UK director outsmarts censors to release Sri Lanka war documentary for free online
NEW DELHI // The director of a war film on Sri Lanka streamed it free online in India yesterday, after censors banned its cinema release over fears it could strain friendly ties with Colombo.
Callum Macrae, the British director of No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, said the film would also be available free in Malaysia, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the other countries where its general screening has been banned.
The 93-minute film is a collection of footage recorded in Sri Lanka’s north- east by doctors, civilians, rebels and soldiers as the government allegedly bombarded areas teeming with refugees trying to flee the fighting. The documentary has been contested by the Sri Lankan government as propaganda to discredit Colombo in the eyes of the international community.
The film’s producers said the Indian censor board had banned its release on the grounds that it “may strain friendly relations with Sri Lanka”.
Mr Macrae said India’s reluctance to release the film hurt him the most, given the country’s deeprooted tradition of democracy and free speech.
“I find it very disturbing that a country whose independent history is rooted in the struggle for democratic rights and free speech should have taken what is, in effect, an act of overt political censorship,” he said.
In protest against the ban, the documentary was screened yesterday in Chennai by a student’s group.
Chennai is the capital of Tamil Nadu state where millions of ethnic Tamils share close cultural and religious ties with their counterparts in Sri Lanka.
The ruling Congress party is seen
Public screening of the film is banned in Malaysia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India
as being soft on Sri Lanka because it does not want to alienate potential Tamil supporters with elections due by May. The ban on the film comes after the Indian government last year refused to grant a visa to Mr Macrae to attend the premiere of the documentary, which was privately screened in New Delhi and Mumbai.
Rights groups say as many as 40,000 civilians were killed by security forces in the final months of a no-holds-barred offensive in 2009 that ended Sri Lanka’s decadeslong fight against Tamil separatists.
Sri Lanka denies causing civilian deaths.