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 …