The London School of Economics screened the feature length documentary, ‘No Fire Zone- The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka’ , today.

The film screening was preceded by a series of panel presentations on options for accountability and victim support and followed by a Question and answer session. Members of the panel included No Fire Zone director Callum Macrae, Shivani Jegarajah of the Renaissance Chambers, Janani Jananayagam, founding director of Tamils against Genocide and Dr Devika Hovell a lecturer in law at the LSE.

Addressing the audience, Barrister of the Renaissance Chambers, Shivani Jegarajah outlined her findings of the situation in Sri Lanka after working on the country guidance case, stating

“No-where in the world has there been such a thorough investigation as we have carried out in Sri Lanka”

“When I finished the country case, I realised that you cannot analyse a Tamil asylum case without considering at the forefront of your analysis that there was genocide.”

The director of the Non Governmental Organisation Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), Janani Jananayagam, outlined that the problem in Sri Lanka was more than an unruly regime, drawing upon several historic presidential statements that highlighted the inconsiderate nature of the Sri Lankan government towards the Tamils in the North-East.

“When you watch, think about why this is happening,” she told the audience.

No Fire Zone director, Callum Macrae, introduced the film noting that the film was a piece of evidence as well as being a documentary, and purported the international communities duty to act on the issue. He stated,

“The Sri Lankan government will tell you that everything you see in this documentary is a lie. This film is not a lie, everything in this film has been independently verified. “

“What has happened is that the government makes promises to do something and does absolutely nothing. They have ignored their own recommendations. The recent UN resolution called on Sri Lanka to investigate itself. Sri Lanka has demonstrated quite clearly that it cannot investigate itself. It is absurd to let Sri Lanka to hide behind false pretences of conducting its own inquiry, The international community under the responsibility to protect resolution has a duty to now call for an international independent investigation.”

The film was received well by the crowd and ended in a question and answer session that discussed the lack of action by the international community.

Callum Macrae slammed the recent failure of the Commonwealth in holding a stance on the issue,

“Commonwealth General Secretary Sharma is responsible for the most appalling breech of the commonwealth values.”

He went on to note,

“There is a tendency to see this as a static situation. The fact is that it is much more volatile. The regime is dangerous and unstable. It is actively trying to deny autonomy in the North-East. It is simply repressing the Tamils.”

The question and answer session ended with Jan Jananayagam, reiterating the importance of No Fire Zone as a tool to pressure the international community to take a stronger stance against Sri Lanka.

Callum Macrae echoed Jan Jananayagam’s calls urging supporters of the documentary to fund the project using the website kickstarters.

See our twitter account for proceedings from the event.