SRI LANKA: AHRC and RCT collaboration

October 30, 2012

Appreciation on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the RCT

(Photo Courtesy: Janasansadaya)

On the occasion of the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT) celebrating its 30th Anniversary, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) wishes to record its appreciation for the RCT and recognize the contribution it has made to the development of the AHRC's work relating to torture and ill-treatment. It is perhaps a happy coincidence that the meeting with parliamentarians, organized by the Asian Alliance against Torture and Ill-treatment, (AAATI) occurred in the same year. The AAATI emerged as a joint venture, started in 2011 and co-sponsored by the AHRC and RCT, after several years of collaboration, to develop a contextually relevant approach to dealing with the widespread use of torture and ill-treatment in Asian countries.

The AHRC and RCT collaboration, which started in Sri Lanka, has been a unique experience. Sri Lanka, in the period around the 1950s, was thought of as a rapidly emerging democracy and an example to the rest of Asia and Africa. The expectation was based on realistic estimations of social indicators, which showed remarkable achievements in the areas of reducing the child mortality rate, dramatic improvements of literacy and education levels, significant improvements in overall healthcare, and skill development in many fields.

However, this dream began to shatter in the late 1970s with the adoption of a constitutional model that placed all power on the executive president, thus displacing the judiciary and the parliament. This was accompanied by a wholesale experiment into the market economy with aggressive undermining of all aspects of welfare and severe attacks on the trade union movement. By around 2002, when the AHRC and RCT collaboration started, Sri Lanka's rule of law system had suffered an exceptional collapse and grave abuses of human rights, by way of forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the use of torture and ill-treatment, manifested a serious deterioration of public institutions in the country. Globally, this situation in Sri Lanka was misunderstood as a result of an ethnic crisis, which has developed into a military conflict between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government.

The AHRC rejected this assessment of the Sri Lankan crisis as being purely based on the ethnic conflict, and instead described the crisis as one of a collapse of public institutions, giving rise to violence in many aspects of the country, including the conflict between the military and the LTTE. It was the view of the AHRC that this overall crisis, arising out of the authoritarian political model introduced by the 1978 constitution, needed to be highlighted as the fundamental cause of violence in Sri Lanka. The AHRC's work on forced disappearances, torture and ill treatment has begun on the basis of these overall initiatives.

The AHRC concentrated on the exposure of torture and ill-treatment as taking place in all parts of Sri Lanka rather than as confined only to the record of violence in the North and East, which was the usual habit of other international organisations and most of the local organisations in Sri Lanka. It is the AHRC's view that the totality of the crisis needs to be exposed if violence taking place in Sri Lanka is to find a comprehensive explanation, leading to the possibility of working towards the recovery of the rule of law system and the democratic institutions, which is the only real overall solution to the crisis. In addressing the crisis of the basic structure, the AHRC was of the view that exposure of police torture and ill-treatment, taking place in areas which were not the conflict areas, would lead to a clarification of the nature of the crisis in Sri Lanka.

Jesudasan Rita and Lalth Rajapakse

Concentrating on police torture was the AHRC's approach. It was this approach that the AHRC explained to the RCT and they agreed to a collaboration in terms of developing the prevention of torture project in Sri Lanka.

In the years that followed, this project encountered a large number of victims of torture, and the stories of their struggles are the most important aspect of this project. The number of victims is far too many to be mentioned individually. However, all of their cases are documented in detail and the documents have been published over and over again, and are available online and in various research publications. A few cases may be mentioned, cases that are quite well-known in Sri Lanka, and the lessons learned have become a part of the discourse on torture and ill-treatment in Sri Lanka.
There is the case of Lalith Rajapaksha, a seventeen-year-old boy, who was arrested and severely beaten all over his body, including on his head, on which books were placed and then hit with rods, resulting in his being unconscious for several weeks. The doctors identified his condition as edema on the brain, a condition that creates similar symptoms as encephalitis. The boy came from an extremely poor family and without very active support from human rights organisations he could not face up to the many problems that came as a result of this attack. He was continuously threatened by the police, who wanted him to withdraw his complaints. Dealing with this case led to very comprehensive ways of supporting torture victims, which combined protection of the victim for many years outside his home territory, community support to help him adjust to his new circumstances, a protracted legal struggle going from the Magistrates Courts to the High Court, to the Appeals Court, and finally to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The UNHRC's view expressed on this case, critiquing the delay in the adjudication process in Sri Lanka and issuing a recommendation for the adoption of legislative and judicial measures to ensure speedy justice, is by now referred to in several other cases. The incident happened in 2002 and the litigation still isn't over. However, the victim was supported throughout this period and now he is living in stable conditions.

Another case is that of Rita Jesudasan, a fourteen-year-old girl from the poorest sections of Sri Lanka, from a family of tea estate workers, who was raped in 2001 while on her way to school by a youth from an affluent family in Kandy. As usual, the police were neglecting the investigation. It was at this stage that the Home for the Victims of Torture came to her assistance. She was given medical and psychological care and was also admitted to a school run by nuns. Her education for several years thereafter was taken care of by the Home for Victims of Torture and the most difficult part they faced was to support her in pursuing her case in the courts. She was determined to seek justice. However, when she went to court, she was insulted by the lawyer and others from the perpetrator's side, who publicly shouted at her, calling her a prostitute. At this stage, a strategy was developed for a large number of persons from the community, including several nuns, to accompany her. There had been severe delays in the case as the perpetrators approached various authorities. She said that because she was a Tamil she was harassed at the police station and that initially they even refused to record her statement. Throughout her ordeal she was treated badly by the police when she tried to get her complaints registered. She had been subjected to humiliation and constant harassment.

Despite all these hazards, the case has continued for over ten years. Meanwhile, she has acquired skills and found employment. As of now, she is married and expecting her first child.

The next cases show the harsher side of fighting police torture.

The cases of Gerald Perera and Sugath Nishantha Fernando

Gerald Perera and Sugath Nishantha Fernando

Gerald Perera, a cook and a trade unionist, was arrested purely on mistaken identity. He was so harshly beaten that he suffered kidney failure and remained unconscious for nearly three weeks. Feeling deeply insulted and wounded, he was uncompromising in trying to seek justice. The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka gave a landmark judgment, in his favour, in a fundamental rights application and awarded the highest sum of compensation for torture so far. The Attorney General of Sri Lanka, in response to the Supreme Court judgment, filed an indictment under criminal charges under the CAT Act (Act No. 22 of 1994) against several police officers, and if the charges were proved they were subjected to a mandatory sentence of seven years rigorous imprisonment and a 10,000 rupees fine. A week before Gerald Perera was to give evidence in this trial he was fatally shot while travelling to work on a bus. Later, the first accused in the torture case, a police Sub Inspector, and one of his assistants, were charged for murder in this case. Both the cases of torture and murder are still continuing in the courts.

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