Doctor defends separatist group

Michael McKenna
May 05, 2007

PEDIATRICIAN John Whitehall's work with the Tamil Tigers has been a dangerous and secretive business.

But the arrest this week of two Melbourne men for their alleged support of the militia - which pioneered the use of suicide bombings in their campaign for an independent homeland - has prompted the doctor to launch a public relations campaign for the cause, which could put him in the sights of Australia's anti-terror laws.

Associate professor Whitehall, director of neonatology at Townsville hospital, last year spent three months training the Tigers' doctors and is now editing a book, to be published later this year in India, on the medical corp of the mainly Hindu organisation.

Dr Whitehall told The Weekend Australian he was willing to talk about his work with the Tigers in an attempt to counter the view that "put the organisation in the same bracket as al-Qa'ida and Osama bin Laden".

"Of course, they have exceeded the Geneva convention of orthodox warfare, but you should not see them as the only people doing that," he said.

"There are other forces of terror at work, state terror, persecution and human rights abuses against the Tamils that has been going on for decades and which we never hear about, and which governments, like that in Australia, seem to ignore."

Dr Whitehall said he was unaware he would be working with the Tigers, after years of humanitarian work in Sri Lanka, when he offered his services to a British-run charity last year. But when he arrived in Sri Lanka with his wife, Elsie, he was sent to Kilinochi, the Tigers' stronghold, and discovered he was training doctors working for the group.

"I was teaching them how to look after sick children, I felt I was doing the right thing," he said.