Published 15 July 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2873
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b2873

News

Doctors say that the Tamil Tigers forced them to lie

Nayanah Siva

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Five doctors who were working in the no fire zone in northern Sri Lanka earlier this year have retracted reports they gave about numbers of civilian deaths in the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebels. The doctors, who are being held in custody by the government, say they were forced to report these figures by the Tamil Tigers. However, international human rights organisations have questioned the reliability of the doctors’ latest comments.

In a press conference on 8 July, at the government’s National Media Centre for National Security in Colombo, the doctors said that the Tamil Tigers forced them to exaggerate the numbers of deaths of civilians and to lie about other details they had reported during their time in the no fire zone.

On 18 May Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, declared that the 26 year war with the Tamil Tigers was over.

During . . . [Full text of this article]


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