The truth about Sri Lanka's Baby 81
Blogged by: Glenda Cooper
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
Tsunami survivor Abilass Jeyarajah, also known as "Baby 81" plays at a new home in Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka on October 20, 2005, nearly 10 months after he was found among the debris. REUTERS/Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi
You probably don't know the name Abilass Jeyarajah. Looking back on coverage of the Sri Lankan tsunami, you're much more likely to recognise the nickname he was given at the time: Baby 81.
It was the ideal story; a young baby miraculously rescued from the wave, but with no identification to show whom he belonged to, a symbol both of the devastating impact of the tsunami and of the spirit of survival.
He's still a talking point in Sri Lanka. My driver travelling up the east coast to Batticaloa knew I had been a journalist and insisted on pointing out the hospital in Kalmunai where Baby 81 had stayed.
There, nine desperate couples reportedly stepped forward to claim him as theirs. Mothers threatened to commit suicide, the child was forced to sleep in an operating theatre so he wouldn't be kidnapped, and DNA tests were required to decide who the true parents were. Thousands of words were written about him.
Except...most of them weren't true.
Amal Jayasinghe, the Colombo bureau chief of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, investigated the story and discovered that almost everything we know about the young child turns out to be inaccurate.
"For me the whole tsunami coverage boiled down to this one story," says Jayasinghe. "And now I fear that if the Sri Lanka tsunami is remembered, it is for the wrong reasons; for Baby 81."
There are some facts that are not disputed. Baby 81 originally came from Kalmunai in Ampara district on the east coast. When the wave hit he was separated from his parents (later proved to be Mugurpillai and Jenita Jeyarajah). Despite being only 10 weeks old, he survived and was found by a villager, who took him to the local hospital on December 26. He stayed there unclaimed for two days.
As Jayasinghe explains, the baby's parents had been hurt in the tsunami and were in another hospital. Returning to the village, they discovered that their baby had been taken to Kalmunai and went to claim him.
Meanwhile, a doctor at the hospital who thought the child's parents would never show up had asked a childless nurse to take Baby 81 home, which she did. So by the time the parents arrived and asked for an unclaimed baby, there was no such infant there. Undeterred, the Jeyarajahs lodged a complaint with the police, who went to the hospital and told the nurse to bring the baby back.
"The doctor asked the parents separately "Give us some description of what your child is like. Does it have a black thread tied around its waist?" [a Tamil tradition to ward off evil]. The parents said no. But the child did have such a thread - it had been tied there by the nurse. So the doctor refused to release the child," says Jayasinghe.
The police and the parents then applied to a magistrate to get Baby 81 released from hospital. At that stage, it could have been resolved fairly simply. But then the media got involved.
A TV crew filmed Baby 81 and the rushes were seen by a wire agency reporter. Whether it was a mistake in translation or some other kind of misunderstanding is unknown, but a report then ran that "nine desperate heartbroken women" were all claiming the child as their own.
Not only that, the story also spoke of a man and a woman claiming they would commit suicide and another woman claiming she would kill the doctors.
Within a day, stories based on the wire copy appeared in newspapers around the world and Sri Lanka-based foreign correspondents flocked to Kalmunai to write up their own pieces. Yet when Jayasinghe sent a team to interview the feuding families, it quickly became clear the story was not what it had first seemed.
"It's a basic rule of journalism that if the centre of the story is nine mothers then you should be able to name at least three if not all nine," says Jayasinghe. "My reporter and photographer came back saying it's all bulls***. I spoke to the police chief who said they didn't have nine complaints. A spokesman for the hospital also rejected the idea of nine mothers although he said there were a lot of people who were willing to adopt the child because it didn't have parents."
AFP wrote a story trying to put the record straight, but the media hullabaloo continued unabated.
By the time the case reached court at the beginning of February, child protection authorities felt they had no option but to order a DNA test, even though it was only the Jeyarajahs who had ever filed a case to claim the child.
It then took until February 16 - six weeks after the Jeyarajahs had been separated from their baby - before they could take him home again. But there was still no let-up in the media circus and the Jeyarajahs were flown to the United States to be interviewed on NBC's Good Morning America.
As Jayasinghe discovered while researching a follow-up piece for the first anniversary of the tsunami, the TV station paid nothing to the family, who were helped out with contributions of 25,000 rupees ($226) from Sri Lankans in New York. When they returned home, they then discovered that they would receive nothing from local charities, who believed they had been lavishly paid for their trip.
It is not just Jayasinghe who has been left feeling uneasy by the whole episode. The Sri Lankan Press Institute asked in a report why frontline reporters from international media organizations did not expose the story. "Were they being taken for a ride ... or did they not want to kill a good story through over-verification?"
In 2005, the head of the BBC's Sinhalese section, Priyath Liyanage, had this to say: "It is a classic example of the facts not getting in the way of the good story because there's no story at all."
Speaking at conference on coverage of the tsunami hosted by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, Liyanage said the media frenzy surrounding the story ensured that "nobody wanted to know the truth".
And while some articles and blogs have revealed what really happened to Baby 81, the vast majority of stories in newspaper libraries and on the internet still refer to the supposed nine parents and the "tug of love" for the child.
"The unfortunate thing," adds Jayasinghe, "is if you take a very clinical look at the entire tsunami situation, the story which grabbed the attention of the world was a figment of someone's imagination. It was a hoax. And that's the tragedy."
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14 responses to “The truth about Sri Lanka's Baby 81”
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Glenda Cooper is the current Guardian Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, where she is researching how the media and aid agencies work together - or don't - during natural disasters. For the past 12 years, she has worked as a journalist around the world for a range of media including the BBC, the Washington Post, the Independent and the Daily Mail. She is now also a presenter on Channel 4 Radio News's The Morning Report.
07 Jun 2007 14:33:38 GMT
It's nice to have this one clarified. I hadn't noticed the Baby 81 story even though I followed the Tsunami reports. Perhaps it depends on what sources you read.
But while I'm interested to hear about this case of wholesale disinformation by the mainstream press, are people who read stories like the ones about Baby 81 interested in hearing it? Maybe people are fooled, maybe they are naive. Or maybe they just enjoy these stories and they know where they'll find them, in the mainstream press. After all, what else would they expect to find there? Information?07 Jun 2007 19:12:57 GMT
I am a Sri Lankan and do not trust most of the news/information I read, especially news reports in western media. Most of them do not give the correct information, knowingly or unknowingly. I think some of the western journalists manipulate news with hidden agendas.
Cooper thanks for the article. This kind of things happen very often.08 Jun 2007 10:32:19 GMT
I totally agree with the reader Mr.Devar who very correctly says that some of the western media reporters do not report the actual stories.they twist the stories and give prominance to only certain incidents which favours one side always. If they are compelled to state some thing against their agendas they just mentioned it very vagly and in between the lines and at the centre of the report.It is very sad that gone are the days we hear actual on the spot acurate stories.
Many thanks. pls publish this opinion as you have not publish my previous opinion on a different topic. other wise why you keep an opinion colum????and ask for the readers views???? 07/06/200608 Jun 2007 10:35:05 GMT
we should all be very grateful to amal for enlightening the world about this story. i am very interested to see how much coverage this story of enlightenment receives from the media. it is important that the world is educated on the facts even at this late stage. hope the same media that messed up the story initially will take this eye opener to the world.
08 Jun 2007 10:38:42 GMT
How genuine is the report of this singhalese news reporter, I would imagine if the child was from the singhalese majority no negative reports like the above would have been raised. I think it is a sad fact this journalist is trying to do what the majority of the countries people are doing against the minority tamils since the start of civilization in Srilanka. There wasn't a single singhalese family which captured the news headlines like this poor tamil family and Jayasinghe is trying to throw mud to the dignity and reputation gained by this poor family.
08 Jun 2007 10:40:55 GMT
it is true that there were no nine mothers. i know this because as a journalist for the local media i was one of the people who was sent down by my editor to cover the story. I was there. I spoke to the parents, went to the hospital and interviewed the police who were conducting investigations. imagine my surprise and disgust when i understood that the whole story was cooked up by international media who were willing to do anything for a headline grabbing story.
Fortunatly some of the local media did file stories about the hoax.... but they were mostly ignored because people and new agencies prefer the tear jerking version no matter how wrong it may be. There was a time when i believed that true and impartial reporting was the corner stone of international agencies but after this and many subsequent stories i have lost that faith. It would be great if the people who want the truth balance out the story by reading the local media's version of it as well.08 Jun 2007 11:53:14 GMT
i am a srilankan tamil .i am happy that your organization took this matter to your higher cosideration because most of the story in srilanka(tamil) was not comeout due to the terror-government. the government in sri lanka is acting as a terrorist in srilankan tamil's matter. the baby 81 also a tamil baby that's why they din't care about this matter . ( tamil is a minority people living in srilanka 21% )
08 Jun 2007 16:25:04 GMT
When I addressed LAWASIA Binennial Conference hld in Gold Coast, Australia in April 2005,On "Legal issues in the Aftermath on Tsunami in Sri Lanka", I specifically mentioned that Baby 81 is a fabrication of Internationa electronic media who rushed to Sri Lanka and other Indian Ocean countries immediately after Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 and in fact and in truth, there was only one couple to claim the baby. Internaition Electronic Media fabricated the story and sold to their innnocent viewers, knowing very well that the story was false.
09 Jun 2007 18:22:22 GMT
My Goodness! No matter where we are in the world, Sri Lankans have to bring up the fact that its all about Sinhalese against Tamils and vice versa...This article actually is shedding light on how the international media has its own agenda and wont hesitate to report downright lies in order to make a "good" story! Get over yourself! The western media probably can't tell the difference between a Sinhalese and Tamil baby, even though we Sri Lankans have become experts in distinguishing between ourselvesâ¦. Also I hope to forward this article to Matt Lauer as I watched him interview this family (baby81) on NBC.
Ann (My grandfather was Sinhalese and my grandmother is a Tamil. Whooh!!!!!!!!! Who could imagine!)09 Jun 2007 18:23:38 GMT
The typical media frenzy to make hay whilst the sun shines, with total disregard to the sentiments of people concerned only exposes the low quality of media stories cooked up by a few untrained unethical mediamen who thrive in making a fast buck by sensationalising stories for marketting purpose only.
The current war is sensationalised to the effect that the numbers dead are over exagerated to sell the news paper with a two inch head line. The ultimate damage to the Country's image is of least importance to these scavengers who will write not the truth but their imagination sensationalised with a catch word that will sell. GONE ARE THE DAYS THAT A PERSON COULD TRUST THE NEWS APPEARING IN PRINT MEDIA TO BE TRUE. IFYOU ARE AT A NEWS PAPER STAND YOU COULD READ 5 NEWS HEADLINES IN DIFFERENT PAPERS WITH DIFFERENT CASUALTY FIGURES. IN THIS SENSE IT IS WORTH WHILE TO CONSIDER AUTHENTICATED NEWS TO BE PUBLISHED AT LEAST IN THE CASE OF WAR AND DISASTER CASUALTIES. AFTERALL THE MEDIA HYENAS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO DEVOUR THE CARCASES BEFORE GIVING A RESPECTFUL BURIAL...AT LEAST.09 Jun 2007 18:24:24 GMT
Neil Vincent has sadly missed the point. There is no ethnic element to the story. Only a powerful human element. After teaching in Sri lanka for a long time, I am convinced that those in the country are byand large not racist. But I find a lot of Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese living abroad are extreme nationalists who are capable of seeing an ethnic conspiracy even in the "Baby 81" saga.
09 Jun 2007 18:25:05 GMT
I think if Mr. Jayasinghe went so far as to expose the hoax, he should also have named the culprits. If not by name, at least by agency/news organization. Both Ms. Cooper and he do wrong by the western media that, at least in this case, did not sensationalize the story. And, Mr. Vincent, there is no need to sniff out any racism in something that is purely an appraisal of media ethics. In fact, the baby's father complained, after all the hoop-la was done, that the unwarranted publicity they received had deprived them of tsunami aid, as donor agencies and the government assumed he had made a packet out of all the attention. I think Mr. Jayasinghe has in reality helped the family by reporting the facts and being fearless in exposing the fraud. Thank you too, Miss Cooper, for keeping the story alive.
09 Jun 2007 18:26:15 GMT
Dear Glenda,
To prevent the entire international media being tarred with the same brush, why don't you write another report or amend the current one to name who started the lie. Surely all foreign media can't be bad.11 Jun 2007 13:47:27 GMT
Unattended problems tends to be stumbling blocks on the way of many people. Thanks for your job guys these things are happening in a real worl. I'm a journalist by the way but not afraid to say things change in the newsroom regardless of what you come with as a journalist.Fact is not so important in our media these days, what only matters is how much will you make out of each story appearing in each edition.