| Military video montage | Music | 00:00 |
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| LLOYD: This is what a cease fire looks like in Sri Lanka. The agreement, signed more than four years ago, exists now only on paper. | 00:15 |
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| Music | 00:25 |
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| LLOYD: It is an undeclared return to war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are fighting for an independent ethnic Tamil homeland in the north and north east of the island. | 00:29 |
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| Government forces – mostly rival ethnic Sinhalese -- are attacking on land and sea. | 00:49 |
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| Music | 00:56 |
| Lloyd with Brigadier | BRIGADIER PRASAD: Now after 15 years we have control over these areas. | 01:07 |
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| LLOYD: Sri Lanka’s Government is confident that a military victory over the Tamil Tigers is possible, within three years. Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe is a former front line commander, and 27 year veteran of the fight. | 01:11 |
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| BRIGADIER PRASAD: Only this area they have left, but the troops are operating in this area also now. | 01:26 |
| Military video montage | Music | 01:31 |
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| LLOYD: Sri Lanka’s return to its violent past extends well beyond the battlefield. | 01:36 |
| People on streets | Another kind of war is being waged, against ordinary people. In the past 18 months, more than two thousand, mainly Tamil, civilians have been kidnapped and killed. It’s Sri Lanka’s ‘dirty war’. LLOYD: Are people very afraid | 01:41 |
| Lloyd walks with Ganesan | to speak out here in Sri Lanka? GANESAN: Yeah, naturally they are not free, free to speak or talk about this. | 01:59 |
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| LLOYD: Colombo MP Mano Ganesan is one man who is not afraid to speak out. A Tamil, he runs a group that monitors abductions. It’s made him powerful enemies. | 02:08 |
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| LLOYD: And here, just going for a walk along the street. How many security police are there with us? GANESAN: About ten. LLOYD: How many? GANESAN: Ten, about ten. Ten of these people, and they’re all armed? GANESAN: Yeah. LLOYD: And they’re all for you? GANESAN: Yeah. | 02:20 |
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| LLOYD: Mano Ganesan has good reason to be worried. | 02:32 |
| Photos. Nadarajah Raviraj | This is the co-founder of his organisation. Fellow Tamil MP Nadarajah Raviraj. | 02:35 |
| Photo. Raviraj’s body | Last November he was assassinated outside his home in Colombo. | 02:47 |
| Raviraj’s coffin | GANESAN: He paid a high price for standing against the human rights violations. | 0254 |
| Ganesan | It is not that I am here unknowingly, without considering the danger I am facing. But I am here because somebody got to talk about these human rights violations, the disrespect to human dignity, extrajudicial killings, abductions, disappearances, intimidations. Somebody got to talk, so I’m talking. | 03:00 |
| Photo. Bodies lying in ditch | Music | 03:20 |
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| LLOYD: On Mano Ganesan’s list 80 people are missing. 18 have been found dead around Colombo. Most victims are ethnic Tamils. | 03:22 |
| Photo. Body by car | Mr. Ganesan is convinced they were targeted by government death squads. Their crime – a perception of sympathy for the Tamil Tigers. | 03:31 |
| Ganesan | GANESAN: Whoever they are, the influential section of the government is supporting these abductions and disappearances, and extra judicial killings as a method of crushing the Tamil national struggle. | 03:42 |
| Lloyd and Ganesan get into car with bodyguards | LLOYD: It’s a charge the authorities deny. For Mr. Ganesan, blaming the government carries more than a little irony. It provides the security personnel that keep him alive. | 04:01 |
| Lloyd and Ganesan in car with bodyguard | GANESAN: I have to rely on the government security, of the very government I’m accusing, of course. LLOYD: So you have to trust this man here? GANESAN: Yes. Yes he is my personal security. I trust him. Of course, I have no other alternative. | 04:20 |
| Lloyd and Ganesan visit Jegatheewary | LLOYD: We arrive at an apartment in the suburbs. We’re taken upstairs to meet the family of a prominent academic, who has been missing since December. | 04:43 |
| Jegatheewary | JEGATHEEWARY: He is a very, very genuine man. he is very innocent. LLOYD: Jegatheewary Raveendranath isn’t sure if she’s a wife, or widow. JEGATHEEWARY: Everyone liked him. | 04:57 |
| Photo. Sivasubramanium | LLOYD: Her husband Sivasubramanium Raveendranath is a University vice chancellor. A Professor in agricultural economics, he had no known involvement in politics. | 05:16 |
| Photo. Family occasion | LLOYD: What was this occasion? JEGATHEEWARY: Birthday. My grand daughter’s birthday. | 05:57 |
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| LLOYD: Jegatheewary says her husband was devoted only to work and family. | 05:33 |
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| It seems being a high profile Tamil may have been enough to make him a target. | 05:41 |
| Soldiers on streets of Colombo | Music | 05:50 |
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| LLOYD: Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, is a city under the gun. It teems with soldiers on foot patrol. And police running vehicle checkpoints. Hardly anyone escapes inspection at the daily dragnet. | 05:56 |
| Ganesan | GANESAN: At none of these checkpoints I have ever heard the abductor vehicles stopped, the abductors arrested, the abductees released. | 06:15 |
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| So what does it mean? | 06:28 |
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| You don’t need a rocket scientist to know about this, to understand this. There is a kind of connivance, a tacit support, co-operation between the abductors and the security personnel manning the checkpoints. | 06:30 |
| Driving shots. Country | LLOYD: Civilians have gone missing all around Sri Lanka. Especially in areas closer to fighting. | 06:48 |
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| As in Colombo, the military is everywhere. | 06:58 |
| Soldiers check car | And checking everyone. Lloyd: We can go? Okay. | 07:03 |
| Driving shots. Country | LLOYD: Our journey is to the eastern province. The town of Batticaloa. | 07:12 |
| Batticaloa | Over the years, there have been pitched battles for this territory. The most recent fight was won by the government. | 07:17 |
| Displaced person’s camp | The area’s population has been swelled by the arrival of more than 150,000 people, displaced by fighting. | 07:26 |
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| Mostly they are Tamil, but also a handful of minority Muslims. They escaped being killed or injured in crossfire. But the dirty war has found them in other ways. | 07:34 |
| Thilakatthi | Her name is Thilakatthi. Last year, an armed gang, recruiting child soldiers, took away her 16 year old son Govindan Nirmalan. | 07:47 |
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| THILAKATTHI: We were screaming and we were crying and we pleaded with them not to do it. | 07:59 |
| Thilakatthi with family | LLOYD: Eventually, the gang offered a deal. They’d return the teenager, but only in exchange for another of the children. | 08:08 |
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| The family refused. The still see Govindan, on occasion, but hardly recognise him. | 08:15 |
| Thilakatthi | THILAKATTHI: Now he is very arrogant. He used to be very polite -- very simple and humble. Now he has become a violent person. | 08:26 |
| Photos. Colonel Karuna | LLOYD: Govindan was kidnapped and put to work as a foot soldier for the former Tamil Tiger commander known as Colonel Karuna. Three years ago Karuna switched sides and joined the government. It was a serious blow to the Tamil Tiger cause, losing them much of the East. | 08:35 |
| TRAN-THANH: They were all gathered together and they were shot directly in the head or in the chest. LLOYD: Execution style? TRAN-THANH: Yes. | 10:01 | |
| Photos. Muttur massacre victims | LLOYD: Who carried out this crime is still not known. Both sides have denied it was them. Australian forensic experts have been helping with the official investigation. But international | 10:11 |
| Lloyd with Tran-Thanh | observers say the process is seriously flawed. | 10:24 |
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| TRAN-THANH: We will fight, as ACF, to find the truth. And to get, to have light on those killings and to know who we are and what happened. | 10:28 |
| Soldiers | LLOYD: The national army knows it is the prime suspect. The official line has shifted, from outright denial to something more nuanced. LLOYD: Is there any blood on the hands | 10:39 |
| Brigadier Prasad | of soldiers in that killing? BRIGADIER PRASAD: It’s like this, it’s like this… | 10:53 |
| Soldiers | We can’t 100 percent say whether it was done by the troops or if it was done by somebody else. If any soldier gets caught, they will be definitely taken to task. | 10:55 |
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| LLOYD: Why should people believe any investigation carried out buy the government? | 11:10 |
| Brigadier Prasad | BRIGADIER PRASAD: Because the government has done investigations, and the courts, the separate judge, the separate commission has been appointed . But over and above that, the government has allowed an international body to come in and investigate separately. | 11:16 |
| Photos. Muttur massacre victims | LLOYD: But the Australians who are part of that international investigations weren’t able to do their job properly – they weren’t able to see the things they were supposed to see | 11:30 |
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| BRIGADIER: No. Of course there might be a problem due to the incidents in those areas. There was fighting going on until recently. Now the people can go there immediately. There’s no problem. | 11:39 |
| Buddhist temple | Music | 11:54 |
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| LLOYD: There may eventually be justice for the victims of Muttur. But little official attention is being paid to the two thousand other civilians who’ve been killed or kidnapped in recent times. | 12:02 |
| People walk on street | Both sides are seemingly locked in a fight to the death. | 12:17 |
| Soldiers | On the way, they’ve taken hostage an entire country. | 12:21 |
| Children | And robbed another generation of the right to live in peace. | 12:25 |
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| Music | 12:30 |
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| Reporter: Peter Lloyd Camera: Wayne McAllister Editor: Bryan Milliss Production Company: ABC Australia – Foreign Correpsondent | 12:35 |