UN torture body visits Sri Lanka as local watchdog denies ongoing abductions

: Post 30 March 2019

By Athula Vithanage

The United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture visits Sri Lanka on Tuesday (2) amid controversy about how best to tackle ongoing security force abductions and torture of Tamils.

Dr Deepika Udagama The UN announced on Friday (29) that its delegation led by Victor Zaharia of Moldova, will reach Sri Lanka for a 10 day visit.

“The four-member delegation will meet government officials and hold discussions with relevant ministries, as well as meeting with the Human Rights Commission and civil society organisations,” it said.

The team will look at how Sri Lanka can comply with the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture which requires the establishment of an independent Preventative Mechanism to visit detention sites, which could be the domestic Human Rights Commission.

'No complaints'

However, Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission is increasingly becoming a controversial choice as the investigative body. In Geneva, the chairperson of the Commission, Dr Deepika Udagama, recently said they had yet to receive any complaints of “abduction, unlawful detention and sexual violence referred to in paragraph 56 of the [UN] High Commissioner’s report”. The relevant paragraph of the UN report speaks of, “credible information about cases of abduction, unlawful detention, torture and sexual violence by Sri Lankan security forces, which allegedly took place in 2016-18”. It also refers to a “preliminary assessment” process, for which it is widely known that a large number of civil society activists in Sri Lanka were interviewed by the UN in 2018.

Although Dr. Udagama claims they received no information about abductions the Commission’s own statistics appear to contradict this. A Right to Information claim by a Jaffna based journalist Shobika Smylini Ponrajah uncovered the Commission’s own annual statistics, which have not been posted on its website.

This data released through the RTI process for 2015, 2016 and the first ten months of 2017 contains 8 cases of abduction that were registered with the Human Rights Commission. In addition, there are 1079 cases of torture, 1229 cases of “arbitrary arrest/detention” and 16 deaths in custody in this period.

In its 2017 Submission to the UPR process, the Commission clearly stated it had received no complaints of enforced disappearance in 2015 and 2016. The data revealed under RTI also has one case of disappearance listed in 2016.

South vs North

An examination of the Commission’s reports available online from 2004-2016 shows the largest proportion of the complaints they have received of torture have always come from offices in the South, outside the conflict areas. For example, in 2009 when it is widely known the violations against Tamils who surrendered in the north were on a massive scale, only 23 complaints of torture were registered in Vavuniya as compared to 93 in Matara in the south of the island. Likewise, in 2010 there were 6 complaints of torture in Vavuniya and 2 in Jaffna, compared to 75 in Matara. The pattern appears to be repeated in subsequent years though the annual data includes complaints to head office. It indicates that Tamil victims of conflict-related torture have a problem about reporting to the Commission. This could explain why the Tamil victims, especially those with an LTTE past, are much more likely to disclose their torture and sexual abuse only when they reach sanctuary abroad.

Freedom from Torture say Sri Lankans still make up the largest number of clients they treat in the United Kingdom. Their doctors have seen 16 victims, while lawyers at the International Truth and Justice Project say they have documented 76 torture cases after 2015 in three countries in Europe, more than 50 of whom they say have been granted asylum. Combined that is more than 100 documented recent cases.

JDS understands that the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture findings will be made publicly available only with the permission of President Maithripala Sirisena who will be given a copy of the report.☐