Michael Roberts
When I came across some ‘new’ material[1] of great import relating to KP Pathmanathan’s valiant efforts to extricate the LTTE leadership from their deteriorating military situation in early 2009 and to whisk them away to Eritrea with the active support of the great powers, and then reiterated my longstanding criticisms of the Western powers’ imperial effrontery in a fresh article this April,[2] I was surprised to receive an email note out of the blue from Stephen Champion in March this year 2020 – one wholly supportive of my slashing criticisms of the West.
I assumed that Champion was writing to me from UK and was mighty pleased because I was aware of his enterprising camerawork in trying and dangerous conditions in the late 1980s and have a copy of at least one of his pictorial works.[3] I decided to seek out more information on Champion via Google and immediately chanced upon Saroj Pathirana’s report in the BBC Sandeshaya programme describing an event mounted by Amnesty International in July 2008 displaying some of Champion’s photographic collections (see Pix above). Adhering to the principle of progressing step-by-step in temporal order, I placed this item within my Thuppahi site on 20th April 2020.
