COLOMBO, Feb 4: British Labour party MP Siobhain Ann McDonagh, and New South Wales Greens party Senator Lee Rhiannon, have jointly appealed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the British ITN Channel 4 TV team for doing the documentary, “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields” on the last gruesome phase of the military operation against the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

“The documentary drew the world’s attention to the atrocities committed against Tamils in the last days of Sri Lanka’s civil war.

The programme makers’ courage in demonstrating that war crimes will not be swept under the carpet has contributed to the reconciliation process, and has made war crimes elsewhere less likely. They are deserving nominees for the Nobel prize for peace.”

“The documentary was shown to the United Nations Human Rights Council in May 2011 and was also screened at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The significance of the film as a recording of history, its impact on bringing out truth, and the potential it offers for reconciliation and peace in Sri Lanka are enormous,” the legislators said in a statement dated Feb 1.The video was directed by Callum Macrae and presented by Jon Snow.

On Jan 25, the US-based “Tamils for Obama” had asked the Nobel committee to award the peace prize to those individuals who had “comforted” the victims of the Lankan war and “exposed’ the perpetrators of the violence against the Tamils of Lanka.