Torture and sexual abuse continues under new Sri Lankan government

Abduction, torture and sexual violence has continued in Sri Lanka, despite the change in government earlier this year, said the International Truth & Justice Project in a briefing note released this week.

The ITJP also detailed a series of minimum prior steps that Sri Lankan government must carry out before establishing an accountability mechanism, including repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act and ratifying the Rome Statue.

The ITJP report detailed 11 such cases of torture and sexual abuse that occurred after the new Sri Lankan government came in to power in January. The cases had been corroborated by medical legal reports from international medical experts. Overall the ITJP has documented one hundred and eighty cases of torture in detention in Sri Lanka since the end of the armed conflict in 2009 and identified forty-eight sites, mainly in the Tamil North-East and Sri Lankan capital Colombo, where victims stated their torture took place.

“In addition to violent reprisals during 2015, surveillance and intimidation by the security forces has continued unabated under the Sirisena government,” said the ITJP.

“In this context of on-going violations it is extremely difficult for the victims and their families to envisage a domestic accountability process, even with some form of international involvement, in which they could safely testify against perpetrators who are members of the security forces,” it said.

“The context of Sri Lanka is also different from the context of other countries in transition as many of the alleged perpetrators and their authority structures are still in place, still wielding power or great influence, still allegedly committing ongoing violations, and still for the most part Sinhalese.”

See the full briefing note on “Torture & Sexual Abuse Under the New Government in Sri Lanka” here.

“The last hybrid international domestic mechanism in Sri Lanka (IIGEP (2007-2008) was an abject failure with tens of thousands of non-combatants killed since its failure and countless others tortured and sexually violated since,” said the ITJP, adding, “even those witnesses abroad [who make up the vast majority of those who testified to the UN investigation (OISL) and to ITJP] cannot reveal their identities to the Sri Lankan authorities for fear of what will happen to them if their asylum applications fail, or to their families back home”.

Detailing a series of minimum steps that must take before any accountability mechanism is set up, the organisation said Sri Lanka must ratify the Rome Statute and incorporate “into domestic law of international crimes, including criminalising war crimes and crimes against humanity and adding procedural provisions of command responsibility similar to those found in the Rome Statute”. “This must be done before any domestic or hybrid Tribunal is established,” it added.

It went on to add that Sri Lanka must ensure “no head of state secures immunity from prosecution and “there be no statute of limitations in relation to the crimes”.

The briefing stated that “any justice mechanism established must be based on the highest international standards guaranteeing complete independence, adding that “minimum standards” include an “equal number of international judges, international prosecutors, international investigators and international witness protection experts working in partnership with local Judges, prosecutors, investigators” and “the inclusion of domestic practitioners who are of Tamil origin and/or who have no affiliation with the authority structures, and have never worked for the government in any way”.