The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has located three doctors who worked in the conflict zone, in northern Sri Lanka and were incommunicado from Saturday, after leaving the conflict zone, Monica Zanarelli, the ICRC’s deputy head of operations for South Asia said Friday.
He said, "yesterday (Thursday), in the context of our regular visits to places of detention in Sri Lanka, the ICRC was able to talk in private to three doctors from the Ministry of Health who had left the conflict area in recent days." The three of them were being held in detention.
We are looking for a fourth doctor, who was injured during the conflict and who is said to have been hospitalized, Monica Zanarelli said.
He added that these are the doctors with whom the ICRC had been working to evacuate nearly 14,000 patients and their carers between mid-February and 9 May. This was the first confirmation on their fate after contact with them had been lost on Saturday.
Physicians for Human Rights, an American advocacy group, said earlier this week it was "deeply concerned about the arrest and detention under illegitimate charges" of these Sri Lankan doctors.
The doctors were arrested by Sri Lankan authorities as they tried to leave the conflict zone on Saturday. Reports said they were accused of "spreading lies." Journalists and aid workers were barred from entering the enclave.
Meanwhile, Monica Zanarelli said that ICRC has resumed assistance to displaced people in Vavuniya camp.
On 21 May, the Sri Lankan authorities restored the ICRC’s access to parts of 'Menik Farm,' the largest camp for displaced persons in Sri Lanka, housing over 130,000 people.
"ICRC teams have started to distribute aid to thousands of families. We hope to obtain full access very soon, in view of the urgent needs of tens of thousands of displaced people, especially those who only recently emerged from the zone that had witnessed such heavy fighting," Zanarelli said.
Earlier on Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) informed that it has suspended its aid operations in Vavuniya camp due to restrictions placed on it by the government.
Separate to this, 14 aid groups released a joint statement on Thursday against the government's restriction on access to IDP camps. "Thousands of lives are at risk in Sri Lanka because aid to internally displaced people is being restricted by difficulties in securing access for staff and vehicles of international agencies," the aid groups said in a joint statement signed by Oxfam, ASB/Solidar, Acted, the Danish Refugee Council, ZOA Refugee Care, Forut, UMCOR, Relief International, Handicap International and Save the Children, Welthungerhilfe, CARE, World Vision and Medical Teams International.
News edited by Tamil National [
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