"Sri Lanka is stuck in the middle of an unfinished war"
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Version 0 of 1. Young Tamil men and women with suspected or past links to the Tamil Tiger rebels are still being abducted, tortured and raped by the security forces, who then release them in exchange for large sums of money. In our new report, “An Unfinished War” , we detail the shocking experiences of forty witnesses who managed to reach the UK – wrecked human beings, half of whom tried to harm themselves out of shame. Twenty-one were tortured in the last year in Sri Lanka; one as recently as last month. They were submerged in water, suffocated by plastic bags soaked in petrol put over their heads, hung upside down and beaten on the soles of their feet, forced to inhale the fumes from burning chillies and branded with hot metal rods. Not to mention, being beaten with plastic pipes filled with sand, cricket wickets and stripped electric cables, kicked and punched to the point of passing out unconscious. In all our cases there was sexual torture – anal and vaginal rape including with objects and forced oral sex – often very violent and accompanied by racist verbal abuse. The testimony we gathered is backed up by medical reports and other corroboratory evidence, and supported by 57 medico-legal reports from other cases. Our evidence likely constitutes a small sample of the crimes committed against the Tamil population in Sri Lanka. These are the witnesses whose families were able to bribe them out of detention and send them abroad. We don’t know what happens to those without family or money. I continue to receive horrifying reports from inside Sri Lanka of women subjected to years of repeated sexual violence by the security forces in the north and threats to rape their daughters if they don’t comply. Our evidence has serious implications for asylum policy in Europe; also for donor countries, like the UK, that have funded rehabilitation and reconciliation programmes in Sri Lanka. Importantly, Sri Lankan troops should not be allowed to serve in United Nations peacekeeping missions until there is an independent international inquiry into these allegations of systematic and widespread sexual abuse by the military and police. Everything points to collusion amongst multiple branches of the forces and a coordinated systematic plan approved by the highest levels of the government in that island. |