Category: News

Ten years on from the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, we have documented evidence of torture of its Tamil citizens in the context of ongoing security operations. This is despite the Sri Lankan government’s stated ‘zero tolerance’ policy on torture, and commitments to promote human rights when it was elected in 2015. In 2015, the new government of President Sirisena pledged to promote accountability and human rights, including to the UN Human Rights Council. Despite this, today we release a briefing based on 16 cases of Sri Lankan nationals who…

Read More

One of the men tortured in Sri Lanka said he was held for 21 days in a small dank room where he was raped 12 times, burned with cigarettes, beaten with iron rods; a Sri Lankan foreign ministry official said will ensure allegations are ‘investigated and prosecuted’. Sri Lanka says it will investigate allegations by more than 50 ethnic Tamils that they were abducted and tortured by police or army soldiers long after the nation’s civil war ended.

Read More

Sri Lanka’s military admitted on Saturday soldiers had abused and tortured female recruits, a rare admission of guilt after years of allegations over its personnel’s treatment of Tamil rebels during an uprising. A military spokesman said it accepted the authenticity of a video leaked on a dissident website that appeared to show soldiers torturing women soldiers, adding instructors had overstepped their authority for an undisclosed act of violating “military discipline”. “The investigation which is being carried out by the Sri Lanka Army Corps of Military Police has so far revealed…

Read More