Word: sri
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...Hippocratic oath with new force, risking their lives out of a commitment to what Dr. Bernard Kouchner, one of the founders of the movement, calls "the duty to interfere." Volunteer medics are treating tribespeople for malaria and tuberculosis in East Africa, performing amputations on victims of land mines in Sri Lanka, building clean-water systems in El Salvador and operating surgical clinics, often under gunfire, in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon...
...volunteers themselves acknowledge, what drives them to undertake such missions of mercy -- and others far more perilous -- is not something easily explained or understood. "I know it is not possible to save everybody in the world," says Dr. Jean-Louis Menciere, a French anesthesiologist working in Sri Lanka, "but to do something about it is better than doing nothing." As more and more people become committed to the idea that, as Bernard Kouchner puts it, "mankind's suffering belongs to all men," the day may not be far off when there will be a substantial pool of medical personnel...
Violence is not new to Sri Lanka, torn by civil conflict since 1983. In the past 16 months some 4,000 civilians and combatants have died in the violence. Over the past few weeks, however, the tide of blood has risen. The toll in the south has mounted to at least a dozen lives daily. With the presidential vote set for next week, the country and its 16 million people are on the verge of anarchy, the ethnic and factional strife having unleashed a savagery evocative of El Salvador in the early 1980s. Many Sri Lankans stake the last hope...
When civil war erupted five years ago, the lines of discord were drawn between the separatist Tamils of the north and the majority Sinhalese, who dominate the south. But that precise if gory equation was complicated 16 months ago by the signing of a peace accord between India and Sri Lanka that guaranteed the Tamils a measure of autonomy. Since then, 70,000 Indian troops have been deployed throughout Sri Lanka's north and east to enforce the peace...
Caught between the insurgent and counterinsurgent campaigns, terrified citizens can hardly remember the gentle ways that characterized Sri Lanka for decades. "Today I am afraid to smile at anyone on the street," says Vallipuram Pararajasingham, a doctor in northern Vavuniya. In the south, people are too frightened even to venture into the streets. "You find television newscasters afraid to work, lawyers afraid to attend bar meetings, and M.P.s who resign after threats," says Wickremasinghe. "Everyone is living in a psychosis of fear...