Sri Lanka: Military Conflict vs. Propaganda War?

by Thalif Deen

15 May 09 | IPS

The Sri Lankan government, which has come under heavy fire for the massive humanitarian crisis in the country’s war zone, is winning the 25-year-old military conflict but is on the verge of losing the propaganda war overseas.

“It is a very stressful time here,” says Sri Lanka’s Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona, a former chief of the U.N. Treaty Section.

Although the military has scored unbelievable gains, he said, the last ditch effort by the rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), is painful.

In an interview with IPS, Kohona said: “The LTTE is trying to save its neck by surrounding itself with reluctant civilians – ‘lambs to the slaughter’ – and throwing Kalashnikov-armed children and old people against the army.”

“People are getting killed. But not in the numbers highlighted by the LTTE propaganda machine,” he added.

During the past few weeks, LTTE supporters overseas have organised huge demonstrations in Western Europe, Canada and the United States accusing the government of war crimes. >>>

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