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
The Sri Lankan parliament has approved an additional 20% budget for the country’s military for the remainder of this year.
The government says the cash boost is necessary despite the end of the long-running war in May because the security forces still need strengthening.
That was the government’s argument as it pushed for an additional $300m to be added to the military budget.
The extra cash is on top of the record $1.6bn already allocated this year.
The money was approved by parliament which also extended by a further month the country’s state of emergency, nearly five months after the end of the war.
The extra revenue is to fund the armed forces’ fuel and medical supplies and provide compensation for those who were injured or died.
The army, navy and air force will all benefit.
An opposition politician, speaking in parliament, asked why the extra military budget was needed given the end of the conflict.
Parts of the island remain heavily fortified.
The authorities say they must prevent any resurgence of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels.
There are plans to set up two major new military bases in areas captured from the Tigers and to increase military surveillance of the north which will last long after the planned resettlement of Tamil displaced people currently interned in camps.
The country is plastered with posters glorifying the armed forces, most of them in the majority Sinhalese language whose speakers constitute the vast bulk of the military.
WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday called on the Sri Lankan government to allow Tamil refugees displaced by recent fighting to move freely around the country.
Assistant US Secretary of State Robert Blake, who is focussed on US relations with central and southern Asia, “emphasized the importance of the government allowing freedom of movement for IDPs,” or internally displaced people, read a State Department statement.
While the Sri Lankan government “has made some progress easing camp congestion, registering IDPs, and expanding access by humanitarian organizations, much remains to be done,” Blake said.
Blake also “underscored the importance of political reconciliation” in Sri Lanka, where some 250,000 people who were displaced by fighting between troops and Tamil Tiger separatists have remained in the state-run camps since the rebels were defeated in May.
In order to reach a lasting peace, the Sri Lankan government must “promote justice and political reconciliation for all parties and dialogue with all parties, including Tamils inside and outside Sri Lanka, on new mechanisms for devolving power.”
Sri Lanka “must also seek to improve human rights and accountability,” he said.
Blake met Friday with Sri Lankan-Americans, and urged them to “seek opportunities to channel their resources and expertise toward supporting national reconciliation and the reconstruction of Sri Lanka.”
The Sri Lankan government has been widely criticized for holding refugees indefinitely, but it insists it needs time to weed out Tiger fighters hidden among the displaced civilians.
Some 12.6 percent of the island’s 20 million inhabitants are of Tamil descent.
The United Nations has said that up to 7,000 civilians may have perished in the first few months of this year when government troops escalated their offensive against the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Blake “reviewed the long friendship between the US and Sri Lanka, noting that the United States has provided over 56 million dollars in humanitarian assistance in 2009, including 6.6 million dollars in de-mining assistance,” the statement read.
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?
AMA (NSW) has voiced concern for the safety and wellbeing of three doctors missing in Sri Lanka since Friday 15 May 2009. In a letter to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith MP, AMA (NSW) President Dr Brian Morton called on the Australian Government to demand the Sri Lankan Government account for the missing doctors.
Dr Thangamuttu Sathiyamoorthy, Regional Director of health services in Kilinochchi, Dr Thurairajah Varatharajah, Regional Director of health services in Mullaitivu and Dr V. Shanmugarajah, were employed by the Sri Lankan Government to treat sick and wounded civilians trapped in the conflict zone and continued to do so in makeshift facilities even after shelling and bombardment attacks.
The doctors had reported on conditions in the conflict zone, banned to journalists. Amnesty International has received reports doctors V.
Shanmugarajah and T. Sathiyamoorthy may currently be held at the Terrorist Investigation Division in Colombo and Dr Varatharajah has been seriously injured. The doctors’ families remain unsure of their whereabouts and do not have access to a lawyer.
“Despite the doctors’ heroic efforts to help thousands of displaced civilians amid ongoing threats to their own personal safety, it is now widely feared they may be held prisoner in reprisal for providing information about civilians in the conflict zone,” AMA (NSW) President, Dr Brian Morton said.
Media Contacts:
Andrea Kunz (02) 9439 8822/ 0407 776 581
Tanzeem Parkar (02) 9439 8822/ 0419 402 955
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 ?
