WASHINGTON, DC, 7 February 2015 — Ann Peters, Director of Development and Outreach at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, made this image during our screening and panel discussion this week of “No Fire Zone,” about war crimes by the Sri Lankan army during a 2009 offensive against Tamil rebels.
UK filmmaker Callum Macrae showed the latest version of his award-winning documentary to a full house at American University’s School of Communication.
On the far left is Juan Méndez, professor of Human Rights Law in Residence, Washington College of Law. Since November 2010, Méndez has been the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. In the center is Carolyn Gallaher, associate professor, School of International Service. Gallaher focuses on two distinct research areasorganized violence by non-state actors and urban politics. I moderated the discussion from the podium.
In a wide-ranging discussion with the crowd, Callum talked about how he collected and sifted through hundreds of hours of footage of the offensive to patch together an extraordinarily powerful documentary, and how he verified the veracity of that footage.