Sri Lanka ‘acting’ to curb torture – Peiris

by admin
Nov 7, 2011

A Sri Lankan delegation, led by Mohan Pieris, told the UN Committee Against Torture on Tuesday that they are acting to curb torture committed by its security forces.

He told the panel that the Sri Lankan government agrees “110 percent” that there must be no tolerance for torture.

Their claims come as several human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Freedom from Torture, released reports which include damning evidence of systematic state sponsored torture camps.

Yolande Foster from Amnesty International said,

"There is no longer an independently functioning unit investigating torture allegations levelled against the security forces, which calls into question Sri Lanka's commitment to ending this abhorrent practice,"

The UN panel questioned Sri Lanka over accusations of torture by police, harassment of lawyers and journalists, deaths in state custody, secret detention centres and the disappearances of thousands of people, a large proportion of those belonging to the Tamil-speaking community.

See Sri Lanka: war crimes are 'hearsay' and 'propaganda' (Oct 2011)

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button