Listen to Derryn's powerful editorial and interview with Gordon Weiss, former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka below 

HINCH: On a similar Tuesday a few weeks ago Twitter was over-heating, emails were pouring into Canberra by the thousand and radio talkback lines were justifiably red hot.

All of it triggered by a devastating 4 Corners program the night before about  cruelty to animals in Indonesian abattoirs.

Last night the ABC aired another documentary. Another even more disturbing  4 Corners report from Britain’s Channel 4  showing the rapes and executions and hospital bombings at the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009.

An estimated 40,000 civilians died.  The report was called ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields'. The footage showed women being stripped, raped and murdered. Their  bodies tossed on trucks and into pits like we saw in the grainy footage of the Holocaust.

Temporary hospitals were deliberately targeted by government troops after being given the coordinates by the Red Cross for protection. Thousands of people were herded into so-called No Fire Zones and then attacked.

Last night’s almost unwatchable program did not receive a smidgen of the outrage or protests that the animal slaughter did.

I tweeted: ‘Weird world. Outrage after 4 Corners on animal cruelty.  Virtually nothing after program on rape and genocide in Sri Lanka last night’.

It is weird. And sad. One argument put forward is that the animals are innocent and defenceless. And yet these women who were brutalised were innocent and defenceless.

The savagery, along with chilling boasts from their rapists, were recorded on the Sri Lankan government troops’ own mobile phones.

Images that the Sri Lankan Government claims are fakes – despite a recent  United Nations three-man panel investigation that war crimes and crimes against humanity did occur.  And some of the men who ordered that genocide are still in power.

A short time after the carnage was broadcast Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd was interviewed on the ABC’s Lateline by Ali Moore.

They talked about carbon tax, the election in Thailand, Malaysia and asylum seekers, the live cattle trade and the battle for control of the Australia broadcast network.

The ghastly footage we had just seen did not rate a mention. And you wonder are member countries of the UN that impotent or that political?  Why isn’t Australia leading the demands for charges to be laid against war criminals in the International Court in The Hague?

It is true that in their 25-year civil war the Tamil Tigers were brutal. They invented the suicide bomber. But we are talking about civilians here.

The UN has been quick to rightly brand Colonel Gaffafi a war criminal and Australia’s has been in the diplomatic forefront over Libya.

But where are you, closer to home, on Sri Lanka, Mr. Rudd? Ms Gillard? Would it raise too many embarrassing questions about asylum seekers?  Because any one of those targeted civilians who escaped the rape and the pillage could rightly claim to be a refugee. They were treated worse than cattle in Indonesia. As I said: Weird.

Footnote: Watching 4 Corners last night I thought: What is obscene? They showed rape victims’ naked breasts, bloodied bodies and torn clothes. The world needed to see it. But they obscured their genitals for the purposes of decency. They showed the dead bodies being tossed on trucks like road kill. Showed live prisoners bound and blindfolded being shot in the head. Dead and dying hospital patients. And suffering children. That was the real obscenity.                

RE-PLAY Derryn's powerful editorial and interview with former UN Sri Lankan spokesperson Gordon Weiss here

EARLIER: Callers phoned Neil Mitchell on Tuesday demanding the Federal Government take some action against Sri Lanka in the wake of Four Corners' graphic program on Monday night.

The ABC program showed gruesome images of civillians' dead, naked and raped bodies stemming from the country's civil conflict involving the Tamil Tigers.

After the program went to air, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd tweeted: "#4corners tonight on Sri Lanka deeply disturbing. UN Human Rights Council can't simply push this to one side. Action needed. KRudd."

Listen now to the TV segment on Neil Mitchell's Program.

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Neil is one of Australia’s most experienced journalists with success in newspapers, radio and television. He was one of the youngest editors of a daily metropolitan newspaper, The Herald. Enter Neil's highlights page for videos. replays and news.