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Release ‘heroic’ doctors and provide asylum immediately

May 20, 2009

Please take immediate action to release the three physicians illegally detained by the Sri Lankan government and provide asylum for them and their families. The three physicians, who recently worked in makeshift hospitals in Sri Lanka’s conflict zone, provided eyewitness accounts of the civilian carnage during the Sri Lankan government’s military offensive in the North.

We are concerned for the safety of these physicians, both while detained and upon their release. Sri Lanka has a long, bloody history of extrajudicial killings and these physicians are now prominent targets for attack. These physicians and their families must be granted asylum immediately.

Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights and Reporters Without Borders have already called for the release of Thangamuttu Sathiyamoorthy, Thurairajah Varatharajah and V. Shanmugarajah. These physicians acted as the sole source of information for the media and the rest of the world, due to the government’s restrictions on international aid groups and journalists in the conflict area. They reported about the large-scale civilian injuries and deaths from the continuous aerial bombardment and shelling into the “Safe Zone.”

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes stated, “These are people who performed absolutely heroically in the last few weeks and months, and deserve every praise and care.” Amnesty reported that Dr. Sathiyamoorthy and Dr. Shanmugarajah have been taken to Colombo, where they are being detained by the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID). Dr. Varatharajah, who was seriously injured, was transported by the Sri Lankan Air Force from the Omanthai checkpoint to an unknown location.

Amnesty International said that it was “concerned for the safety of the doctors” in detainment, and that “The government will be held responsible if the army's military victory is accompanied by such criminal acts of revenge against those have who have described the humanitarian tragedy.” We fear that if these doctors are released, they will be subject to revenge attacks by military, paramilitary, or Sinhala nationalist forces. We therefore urge you to ensure they are granted asylum before they are released.

The plight of these three physicians is shared by other Tamil humanitarian aid workers and human rights activists throughout the island. Local humanitarian aid staff is being held in the government’s internment camps, where they endure food and medical shortages in addition to physical and sexual abuse. We urge you to pressure the Sri Lankan government to allow all people held in its internment camps to return to their homes within days, not years as it currently plans.