Writing on the website www.journalism.co.uk, former BBC correspondent in Sri Lanka, Frances Harrison, slammed the failure of journalists to expose the truth of Mullivaikkal.

Excerpts reproduced below:

"How is it possible in this world of satellites, rolling news and internet we have no idea how many human beings really perished, even rounded up to the nearest thousand?"

"It is because as journalists we have failed to get close to the truth."

"Those aid workers who spoke out were forced to leave the country. Record numbers of journalists were killed and exiled in a deliberate attempt to silence the truth."

"But no intrepid journalists smuggled their way into rebel territory as they did in Syria, even though an erratic bus service ran across the front line until mid-January 2009. There were Scottish, Australian and Bangladeshi UN staff who witnessed war crimes at the start of the war, but their stories did not get out at the time. Journalists reported on British politicians wooing the Tamil vote in general elections but they failed to read a Swedish study that found the UK issued more arms-export licenses for Sri Lanka during 2001-2008 than any country in Europe."

"At the time 400,000 Tamils were trapped in the war zone in Sri Lanka, international media attention was focused on Gaza where at most an estimated 1,500 died. A UN report now says reports of up to forty thousand civilian deaths in 2009 in Sri Lanka are credible. If that number is correct, then the defeat of the Tamil Tigers was one of the bloodiest conflicts so far this century."

"Every journalist has heard of Srebrenica. How many have heard of Mullivaikkal where just as many perished?"