Facebook icon
Twitter icon
e-mail icon

‘The image has become a powerful weapon’

‘Footage shows photographs of sexually abused women upon whom the military exercise a further act of domination with the camera. In one film taken on a smartphone soldiers are recorded throwing the bodies of dead females into a truck, rating their bodies as they fling them into a pile.

This objectification and absolute disrespect for the dead is emphasised once again by the presence of the lens, which is said to be recording the acts as ‘trophy footage’. The filming of brutal executions by the perpetrators is another decisively symbolic act of power.

However, like all weapons, these images can be used to exploit, but also have the potential to protect. The unstable nature of the photograph means it is unable to be monopolised, it can elude total partisan intervention. In the age of the network, the potential for the photograph to be re-written is intensified. The image can become the last civil refuge for those denied the privileges of sovereign citizenship. It can be employed as such regardless of whether this was the photographer’s original purpose, depending instead on the spectator and the discourse it is placed within.

Now these images have been leaked, picked up by Channel 4 and filtered onto the web where they remain, they have the potential to be removed them from their previous complicity in the act of war.

What was once a form of abuse for the people in the frame now has the opportunity to be a key part of a process for justice and retribution.’

- Rachel Cloughton writing in The Independent Blogs. See her full piece here.

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

For more ways to donate visit https://donate.tamilguardian.com.