Sri Lanka’s rights monitoring authority has recorded almost 3000 complaints of torture, including sexual violence within a period of one and a half years, just six months into the Ranil Wickremesinghe presidency.
This chilling detail of continuing violations was revealed in the latest comprehensive report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Torture and ill-treatment by police and security forces remain prevalent in Sri Lanka,” says the report to the 57th session of the Human Rights Council (UNHRC) due to be held for a month from 9 September.
High Commissioner Volker Turk’s report highlights “some concerning trends with potentially far-reaching impact on the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms in the country”.
The finding is based on information made available to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) by the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) and interviews with victims in the Tamil speaking north of the country.
“The HRSCL informed OHCHR that it received 2,845 cases of torture and 675 complaints of degrading treatment between January 2023 and March 2024,” says the report.
“The HRCSL reported that between January 2023 and March 2024, it received 21 cases of extrajudicial killings; 26 cases of deaths in custody, and 1,342 complaints of arbitrary arrests and detentions. The Government informed OHCHR that there were 14 and three cases of custodial deaths in 2023 and 2024 respectively, and that the police had issued Circular No.2747/2023 on preventing custodial and encounter deaths.”
OHCHR says it had “examined recent allegations of abduction, arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and sexual violence perpetrated against individuals of Tamil ethnicity by Sri Lankan security forces, mainly in Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mannar, Mullaitivu, and Vavuniya districts. These date from the period as recently as January 2024”.
A ‘clear pattern emerged’ says the report confirming multiple accounts that political opponents, campaigners for justice and suspected former Tamil Tigers are prime targets.
“Tamils, primarily men who had been involved in protests over disappearances, land/environmental rights or commemoration of war victims and were believed to be previously involved or linked with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), were monitored or photographed, and subsequently arrested by people who verbally identified themselves as police CID or TID personnel.”
Those taken away blindfolded to undisclosed locations have been interrogated for three to five days.
The UN high commissioner’s office has received “credible specific accounts of security forces using various techniques of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment”.
“Many of the interviewees also reported experiencing sexual torture, including rape, squeezing testicles, forced nudity, biting of breasts, either during interrogation or in the holding cell. Victims described making up information or ‘confessing’ simply to get the treatment to stop, or signing blank papers or documents in Sinhala, a language which majority of the victims could not read.”
The chain of events concludes with the perpetrators lining their pockets and the victims fleeing the country. An abusive and corrupt practice that has been continuing with impunity since the war.
“Nearly all interviewees recounted that they eventually were released when a family member paid a bribe to someone in the security forces, often using an intermediary. They then fled Sri Lanka.”
The Government responded that the allegations lacked sufficient detail, but it takes allegations of abduction, unlawful detention, and torture seriously and that it is committed to thorough investigations and prosecutions, says the report.
OHCHR urges the government to “Publicly issue unequivocal instructions to all branches of the military, intelligence and police forces that arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, torture, sexual violence and other human rights violations are prohibited and will be systematically investigated and punished”.
