Telling a Whopper
Posted by sim-o
July 29th, 2010
“I have been shunned, publicly abused and received numerous extremely distressing and frightening telephone calls and text messages,” he said. “I have received death threats and on occasions felt unable to leave my home for fear that I may be attacked.”
That, is Parameswaran Subramanyam. The Tamil who went on hunger strike in the middle of 2009 protesting against Sri Lankan governments last push against the Tamils.
The reason Parameswaran was shunned and abused and received death threats was because of the report in the Daily Mail that inspired other articles like this one. (The Sun also churned out copy based on the Mails’ article too.)
The Daily Mail piece has obviously disappeared, and they have now published an apology, but their claims of Parameswaran costing the Met Police over £7 million in overtime due to a hunger strike was designed to do more than make people gasp at the cost of the demonstration; the Mail even claimed the hunger striker was a fraud and was having sneaky meals of fast foods.
And what evidence did they have for this? None at all. Police “surveillance teams using specialist monitoring equipment had watched in disbelief as he tucked into the clandestine deliveries.” Apparently.
But the police couldn’t have recorded any McDonald’s being eaten by Parameswaran…
[T]he Met superintendent in charge of the policing operation had also confirmed that no video evidence existed because there had been no police surveillance team using the “specialist monitoring equipment” alluded to in the Daily Mail article.
Whether the Mail was fed that line about the surveillance from someone in the Met or they managed to think it up all by themselves in unknown, but the linking of it to the overtime bill for the whole protest concentrated all the hostility that these two pieces of information could generate on the one man who was making the ultimate political protest, and it seemed as if it were designed specifically to undermine him and his cause.
“Fasting was the sacrifice [Subramanyam] was making to bring the UK’s attention to the plight of hundreds of thousands of Tamils being killed and injured by the Sri Lankan government,” she said [Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh].
“To suggest that he had broken his fast in secret, at the height of the civil war was an insult to him, to his community and to those victims.”
The Mail doesn’t care about any of that though. To the Mail it’s just yet more foreigners costing us money.
(hat-tip Exclarotive)
Categories: Politics | Tags: agendas, apology, hunger strike, Immigration, Tamil
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This shows modern day British justice and political correctness and lack of knowledge of other people and their ways and lies.
Tamils are Hindus and are Indian and are high caste. They would not eat beef (India is not serving beef during the common wealth (Indian Empire) games).
So daily mail, Sun and cops are ignorant.
A man on a hunger strike for 23 days and still live to receive death threats. It must be the world record. An artcle for the British Medical Journal.
No one has been charged for the numerous death threats. What would have been the case if the death threats came from the Sun, Daily or from a English, Welsh, Scot or an Irish?
High court has not ruled on what is a hunger strike. I thought hunger strike means you only drink water. The question is not the Big Mac with a sacred beef pat.
The question was was this Tamil really on a hunger strike?
Once again it’s the bunch of lying journo liars lying to us again.
Ignorant, racist, sectarian, petty small minded nationalists and thoroughly nasty bunch that they are, the biggest joke is they think themselves entitled to point fingers at anyone else.
This Tamil will not have eaten a Big Mac as any Mac will have beef in it. Tamils are Hindus and they do not eat beef. So THe Sun, Daily Mail and the Met Police are are wrong. The question is not what the two news papers or the Police said. What was a Tamil terrorist doing in front of British Parliament. Tamils in Ceylon are the same as any Indian outside India. they are colonial parasites that went with the British Raj to British dominions. These colonial parasites bring a lot of money back to India. They also bring a bit to UK as they did for the last two centuries. It is time to decolonise Indian colonies.
“This Tamil will not have eaten a Big Mac as any Mac will have beef in it.”
yes, you already said that.
“So THe Sun, Daily Mail and the Met Police are are wrong.”
the met police can’t be wrong, as the line about this man eating a burger didn’t come from them in the first place.
“What was a Tamil terrorist doing in front of British Parliament.”
he hasn’t been charged with any terrorist offences, where have you picked this idea up from?
“Tamils in Ceylon are…”
in sri lanka.
“they are colonial parasites that went with the British Raj to Blah blah and other blah”
thank you casual racism. much in the same way i would not like to go back to “prussia” just because my decendants were from there, or a friend of mine is not impressed by the bnp’s repatriation idea of “returning” him to sri lanka just because his parents were born there. i really don’t think you have any case for sending an entire group of sri lankan born people to live in india on the basis that people in their familiy may have lived there over a century ago.
I think the point of the article is to highlight the Mail’s shameless publication of a story that was not even in the same time zone as the facts.
Whether or not you agree with this man’s cause, whether he eats beef or not, and whether a hunger strike includes water, lemon juice or a side of fries, the fact remains that newspapers continue to write lies and go completely unpunished.
Surely that’s a battle we should all fight.
A storm in a tea cup, centring around yet another ethnic whinger, who shouldn’t be in this country anyway, and left-wing bleeding hearts who’ve got nothing better to do with their time than to gush over such people. Though I too would criticise the DM for giving this story such coverage. Sri Lanka is a far-away country in which most people here, quite reasonably, take little interest.
And anyway, if this guy really wants to stage a protest, he should be protesting about the Tamil Tiger’s suicide bombing campaign which killed and maimed many thousands of innocent civilians. Not that any of the posturing leftie hypocrites who frequent this site ever took any interest in such atrocities, seeing as how they couldn’t be connected in any way to the US or Israel. Pass me the sickbag someone, PLEASE!!!
Then again…maybe the guy just felt passionately about the plight of his fellow Tamils and maybe you’re quite right to stick up for somebody being bullied by a tabloid newspaper. I suppose that I should consider such possibilities.
“This Tamil will not have eaten a Big Mac as any Mac will have beef in it. Tamils are Hindus and they do not eat beef. So THe Sun, Daily Mail and the Met Police are are wrong. ”
Because religious hypocrisy is impossible? And how do you know he is even religion anyway?
[...] shame of censure by their peers? Is that really as bad as Dacre makes out? If so why did these two have to go to court? Regarding the Commission, it is worth pointing out that the lay representation [...]
Just because the police won;t officially confirm the use of surveillance equipment, does this mean the Mail ‘made the story up’. The mere fact it appeared in multiple papers owned by different groups suggests something was going on. Remeber that the ‘81 NI hungerstrikers started dying at 45-6 days, To do 28 without any medical attention is eyebrow raising.
No, what has happened is the Mail it cannot prove its story under the UK’s strict libel laws (which liberals and lefties are trying to roll back) as the off the record Met sources wouldn;t be stood up in court.
If this was the grauniad writing some story bashing Ulster loyalists (say), you’d all be applauding their brave journalistic stance wildly.
Reporting is hard. Sources don’t always go on the record. reporters and newspapers have to go out on limb occasionally.
Mailwatch double standards all over the place here. Accusations being mounted against professionals by shining the blinging light of ignorance on the whole affair.
“The mere fact it appeared in multiple papers owned by different groups suggests something was going on.”
yes, it’s called “churnalism”
“If this was the grauniad writing some story bashing Ulster loyalists (say), you’d all be applauding their brave journalistic stance wildly.”
based on what exactly?
…churnalism…
Based on what exactly?
links are provided in the article above.
The links show nothing of the kind.
please note claimant’s solictor: Carter-Ruck.
ok, do you mind telling me what the point of that link was? you aiming for some kind of guilt by association perhaps?
Yes. Carter-Ruck is not, IMO, the friend of free speech. Anyone who consults them is (again IMO) storing up bad karma. Are you a fan?
But you are ignoring my real point here. There is no sign that this is ‘churanlism’ just that two reporters haqve access to the same police source. It is possible the story is a smear but mailwatch and fans such as yourself ignore every other possbility in your rush to pour vitriol on a target you dislike. Which is exactly what you accuse the mail of doing. Which makes you hypocrites.