A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Sri Lanka: Pledge to End Police Abuse Not Met
Repeal Prevention of Terrorism Act, Prosecute Torture
Members
of the Sri Lankan police march with an elephant during Sri Lanka's 69th
Independence day celebrations in Colombo, Sri Lanka February 4, 2017.© Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte
Brutality claims: Hakmana residents stage a street protest on Monday over the wounded boy's claims he was badly assaulted while in police custody
Brutality claims: Hakmana residents stage a street protest on Monday over the wounded boy's claims he was badly assaulted while in police custody
(New York) – The Sri Lankan government
has not met its pledge to curtail police abuses prior to the March 2017
session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch
said today. Security sector reform was one of 25 undertakings by Sri
Lanka in the Human Rights Council resolution adopted by consensus in
October 2015.
The Sri Lankan government has failed to repeal the abusive Prevention of
Terrorism Act or take serious measures to reduce torture in custody.
“It’s crucial that the Human Rights Council consider closely whether Sri
Lanka made progress in the security sector as well as its other
commitments such as transitional justice,” said Brad Adams,
Asia director. “Nearly 18 months after making important promises to the
council, Sri Lanka’s leaders appear to be backtracking on key human
rights issues, including reforming the police.”
Reform of the security sector has lagged behind action on the council
resolution’s four pillars of transitional justice: accountability, the
disappeared, truth-seeking, and reconciliation. A recent report from the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, highlighted the ongoing “culture of torture” in the country. A 2015 report by
Human Rights Watch also found that Sri Lankans routinely face torture
and other ill-treatment by the police. In the vast majority of cases,
the victims were unable to obtain any meaningful redress.
The government has also yet to repeal the draconian Prevention of
Terrorism Act (PTA), which has been used to arbitrarily detain terrorism
suspects and others without charge for years. During the country’s
26-year-long civil war, the government asserted that the PTA was a
necessary tool in its battle against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam. Yet, nearly eight years after the war’s end in May 2009, the PTA
not only remains on the books but continues to be used to arrest and
detain people.
Lawyers and relatives of PTA detainees told Human Rights Watch in May
2016 that police arrests were still being made in the notorious white vans used by the previous government, creating fear of a return to a culture of enforced disappearances.
The practice has abated somewhat after an outcry from the rejuvenated
national Human Rights Commission and rights lawyers. Lawyers, families,
and the Human Rights Commission report having access to PTA detainees,
an improvement from past practice.
Curtailing torture in Sri Lanka requires serious reforms of the security sector, prosecutions of those responsible, and sustained political will from the top.
Brad Adams
Asia Director
“A number of those arrested in 2016 under the Prevention of Terrorism
Act were implicated in committing or plotting terrorist crimes,” Adams
said. “Yet there was no good reason for not using the regular criminal
code rather than an abusive law that should have been repealed years
ago.”
The Special Rapporteur on torture, following a May 2016 visit to Sri
Lanka, found that torture to produce confessions, including beatings,
sexual violence, extreme stress positions and asphyxiation, was being
committed in police stations, military facilities and detention centers
throughout the country.
Human Rights Watch’s own investigations found that police routinely use torture to
compel confessions for even minor offenses, such as petty theft and
making illicit alcohol, and this affected all ethnicities and social groups.
The Special Rapporteur described a “worrying lack of will within the
Attorney General’s Department and the judiciary” to investigate and take
action against those considered responsible for torture, noting that
authorities kept repeating to him that there had been no complaints of
ill-treatment or torture, and consequently no investigations.
“Deeply embedded practices linked to the war, like police torture, don’t
just go away once the war is over,” Adams said. “Curtailing torture in
Sri Lanka requires serious reforms of the security sector, prosecutions
of those responsible, and sustained political will from the top.”
In June 2016, President Maithripala Sirisena issued a directive to the
police and military to refrain from torture but the impact of the
directive has gone unreported. Legal provisions in violation of
international law remain on the books, such as permitting criminal
liability at the age of 8. Ensuring the right to counsel at all stages
of detention has also not been remedied.
The upcoming Human Rights Council session provides an important
opportunity for UN member countries to closely examine the Special
Rapporteur on torture’s report and the problem of torture and other
police abuse in Sri Lanka. They should press the government to address
these concerns as part of the overall reform efforts underway under the
Human Rights Council resolution. And they need to be careful not to
endorse measures that would set back human rights protections, such as
earlier draft counter-terrorism bills to replace the PTA.
“The Mendez report on torture maps out a detailed reform proposal that
the Sri Lankan government should embrace and implement,” Adams said.
“The Human Rights Council can rev up this process by addressing torture
and police reform in its review of Sri Lanka’s compliance with the
council’s resolution.”