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.