military personnel was because several of the former staff members had been selling information to a Tamil website, which resulted in many embarrassing cases of false government propaganda being exposed in the media. They feel it will be easier to keep military personnel in check as compared to private workers, but advisors from the unnamed Tamil website state communication has already started and it is only a matter of time before the underpaid staff agree to help out.

The old design.

Another fake article by the Sri Lankan government exposed

It was just 2 days ago that we exposed Army.lk (the official Sri Lankan military website) for using year old photographs to make up a combat story that supposedly took place the same day. Today we have once again caught them using fake photographs to create a false story. The article titled "LTTE’s Chemicals for Bomb Production Unearthed" contains the following photograph:

In the article they state:

An estimated quantity of 3500 kg of Potasium Chloride, used for production of C-4 explosives and other deadly mines, etc by Tigers was unearthed by the troops in OLUMADU, VAVUNIYA last evening (March 31) while the stock remained buried in a container.

The first thing I would like to point out is that Potasium Chloride is used throughout the world primarily as fertilizer. It is not in any way connected to C-4 explosives. In fact Potasium Chloride isn't even one of the ingredients in C-4, though it can be used in other forms of conventional explosives if modified properly. Rather than tell the truth, that the Sri Lankan army found a bunch of fertilizer bags, the official Army.lk websites claims they found "ingredients for making C-4". They even named the photograph of the fertilizer bags as "C_4.jpg" to highlight that they discovered a "deadly explosive", when infact they only found fertilizer.

This itself is bad enough, but it isn't the reason for this article. Please look closely at their claim. They specifically say that they discovered this "deadly C-4" on March 31st, and they even explain how they had dug it out from a secret hole. Now please have a look at the date this photograph was taken:

The photograph was actually taken on February 2nd, yet they claim it was dug out from a secret hole on the 31st of March. But wait, there is something even more humorous about this photograph. See if you can recognize anything in the following screen captures from television news reports filmed last month:

This container of fertilizer was already used in a television report a month ago, and even then that was a lie because it was actually found in February as the photograph shows. What that means is they lied about this not once, but twice. Even the television news report was actually a lie, and we would never have known it if they hadn't posted the photograph today on Army.lk showing the real date it was photographed.

From this we can realize that not only are Army.lk and Defence.lk making up false stories, but even the television news channels are also making false news reports according to the government's orders. Such dishonesty on the part of television news reporters isn't surprising, as just last week one famous reporter (Saman Kumara Ramawickrema) embedded with the army was caught stealing many latpops, digital cameras, and even gold looted from a temple in the war zone.

In recent weeks, over 400,000 Tamil civilians had to flee their homes and leave their possessions behind as the Sri Lankan army ruthlessly bombed them. While the civilians fled for their lives, the Sri Lankan soldiers, and even the news reporters, moved in to loot the belongings of the helpless Tamil refugees. With such an immoral security force, is there any surprise in finding false stories published on their websites and in their news media? What is one fake photograph when they are willing to murder thousands of innocent civilians?

Note: Subsequent research has found the following:

1) The photo was taken on February 2nd based on exif data contained in the photograph.

2) Army.lk originally published this finding on February 5th (http://www.army.lk/fulsit.php?idx=1213)
but has recently deleted the article. It is still present in the google cache though (http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:SPEkbilormYJ:www.army.lk/fulsit.php%3Fidx%3D1213).

3) Around March 15th, news reporters filmed several of these containers, with the exact same contents and even identical concrete support footings, in a report that claimed thousands of tons of LTTE fertilizer had been found. If the above container had really been burried in the ground as claimed by Army.lk, why would they build the exact same concrete footings to place the container on top of as the LTTE had done? Also why would they raise the entire container from the ground while still full, instead of unloading it first. They would need a huge crane to lift such a container while full, and there is no evidence that such a crane even exists in the Vanni.

4) The original photograph from this article (located at http://www.army.lk/editor/images/diwan/C_4.jpg) has since been deleted by Army.lk.

5) After deleting the photograph, the editors of Army.lk forgot to remove the html code in the article that contained the photograph: img width="444" height="333" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.army.lk/editor/images/diwan/C_4.jpg". This code is still present in the article, but the image has been deleted.

Army.lk takes advice from Puligal Today

By Charu Sheelan

In our previous article titled "Defence.lk is 41% more lethal than Army.lk" we had mentioned the Defence.lk website's repetitive use of the word "sniped" in virtually every single article they publish, and also pointed out the conspicuous absence of any sniper attacks being reported on Army.lk. Basically we have a situation where the writers for defence.lk "fill" their articles with made up sniper attacks against LTTE fighters, sometimes "sniping" as many as 30 enemy combatants in a single article.

Unfortunately the writers for the other official government military website, army.lk, are never consulted about the story writing, so there are daily discrepencies between the "officially" announced LTTE casualties by the army.lk website and the defence.lk website. The most obvious difference, other than the numbers of LTTE fighters killed, is the lack of any sniper reportings at all on army.lk, compared to the daily massive sniper reports on defence.lk. Think for a minute, if the Sri Lankan army had actually sniped 30 LTTE fighters, you would expect the army.lk website to know about it and report it, but instead you will find a completely different daily report with no mention of the made up sniper attacks, and a far lower total for LTTE fighters killed.

As mentioned in the previous article, the total reported LTTE fighters killed by the army over the last two months is 41% higher on defence.lk (1174) as compared to army.lk (just 835). The number of LTTE fighters killed by snipers during the same period is over 200 according to defence.lk, compared to ZERO reported by army.lk. Based on this information we stated the following in our previous article:

In every single Army.lk report the LTTE suffers "heavy casualties" due to close quarters combat. But in every single Defence.lk report, the report always concludes with at least 5 or 10 LTTE fighters being "sniped" from long range. On one day the writer became a little too excited and he sniped 30 fighters at one go. What this shows is its simply two seperate people making up stories, and their story patterns remain repetitive because its the same person writing every day. They don't have the intelligence to make up new stories each day, or even to match their stories with their other website writers.

We are happy to report that Army.lk has taken heed of our report, and today for the first time in nearly a year they have brought back snipers to their daily report:

"Army snipers played a key role in those offensives taking minute targets." (from http://army.lk/morenews.php?id=20933)

A little research shows that the last time Army.lk has spoken about a sniper was in April 8, 2008 when they reported:

"Army snipers meanwhile sniped and killed three terrorists on two occasions in THIRUKETHISWARAN and PERANKUMAM. There was one female Tiger terrorist among the dead."

Besides this sniper incident reported in April 2008, there were only 3 other sniper incidents mentioned over the last five years by Army.lk which were reported on 28th January 2008, 24th January 2008, and 27th February 2008. Thus in the history of the Army.lk website there have been only 4 mentions of sniper attacks by the Sri Lankan security forces ever. But after we reported this on Puligal Today, showing the discrepancy with defence.lk's daily massive "sniper attacks", the very next day Army.lk decided to add snipers to their report for the first time in a year, and only the 5th time ever. Lets look at their newly injected sniper statement again:

"Army snipers played a key role in those offensives taking minute targets."

Just as a TV serial slowly introduces a new character into the script, Army.lk has introduced their latest character "Mr. Sniper", so that they can fall in line with defence.lk's made up casualty reports. But what is so humorous is the fact that they got this idea, not from their own officers or propaganda officials, but by reading a Tamil website called Puligal Today. Thus the level of mental insecurity of the defence propaganda team becomes self evident. Their minds are so weak, that in a single article I was able to inject the concept of adding snipers to their reports. Just see how easily they are influenced by psychological warfare. And these are the people who are supposed to be in charge of government propaganda. Their job is to convince other people, but their minds are so easy to influence that they themselves are revealing their own insecurities by their reactive actions.

This has been the repetitive history of this defence team, constantly revealing their own weaknesses and insecurities. Their own reactions indicate weakness and admit their mistake. For example, I said their picture was photoshopped, and immediately they removed the photo and then later put a caption "This photo has been altered for security reasons". I said they were showing pictures of dead sinhala soldiers and claiming they were LTTE, immediately the picture disappears from their website. I said Army.lk has never reported any of the "sniper attacks" claimed on defence.lk, the very next day they start speaking about snipers. Can you see the pattern, which completely betrays their own insecurity? They are being played and manipulated like fools, and they respond just as expected, further exposing their own insecurities and faults.

In conclusion we would like to thank the staff of Army.lk and Defence.lk for once again taking the advice provided at Puligal Today and trying to improve their poor record of misinformation. We cannot change them over night, but little by little we will clean the modaya out of their head.