Tamil doctors, who served inside safe zone placed on trial

Friday, 05 June 2009

The three doctors treating patients inside the no-fire zone at very dire situation and openly speaking about shelling civilian areas and civilian casualities during the conflict between government forces and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are expected to be placed on trial.

The minister has told BBC that the doctors must be produced in court every month while investigations proceed pending possible charges. The investigation could last up to a year, but there might be extensions to that, he has added.

The three doctors who are detained by CID, Colombo gave detailed reports on shelling in civilian areas during the last days of the conflict between government forces and the LTTE. The Sri Lankan government has accused the medical professionals of colluding with the rebels.
In the absence of international media and aid agencies the three doctors were the most reliable sources for information to outside world, enen UN was depended on them. It is learnt that local offices at UN and ICRC gave assurance for their safety to work inside safe zone.

ABC, Australia has interviewd the Sri Lankan Minister of Human Rights and Disaster Management and Susannah Sirkin, Deputy Director of Physicians for Human Rights regarding the detention of these three doctors.

Listen to ABC interview

Sri Lanka's Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told ABC radio that the doctors were making false accusations about government forces shelling civilians. There was no shelling on the part of the government forces, because we had gone on record at the highest level to say that we would not resort to shelling, he said.

He further accused them of being part of conspiracy, he said "these doctors were inside the no fire zone, which was totally under the control of the LTTE and we believe the doctors were used or maybe they were part of that whole conspiracy."

In an interview with BBC World TV, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohita Bogollagama said that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had full access to them.

Mr Bogollagama said to BBC that the issue was whether the pair had been looking after civilians or whether they had been used by the rebels "for other purposes".

John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief praised them as 'heroic,' but now the same doctors languishing in detention and "What is the heroic act the doctors have done in terms of supporting the Tamil Tigers agenda?" the Minister has asked BBC.

Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told the BBC they are being detained at the Criminal Investigation Department on "reasonable suspicion of collaboration with the LTTE".

"I don't know what the investigations would reveal but maybe they were even part of that whole conspiracy to put forward this notion that government forces were shelling and targeting hospitals and indiscriminately targeting civilians as a result of the shelling," he said.

The doctors are expected to be produced in courts and give their confession.
Minister said "I can't reveal all the details of the confessions [by the doctors], but you will see when they appear in court," indicating that the doctors were likely to retract accusations that government forces were responsible for the shelling. "There was a lot publicity that we launched an attack on a hospital. That publicity was given due to the three doctors," Samarasinghe said. "Now they are in the custody of the CID, under detention orders. Soon they will be produced in court. You will hear what really happened."
Under Sri Lanka's emergency laws and said the doctors could be held in detention for up to a year. Under Sri Lanka's emergency laws, they must be produced in court once a month.

The situation has drawn and angry response from human rights groups. Deputy Director of Physicians for Human Rights, Susannah Sirkin in an interview to ABC said the government must release the men.

Sirkin said this is really an appaling effort to suppress information in a conflict and also basically to deny mediacal doctors the ethical duty they have as professionals to prevent and limit the suffering of patients in their care.

The Physicians for human rights has praised the courage of the three Sri Lankans and said they were only doing their jobs.

"It is a doctor's duty to speak out to protect their patients. These physicians were doing nothing more than following the hypocaratic oath and the Geneva conventions," she has told ABC radio.

The former conflict zone in the north of the country is still tightly controlled. Journalists are only able to visit the displacement camps with the approval and supervision of the Sri Lankan military. The civilians in the camps are unable to leave. The true death toll from the final battles of the war, remains unknown.

Separately, Sri Lanka's foreign secretary, Palitha Kohona, has been speaking of the government-run camps where more than 250,000 Tamils from the war zone are detained.

BBC noted him saying, everyone there had to be carefully screened, it was "quite likely" that even many elderly people were "with the LTTE, at least mentally".
News edited by Tamil National [ editor@tamilnational.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ]

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Source: Tamil National