Moderators: Dr. Meera Selvakone BSc, MD, CCFP and John Argue, Amnesty International Canada
Description: Dr. T. Sathiyamoorthy, Dr. V. Shanmugarajah and Dr. T. Varatharajah were government-employed physicians detained without charge after saving thousands of lives during the war in Sri Lanka in 2009. This panel discussion will focus on the circumstances around their cases, and explore the concepts of medical neutrality and ethical duty to patients during war. Panelists will also touch on the broader themes of press freedom, detention without charge, and human rights violations as they pertain to the doctors’ story.
Sponsored by - Save the Doctors Campaign and Amnesty International Canada
Co-sponsored by – Centre for South Asian Studies and Asian Institute
SRI LANKA: Aid Organisations Struggle to Operate in Post-war Sri Lanka
The Sri Lankan government wants the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to scale down its operations in the country, but is sparing other international nongovernmental organisations amid questions over the post-war role for humanitarian workers.
Sarasi Wijeratne, ICRC spokesperson in Colombo, this week confirmed that they were shutting down four offices in the eastern region. These offices had 148 local staff and up to 10 expatriates, out of its total strength of 649. Read full article here.
Sri Lanka: War-Wounded and Displaced Patients Flood MSF Hospitals
An update from MSF – Click here.
Colombo’s order to the Red Cross to cut back its work at Tamil internment camps is an outrage. The world must boycott Sri Lanka until it starts releasing detainees
There is something despicable about forcing doctors to lie about war crimes. By their calling, doctors are committed to relieving human suffering, to helping the sick and preventing disease. It is therefore particularly disturbing to see the five doctors who remained with the besieged Tamil civilians as the Sri Lankan Army closed in being paraded before journalists to deny their earlier casualty reports. Men who risked their lives to save lives are now being forced to take part in a political charade to cover up the appalling suffering two months ago — suffering that is still being inflicted on 300,000 Tamils interned in detention camps in northern Sri Lanka.
As the army squeezed the Tamil Tigers into an ever smaller strip of beach, the doctors were the only source of news about the slaughter caused by the military’s indiscriminate shelling. The United Nations found that more than 7,000 civilians were killed between January and May. Subsequent aerial photographs of beach graves, revealed in The Times, suggested that the figure was more than 20,000. World outrage embarrassed the Colombo Government. The doctors were swiftly arrested and nothing further was heard of them until Wednesday.
Their recantation, clearly made under duress, was as ludicrous as it was humiliating. Mechanically rehearsed but clearly nervous, they drastically reduced the death toll estimates, denied that a key hospital had been shelled and insisted that they had been forced to exaggerate the totals by Tiger fighters. In response the UN yesterday asserted tersely that it stood by its figures.
Few people will be fooled by Colombo’s crude attempt at a propaganda victory. For the Government took a far more sinister and callous step yesterday when it ordered the International Committee of the Red Cross to scale back its operations in Sri Lanka, leave the camps where it has been monitoring conditions and halt its aid programmes. The need for expatriate assistance was much less now than before, the Government asserted. Sri Lankans were fully able to meet all the needs of those detained in “welfare villages”.
The claim is an outrageous lie. Senior international aid figures said yesterday that about 1,400 people a week are dying at one of the big internment camps. Tamil civilians, rounded up after the government victory on the pretext of a security need to weed out former fighters, are suffering from hunger, disease, insanitary conditions, overcrowding and the enforced separation of families. The Government has taken almost no steps to free them. Indeed, a former Sri Lankan foreign minister has accused it of a policy of deliberate “ethnic cleansing” to change the population balance.
Colombo’s order puts the Red Cross in a difficult position. Historically, it has rarely spoken out — even about Nazi concentration camps — so as not to jeopardise access to those in greatest danger. It was the only aid agency allowed inside the war zone in the final stages of the conflict. But its few statements angered the Government. Sri Lanka wants no witnesses to what is now being done in these modern concentration camps.
If the Red Cross is forced to withdraw, however, the outside world should step in. The Sri Lankan Government is awaiting a $1.9 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to address its balance-of-payments crisis and postwar development. None of this money should be paid until independent aid agencies are guaranteed access to the Tamil camps and until Sri Lanka starts to release those detained. Other world bodies — the Commonwealth, the United Nations and even world cricketing organisations — should boycott Colombo until reconciliation begins. A nation cannot run concentration camps and expect the world to look away.
On 8th July 2009, Sri Lankan Government paraded 5 Tamil Doctors (Dr. T.Sathiyamoorthy, Dr. T.Varatharaja, Dr V.Shanmugaraja, Dr. Illancheliyan Pallavan and Dr. S. Sivapalan ), who are currently under Sri Lankan Military Intelligence custody for nearly 2 months, in an effort to cover-up its War Crime Evidences. Those five doctors who acted as the eyes and ears of the world during Sri Lankan Government’s War Without Witness waged in Vanni recanted their previous reporting under duress, sources close to their families confirmed to “War Without Witness”.
The whole drama was staged at Sri Lankan Defence Ministry, ‘Media Centre for National Security’ and moderated by Mr Jeyarajan Yogaraj, son of a Sri Lankan Police Officer and a full time employee of Sri Lankan State Media, Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation & Rupavahini TV ‘eye’ Channel.
Under duress, The doctors said that only up to 750 civilians were killed between January and mid-May in the final battles of the war in 2009, a number far below the 20,000 Civilian casualty documented with identities confirmed and published by War Without Witness on 13th June 2009 ( http://warwithoutwitness.com/SLCasualityReport/ ).
Sam Zarifi, the Asia-pacific director for Amnesty International, said that the statements from the doctors were “expected and predicted”. “There are very significant grounds to question whether these statements were voluntary, and they raise serious concerns whether the doctors were subjected to ill-treatment during weeks of detention,” he said. “From the time the doctors were detained, the fear was that they would be used exactly this way.”
” The doctors, who appeared physically well but extremely nervous at the press conference”. ”Their recantation, clearly made under duress, was as ludicrous as it was humiliating. Mechanically rehearsed but clearly nervous, they drastically reduced the death toll estimates, denied that a key hospital had been shelled and insisted that they had been forced to exaggerate the totals by Tiger fighters. “ said The Time, UK
Considering the below facts, War Without Witness, urge main stream media, Human Rights organisations, Governments and Policy makers to be vigilant of these type of Sri Lankan Government Propaganda and also urge United Nations to not act like “club-of-governments” but rather act as a true voice of people & bring those perpetrators of Sri Lankan War Crimes into justice without fail & further delay.
Facts speak for It-Self
1) 20,000 Civilian casualty in 2009 has been documented with identities confirmed (including photos of the victims) and published by War Without Witness on 13th June 2009 ( http://warwithoutwitness.com/SLCasualityReport/ ).
3) UN withheld casualty is 20,000. U.N. official figures show more than 7,000 civilians were killed between January and May. Human rights groups accused the government of shelling heavily populated areas and accused the rebels of holding civilians as human shields. Satellite photos showed densely populated civilian areas had been shelled. Both sides denied the accusations. When asked about the doctors’ latest comments, U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said: “We stand by our statements.”
Source: http://www.innercitypress.com/3832_001.pdf , http://www.innercitypress.com/untrip3may3srilanka060209.html
4) Injured causality of more than 12,000 Tamils were transferred from Puthumattalan War Zone to Trincomalle by ship (more than 20 times) with assistance of I C R C. In addition, I C R C was assisted to transfer the injured people through land route to Vavuniya hospital and Mannar hospitals.
Full Name List ( First 10 Ships ) : http://warwithoutwitness.com/SLCasualityReport/Annex02_ICRC_Ship_PatientList.pdf
6) On 2nd July 2009 , an eyewitness said, “There 35,000 children in the camps and out of which around 1,800 are orphans. “ This would equate to a minimum of 3600 causality ( ie both parents have been killed ).
Social Welfare Deputy Minister Lionel Premasri, officially confirmed on 9th July 2009, that there are 2,800 disabled people in camps amongst 300,00 detained IDPs. Who caused this huge scale of injuries ?
Source: http://www.groundviews.org/2009/07/02/an-eye-witness-account-of-idp-camp-conditions-in-sri-lanka/
7) Mr Rajiva Wijesinha, permanent secretary in Sri Lanka’s ministry of disaster management and human rights, confessed to Guardian on 4th June that the civilian death toll from the last stages of the war as 3,000 to 5,000. Will there be another parade by Rajiva ?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/04/sri-lanka-civilians-tigers-battle
If the hospital and civilians were not indiscriminately targeted by Sri Lankan Armed Forces, how one of the doctors paraded by Sri Lankan Government have injuries in his hand ?
9) S Kanthasamy Tharmakulasingham, Administrative Officer Health Department Mullaithivu – Makeshift Hospital was killed in an indiscriminate attack on hospital on 12th May 2009. On 2nd Feb 2009, A nurse who was attending a wounded patient at Udaiyaarkaddu makeshift hospital was killed when 3 shells hit the hospital. How they have been killed if there is no such indiscriminate attack by Sri Lankan Armed Forces on Hospitals?
10) Dr. T.Sathiyamoorthy, Dr. T.Varatharaja, Dr V.Shanmugaraja, Dr. Illancheliyan Pallavan and Dr. S. Sivapalan who served the many thousands of civilians stranded in the so called “no fire zone” under the most difficult conditions of continuous aerial and artillery attacks, and have been hailed by the UN as heroes, Will the Sri Lankan Government release them immediately and recommend them for their well deserved UN award?
Inner City Press – On Sri Lanka, Norway Worried by Camps, WHO by Doctors, Bill Clinton on Tsunami
As the UN brags about it role in building more and more permanent shelters in Sri Lanka’s internment camps for Tamil, on Monday Inner City Press asked Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Garh Stoere if his country is assisting with the camps. “Mostly humanitarian,” he said. “We don’t get access as a country to the camps, we support the ICRC and UN agencies… it’s an uphill battle.”
Inner City Press asked about the use of funds to lock up Sri Lankan citizens for essentially political screening. “It’s a great dilemma,” said Jonas Garh Stoere. “The war is over, but there are almost 300,000 people in camps. If they are not quickly resettled, normalized, our past experience shows us that temporary camps can become permanent. That should not happen here.”
But the UN in New York seems to believe it is best not to criticize the Rajapaksa government, and to downplay problems with the camps. In that context, the World Health Organization’s Margaret Chan has gotten involved in pleading with Sri Lanka’s government the case of the doctors were remained in the “No Fire” Zone offering treatment and casualty figures, it emerged Monday at the UN.
Still, the Rajapaksa administration says that the doctors, detained since last month, will be put on trial. Doctor Chan said told Inner City Press that “the UN’s position is very clear. Doctors working in the humanitarian space should maintain neutrality, do their work and be protected. And I, we have been following up with the regional office on this issue.” Video here, from Minute 7:46.
Transcript:
John Whitehall: I was involved in the Tsunami relief and I had long service leave, I volunteered to go back as a pediatrician to work anywhere. I was originally going to work in Batticaloa, but the organisation received a request for a pediatrician to teach what were described as medical students in Killinochchi. So it didn’t make any difference to me, and I went to Killinochchi. And, as it turns out, the students, there were 32 of them, comprised the medical wing of the Tamil Tigers. ‘Medical practitioners’ is a strange name for them. They have infact been running surgical units in the various clashes. They have been looking after people with cholera and all sorts of other diseases. So they are very experienced people. To finish their medical degree, they needed a course on pediatrics. So, I came an extended that two weeks for three months and we did some research projects and other things.
Question: So what sort of qualifications? Do you mean Sri Lankan qualifications?
John Whitehall: Well in 1992, Prabaharan realised that they were very vulnerable without their own doctors. Until that stage they were sending casualties in fishing boats across to Tamil Nadu where they had sympathisers and they were using the teaching hospital in Jaffna, and they thought they would probably loose access to that, as they did. So in ‘92, he decided they needed their own medical wing and indeed the commanders were asked to identify people who would make good doctors from the ranks of the [LTTE] army. And a number of these had finished college degrees, but infact some of them hadn’t even finished their high school. So they started with 75 students and they began a course, a curriculum in parallel with the curriculum in the established medical school in Jaffna. It ran for about two years and then with the clashes increasing at various stages then, the students were assigned to what became field hospitals as the whole of the medical apparatus of the Tigers matured, and when the war would settle down, they got on with their theoretical studies and other things. So, I happened upon them many years after they had first started. And I just happened to fill that hiatus of formal pediatric teaching. Now they call themselves the Medical College of Tamil Eelam and of course it is not recognised by the government in Colombo.
Question: Do you think that the qualifications are equivalent?
John Whitehall: Oh yes. Yes in many ways. These people had reached the stage of doing end-to-end arterial anastomosis under torchlight with essentially imperfect anesthesia during bombardment from artillery, with the shrapnel hitting their compound. Now that is quite sophisticate surgery under those circumstances. The whole medical apparatus developed from essentially a bandage approach to their casualties, trying to keep them alive by putting them onto a boat and taking them to Tamil Nadu, to a really sophisticated four-stage series of handling of casualties, from when somebody is hit – passed back 50 or 70 meters to people behind and then to a third stage hospital and then to a fourth stage hospital. In the midst of this they developed battle field blood transfusions which the Sri Lankan army does not have even now and the reconstructive surgery and the whole thing is a really fascinating story. This is not a little group of guerrillas wandering around in the jungle. This was a very sophisticated medical apparatus that kept many many people alive who would have otherwise died. And they are doing that right now. I have no doubts about it.
Question: What was the organisation that you dealt with that actually got you across the line into the Tiger controlled areas?
John Whitehall: Yeah, well, I’m not going to tell you that because 3 to 5 Tamils every day of every week disappear in white vans, never to be seen again. The human rights abuses by the government in Colombo ought to be known by Australians but they are not, and I have no wish to tell you who I was associated with because of the extremely serious risks to their life. Even, even more Tamils these days, I hear reliably that even more Tamils are being rounded up in Colombo and other places and are suffering all kinds of abuses. It is a very very dreadful situation.
Question: But you are still in touch with people in the Tiger-controlled areas at this stage?
John Whitehall: No, indirectly I only hear. Until Killinochchi fell they were able to send out, you know, they could use satellite phones and it was not difficult to talk to people. But now, with their moving back and taking refuge in the jungles, I don’t think anyone has much contact with them. I certainly don’t.
Questions: When you went into the Tiger controlled areas, you must have been aware that they were listed by the United Nations and others as a terrorist group. What did you feel about that?
John Whitehall: Well, at that stage there was a ceasefire which had started in 2002 and I was with a recognised international aid organisation, and I was going to teach medical students in inverted commas how to look after sick children. It wasn’t until I was with them for two or three weeks that I learnt of who they were. And I made a studied decision as indeed I have discussed with the Federal Police in this country, I made a decision to stay because I was teaching them how to look after sick children.
Question: How come you were talking to the Federal Police about it?
John Whitehall: Under the new terrorist laws what the definition of recklesslesly supporting a terrorist organisation has been raised and the police came after a very misleading article in the Australian, where it was alleged that I was supporting the LTTE as an orgnisation, which I have not done. I was questioned on my activities. And I do not apologise for them. I taught theses people how to resuscitate and how to teach sick children and that is a pediatrician’s duty.
Question: Do you feel under any continuing pressure at all because you have been associated with the LTTE?
John Whitehall: No, I don’t. I think people understand that position. But let’s take this a little bit further. I mean the definition of terrorist. I have never denied that there is evidence the LTTE has used terror. I have never denied that and I have never said that this was an acceptable thing. What I have said in a number of articles and interviews over these last couple of years is that it must be seen in the context of the State terror which has been and is being inflicted on the government in Colombo. All we hear about from the media and I don’t know why that is so, is the activities of the LTTE. We do not hear of the bombing of schools. One of the schools near where I worked and it was known to be a school – 65 girls or there abouts were killed a year or two back. The Deaf and Blind School where I did work and for which I raised money here and we bought solar heating – several of those deaf and blind children have been killed. The hospital near there with the unpronounceable name – Puthukudiyirruppu or something – my Tamil is rather weak. That has been bombed five times and most of the patients were killed in the last bombing. And this is a place everyone knows is a hospital, it has got red crosses on the roof or it did have, and it was flattened. And we don’t hear of these things and I have accused and I do accuse the government in Colombo of using outrageous use of terror and activities against civilians. And therefore what is terrorism? It caused me to ask this question. But what I’d do under these circumstances? And I asked the various doctors who I had contact with – Why did you join the LTTE? Why did you join this? And they almost to a man and a women – half of them were women – they said, “Well, the LTTE was the only organisation that was actually doing something. Others were talking but the LTTE was putting up and armed resistance”. “What did you want?” I asked. “What are your aims?” They wanted autonomy for the Tamil people and at least protection – the very least protection against the depredations of the government. Now we in Australia in the past have thought quite highly of certain organisations who had been doing that, such as the African National Congress, which we in those days called National Liberation Movement. I frankly see very little difference between…and the ANC did terrible things. I mean, they burnt people alive and bombed people – which was not good. But I don’t see any difference in reality between the ANC for example. Or if you want to take the analogy even further, the Viet Cong who were struggling for national independence or liberation. I think it gives a better understanding of the motivation of the Tamils when you talk of it as national liberation movement and just don’t dismiss it a terrorist organisation. Now let me say one more time, they have used terror and I don’t agree with that at all.
If the hospital and civilians were not indiscriminately targeted by Sri Lankan Armed Forces, how one of the doctors paraded by Sri Lankan Government have injuries in his hand ?
