The Guardian, today, interviewed the private public relations and marketing known for working with the Sri Lankan government and many other regimes, Bell Pottinger.
When asked if Bell Pottinger was still working for the Sri Lankan government, the chairman, Tim Bell, said,
“We stopped in..2009 or 2010. I might have got the dates wrong.”
“It’s a fashionable thing to criticise the way the Sri Lankan government has behaved. David Cameron had one meeting in the north of the country with 200 people who have lost relatives You have to remember there was a 30 year civil-war. The Tamil Tigers weren’t exactly gentle, nice people. And for Britain to ponce around the world talking about human rights after what we did in Afghanistan… It’s what Winston Churchill called ‘our usual export’: hypocrisy.”
The public relations and marketing multinational has previously been involved with media campaigns for former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet, the president of Belarus Alexandar Lukashenko and the repressive regimes of Bahrain and Egypt.