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.