|
 “We exaggerated figures of civilian casualties during the military operations in the North due to pressure from tiger terrorist organization” say doctors who worked in tiger controlled areas and now kept under detention by security forces.
Speaking to the media at the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) yesterday (8th) they said they had overstated the civilian casualties during interviews with reporters during the fighting because they were told to by tiger terrorists.
"We thought LTTE were liberators of the Tamil people. They forcibly recruit children and youth. 3 - 4 from every family. I treated girls and boys of 14 - 15 age group who had been child recruits. It was a useless war. Their strategy was to use civilians as a human shield and to mislead the international community and obtain their support. They shouldn't have brought the war to the no war zone. Now LTTE leadership is decimated and people are liberated. We hope government will develop the area and Tamil diasphora should support." said Dr. Sivapalan.
"Every day the LTTE people came to the hospital, they gave the list. This amount got injured, this amount dead, this area shells fell. We had to tell that list. Read it out. The list was wrong, they were exaggerated number," said Dr T Varatharajah. Dr V Shanmugarajah said, “When 60 were killed tigers asked us to say 1000 were killed.” The doctors said they believed that a total of 600-700 civilians had been killed, and nearly twice that injured, between the start of January and the end of the war.
They said the story about a hospital had been shelled in an incident in early February was not true. They also said shortages of food and medicine in the war zone arose only because the Tamil Tigers appropriated large quantities.
However, United Nations had given large numbers of civilian casualties in air raids by Security Forces figures for those killed and both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations had said a hospital was bombed by government forces.
Among the five doctors who participated in the media conference Dr. Sivapalan served in the LTTE medical corps and Dr. Shanmugaraja, Dr. Vardharaja, Dr. Sathyamoorthy and Dr. Ilancheliyan served the government hospitals before escaping.
 |
