Without treating my wounds, I was compelled to tell lies, says Doctor Varatharajah in New York Symposium

Doctor Varatharaja Thurairajah said that, he was able to learn later from the UN Panel of Experts that, the GPS satellite communications facilities provided to the Sri Lankan Army, by the ICRC, for the purpose of identifying the location of the hospitals set up by ICRC and avoid attacking them, were used by the army to locate hospitals and deliberately attack them.

On the morning of May 15, weak with hunger and exhausted by weeks of unceasing work, I came out of a bunker to drink water. For my bad luck an exploding shell wounded me badly. I was ordered to get to the Sri Lanka Government check-point with my colleagues. I was not admitted to the hospital for treatment. Instead, I was detained in a secret location for 10 days without any communication with the outside world, inquired by the CID, threatened and compelled to give false information to the outside world. He said.

In a symposium organized by the Boston Amnesty International, in the New York town, on Friday, Dr. Varatharaja delivered a speech on “The Ragihar Manoharan, the Trinco Five, and Final Days of the Sri Lankan Civil War”.

More than 1,000 US students participated in this symposium. The Human Rights activists of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Tibet delivered speeches on the Human Rights Violations that occurred in their respective countries.

At the end of this symposium, more than 1,000 students who participated in this symposium, held a protest demonstration in front of the Sri Lankan Embassy calling for justice be delivered to the killed students. Similar demonstrations were held in front of the embassies of Syria, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Dr.Varatharajah, gave a detailed discourse on the Human Rights violations of the Sri Lankan Army, and how the people were killed by deprivation of food and medicine and the indiscriminate shell and air attacks.

He explained there, how the Sri Lankan Army declared certain areas as “No Fire Zones” and promised that if the people go there they will be protected and then went on attack the same “No fire zones” declared by them with artillery and Air bombing.

The Sri Lankan government deliberately deprived the people of the war area of food and medicine, said Dr.Varatharajah, describing these acts as systematic Human Rights Violations.

He also said that he was threatened and compelled to give false information about the war while the wounds on his body were not treated for three months.

The Government in power in Sri Lanka is dragging its feet in punishing the perpetrators of the murders of 5 Trincomalee students and those who are responsible for the war crimes in the final war, he accused.

Excerpt of the speech is available below:

In January 2009 I began working at the government hospital in a town called Puthukudiyiruppu in the Mullaithivu District in north-eastern Sri Lanka. It was in an area controlled at that time by LTTE rebels.

By then, Mullaithivu had become the home of thousands of Tamil refugees fleeing from the Sri Lankan military. As it advanced, the Sri Lanka army systematically shelled and bombed from the air, civilian targets, claiming that LTTE rebels were firing at the army while hiding among civilians. The bloodshed and devastation were enormous.

Further, the Sri Lanka military deliberately targeted No Fire Zones that government officials solemnly promised would be safe for civilians. Puthukudiyiruppu hospital where I worked was in the midst of it.

Despite very heavy odds, we worked in the hospital until in one day three shells fired by the Sri Lanka Army exploded inside the wards and operating theatre forcing us to evacuate.

Between then and May 2009, we worked only in makeshift field hospitals. We had to move four times, but every location was shelled. At that time I had trouble understanding this because the International Red Cross had given Sri Lankan government authorities the GPS coordinates of the hospital. It was only after the war ended a UN Panel of Experts, using satellite imagery and other evidence stated that Sri Lanka government troops had deliberately directed artillery fire at the GPS coordinates.

This was not all. The Government deliberately restricted food supply to starve the civilian population remaining in the rebel-held areas into submission as well as reduced supplies of blood, anaesthetics and pharmaceuticals making it impossible for us to care for the wounded.

Needless to say this was a time of unbearable stress for me and other doctors. We decided the one thing left for us to do: letting the international community know the plight of the hundreds of thousands of civilians who had become targets of systematic violence. We spoke every day to the UN, ICRC and the international media about the dilemma confronting civilians in Sri Lanka’s killing fields.

Little did we envisage the consequences!

By 14 May we realised there was no way we could continue working. For one, most of the population had moved into Government-controlled areas. But there were no supplies, or a safe place to treat patients, or food either. On the morning of May 15, weak with hunger and exhausted by weeks of unceasing work, I came out of a bunker to drink water. For my bad luck an exploding shell wounded me badly. Worse was to follow. Even as my colleagues gave me first aid, the army moved in and surrounded us.

Despite excruciating pain, I was ordered to get to the Sri Lanka Government check-point with my colleagues. There began an ordeal that was to last many months. Once the army found out who I was, despite my wounds, I was held in a secret detention centre and relentlessly interrogated by the Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, of the Sri Lanka Police. I was threatened during these sessions. It was only after 10 days of entering Government custody that they finally took me to hospital. During that time I could not speak to my family, nor had I access to my lawyers. I was held incommunicado. This was the time Amnesty International was informed about my detention and disappearance from public contact.

 We were so harshly treated by Sri Lankan Government authorities.  It was because we had spoken to international organisations and the media of what we had seen – the Government military shelling and bombing hospitals and not supplying adequate food or medicines for non-combatants. In other words, we were punished for exercising our freedom of speech to speak the truth. Because our words had made a hole in the government’s argument that it had inflicted no casualties – yes that what it claimed: zero casualties in the fighting!

I was told by government authorities to publicly recant my statements made to the international media, the UN and others in the warzone. I was told to say I was forced to lie by the LTTE rebels. If I refused to recant I would held in indefinite detention. In fact surgery for my wounds was delayed by three months to force me to retract my earlier statements. It was a time of great fear as many Tamil civilians were tortured and disappearing. With no other practical option left, my colleagues and I went on TV and ‘confessed’ what the Government wanted.

You might ask me what has all this to do with the Trinco Five. They were five boys – all civilians and ethnic Tamils. One of them was Rajigar Manoharan. They had assembled on the beachfront in Trincomalee on January 2^nd 2006 to celebrate news that Rajigar had been accepted by a university in Sri Lanka for study. As they sat speaking, a grenade was lobbed in their midst. It exploded injuring at least some of them. As they tried to move away a jeep approached from which armed men in civvies got down and shot them at point blank range as they pleaded for their lives.

You might think this killing occurred in the fog of war. It did not – it happened during a ceasefire. You might think it happened in a dark lonesome alleyway. But it happened on a beach where the public witnessed it. You might even think the murderers are not known. But they are named as part of an elite police unit, including the officer who ordered the killing. Despite all this and a domestic commission of inquiry called the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission recommending in 2011 there was sufficient evidence for a trial, no trial has begun. Ten years after the incident the killers roam free.

The case of the Trinco Five was something that can be tried under Sri Lanka’s domestic laws as murder. But it has not been, despite exhortations by the international community to do so.

It is because Sri Lanka’s legal system, including the judiciary, dodged trying and punishing the murder of the Trinco Five in 2006, and many other killings like this in Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war, that the mass atrocities of 2009, of which I was witness, could occur. By 2009 the police and the military were well aware of the impunity they enjoyed. It is the confidence that they would not be held accountable by a domestic court of law that persuaded senior military officers to unleash mass-scale death and destruction in 2009.

Today, the UN Human Rights Council describes what happened in 2009 as possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has recommended a tribunal which includes international judges and prosecutors try the perpetrators, especially those at the apex of the chain of command. But the new Government in Sri Lanka has refused and insists on a court with local judges only. It’s not rocket science to figure out why: if the country’s legal and political systems have insulated the murderers of the Trinco Five from justice, surely war criminals too can survive?

It is precisely for that reason I believe your activism has to be strong. When you go today to bring to the attention of the Sri Lanka mission in New York that the government it represents stands accused of murdering five boys in 2006 and that their killers remain at large, please remember something else too. The Government now installed in Sri Lanka is not only dragging its feet on prosecuting the murderers of the Trinco Five, but also war criminals who have, according to the UN, killed at least 40,000 people. Therefore, be purposeful and strong knowing that your determination and fervour, not only today but in the future too, while focused on bringing redress to the Trinco Five also has a larger scope – bringing justice to thousands of victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity.