Sri Lanka denies UN official�s allegation on torture

Colombo, Nov 1: While Sri Lanka�s minister for human rights Mahinda Samarasinghe has denied allegations by a top United Nations official that torture is �routine� in the country, there is little doubt that the renewed civil war has resulted in brutality hitting new lows.

In a report on his visit to the island in October, U.N. special rapporteur on torture Manfred Novak said it was ��widely practiced,�� and noted it was ��prone to become routine in the context of counter-terrorism operations, in particular by the terrorism investigation department.��

Reacting to Novak�s report on Wednesday, Samarasinghe claimed that Sri Lanka had a "zero-tolerance" policy on torture. But he said the report was being studied by the government and that action was being taken against officials who beat up prisoners for speaking to the U.N. official.

But government claims and denials on the subject of torture and human rights have a hollow ring to them. For example, it first denied that the naked bodies of Tamil Tiger rebels killed in an attack on an airbase near Anuradhapura were displayed in public on Oct. 23, and then ordered an enquiry after pictures of the incident began to circulate.

Eyewitnesses say that the bodies were transported in an open tractor trailer from the airbase to the morgue and photographs and video footage corroborate the fact that crowds were allowed to gather around the trailer.

Novak�s report said: ��Over the course of my visits to police stations and prisons, I received numerous consistent and credible allegations from detainees who reported that they were ill-treated by the police during inquiries in order to extract confessions, or to obtain information in relation to other criminal offences. Similar allegations were received with respect to the army.��

"The government took serious note of observations made by the special rapporteur relating to the allegation of corporeal punishment at Bogambara Prison and allegations of torture by the police�s terrorist investigation division -- supposedly in retaliation for communication by the detainees with Novak. In the former case, disciplinary proceedings have commenced against the prison official concerned and, in the latter, detainees have been examined by the judicial medical officer," a government statement said.

Novak has proposed the establishment of "a field presence of the office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights with a mandate of both monitoring the human rights situation in the country, including the right of unimpeded access to all places of detention, and providing technical assistance particularly in the field of judicial, police and prison reform.��

U.N. human rights high commissioner Louise Arbour, another visitor to the island in October, has also called for the establishment of a field presence of her office in Sri Lanka to stem mounting rights violations.

US expresses concern

International backing for the establishment of such an office has increased since Arbour�s visit. U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs R. Nicholas Burns and under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs Paula Dobriansky expressed concern when they met with Sri Lankan activist Sunila Abeysekera who won the Human Rights Watch�s human rights defender award for 2007.

"Under-secretary Burns and under-secretary Dobriansky expressed great concern about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, observing that the Sri Lankan government needed to work far more intensively to end such grave human rights violations as extra-judicial killings, forced disappearances, and torture, as well as on-going media censorship by government security forces," the state department later said of the meeting.

However, activists like Abeyasekera do not see a quick end to the turmoil in Sri Lanka. "This is the worst it has ever been. We have a humanitarian crisis as well as a human rights crisis," she said soon after the award was announced in October.

Lankan President for military solution

The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse has consistently rejected calls for the setting up of any international human rights mission in Sri Lanka and is bent on militarily defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil (LTTE), which has led a two-decade-old armed struggle to carve out a separate state for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of the island.

In July, following pitched battles with the LTTE, the Sri Lankan army declared the liberation of the east from militant control and is now concentrating on the Wanni, a swath of territory in north that has traditionally been the stronghold of the Tamil minority.

But as the fighting shifts to the north, the LTTE has shown signs of making good on a promise to carry the war into Sinhala areas in the south. On Oct. 22 an LTTE commando squad attacked a major airbase near Anuradhapura supported by rebel aircraft, destroying, according to a military statement, four training aircraft, three helicopters and a surveillance plane.

Ten airmen were killed at the base while four others died when a helicopter crashed nearby. At least 20 members of the LTTE squad were killed in the fighting and some of their bodies were placed on display in Anuradhapura while being taken to a morgue the next day.

According to the defence ministry figures, a quarter century of conflict has left more than 70,000 people dead. After fighting intensified under the pro-Sinhala Rajapakse government two attempts at peace talks in Geneva failed with the LTTE insisting that a peace settlement must recognise a separate homeland for Tamils, who make up 8.5 percent of the 20 million population.

Source: IPS

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