Torture in Sri Lanka – ‘Many times I would lose consciousness’

Thevan (not his real name) has flashbacks of the impossible days he spent being tortured in a police cell in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. These flashbacks force him to relive a story so harrowing that even he sometimes struggles to believe it happened to him. “I was blindfolded and with my hands tied behind my back. Sometimes our heads were banged against the wall or we would be kicked on our chests. Many times I was half conscious or would lose consciousness. When I would come back I would find…

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Ethnic Tamil British citizen tortured in Sri Lanka files complaint with the UN

Today, REDRESS has filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee on behalf of Velauthapillai Renukaruban (‘Renu’), a UK citizen who was abducted, detained and tortured by Sri Lankan officials when he visited Sri Lanka in 2016.   Renu, an ethnic Tamil, fled Sri Lanka in 2001, when he was 19, during the civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In 2016, he returned to Sri Lanka to visit his elderly mother and to get married. Within 24 hours of arriving, he was abducted from his mother’s home and…

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