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
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Killing family: Tamil widow blames RUC for training STF
2017-07-24
A Tamil widow, who has said 10 of her relatives were massacred by Sri
Lanka’s police in 1986, has lodged a complaint with Northern Ireland’s
Police Ombudsman after Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) links to Sri
Lanka’s security forces emerged, the Irish Times reported today.
It said senior Sri Lankan police officers had visited Belfast in 1983 to
“see at first hand the roles of the police and army in
counter-terrorist operations”, according to secret British government
files.
The visit happened months after the Special Support Unit, an elite RUC
police commando team, shot dead six men in Co Armagh in one of the most
controversial episodes of the Troubles.
Sri Lankan police set up an almost identical commando unit shortly
afterwards, called the Special Task Force. The complainant, who cannot
be named for safety reasons, says “the Special Task Force was
responsible for the murder of my family” in 1986.
Both the RUC and Sri Lankan units consisted of heavily armed police
officers who underwent Special Forces training, the article said.
The complainant’s lawyer, Darragh Mackin said “the Special Task Force
would not have acquired the paramilitary characteristics of the Special
Support Unit without the engagement between the RUC and the Sri Lankan
Police”.
Vairamuttu Varadakumar, director of the Tamil Information Centre,
welcomed the development. “We support the complainant’s efforts to seek
accountability for the brutal violence against their family,” he said.
He said his organisation, which has documented violence against Tamil
people for 35 years, was “painfully aware of the murders, rape,
disappearances and torture of the Tamil people” at the hands of the
Special Task Force.
Declassified files found at the UK National Archives show that civil
servants privately harboured fears about these police units before the
shootings even took place.
The article further said a CIA report, written around the time that the
complainant’s family members were killed, was highly critical of Sri
Lanka’s Special Task Force.
US intelligence staff were concerned that “a common STF tactic when
fired upon while on patrol is to enter the nearest village and burn it
to the ground”.
Mr Mackin has told the Police Ombudsman that the level of indiscriminate
killing perpetrated by the unit against Tamils amounted to genocide.
A spokesperson from the ombudsman has said they have received a
complaint relating to the actions of police officers in the 1980s and it
is now being considered.