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Doctors admit to spreading wrong information

— Photo: AFP

Sri Lankan Tamil doctor Shammugaraja (left) at a press conference in Colombo on Wednesday.

COLOMBO: Five Tamil doctors, who have been charged by the Sri Lankan military with aiding the LTTE during the last phase of Eelam War IV and spreading false propaganda, admitted at a news conference here on Wednesday that they passed on wrong information on civilian casualties to the media at the behest of the Tigers.

In his extended interview to The Hindu on June 30, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa had said: “I told them to organise a press conference. Let the doctors come and say what they have to say”.

Of the five doctors, Satyamoorthy, Vartharaja and Illanchelliyan were government doctors while Sivapalan and Shanmugraja were part of the LTTE medical corps. They were introduced to the media by a person who initially claimed to represent “free media” and on being asked to clarify, called himself a “freelancer” and later changed it to “working for government media”.

The five doctors surrendered in the middle of May. Since then, they are being investigated for their links to the LTTE.

Clean shaven and healthy, they looked bewildered as they answered questions in English and Tamil, with the person who introduced them acting at times as a translator. “The LTTE forced us to give figures [statistics on dead civilians]. Figures were exaggerated due to LTTE pressure. We were in LTTE-controlled area. We had to do what the LTTE told us,” was the general refrain to most of the questions.

Dr. Varatharajan, who was quoted extensively during the last phase of the war by a section of the international media, said that between 350 and 400 civilians were killed in the fighting between April 15 and May 15. The war was declared over on May 18.

He said the doctors were working under a lot of pressure and risk to their lives. “If we had not been there, the casualty figures couldn’t have been this. With heavy risk, we worked for the civilians,” he said. Another 350 to 400 civilians were killed during the period between January and middle of April, he said.

The final civilian death toll the doctors had given from the war zone on May 13 was 530 for the week preceding. They had mentioned exploding shells, lack of medicine and the number of wounded piling up. Today, the blame fell on the LTTE for cornering medical supplies and shooting civilians trying to escape.

The death toll they reported was contrary to the claim of “more than a thousand killed” circulated by pro-LTTE media during the final military push. The U.N. had called the final stage of the war as a “bloodbath” and estimated that over 6,000 civilians were killed.

Civilian deaths were separate from that of LTTE cadres, they said. “Bodies of LTTE cadres were not brought to the hospital. They had their own arrangement. We treated wounded LTTE cadres,” said Dr. Shammugaraja, adding they did not interact with any LTTE leader.

When asked about their current condition, one doctor first said they were in a “better prison than the LTTE prison” but quickly changed it to “protective custody… We are kept in an office…the rooms are big, compared to the battle zone”. When asked what if they changed their story later, Dr. Varatharaja said: “Now, we are free from any pressure. We can say the truth.”.

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