COLOMBO: The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID), which has concluded its visit to Sri Lanka, has discovered a “secret underground detention cum torture centre” in the Lankan naval base at Trincomalee in the Eastern Province.
Giving details of the “successful discovery” here on Wednesday, Ariel Dulitzky, a member of the UNWGEID, said that the centre might have been used officially or unofficially from 2010, going by the date scribbled on the wall. The walls had blood stains, he revealed. And the structure of the complex suggested that “systematic torture” was conducted there, the UN official said.
Although there were only 11 or 12 cells in the complex, the number of those who were detained or tortured there could have been “many more”, he added.
The three members of the UNWGEID, Argentine Dulitzky, Canadian Bernard Duhaime (leader), and South Korean Tae-Un-Baik, called for further investigations and action in regard to the detention centre and asked the government to reveal the existence of other such secret centres, if there are any.
They pointed out that many of the victims’ families, who now number more than 20,000, are still clueless about the number and location of detention centres in the country, who are detained and where.
Meanwhile, the Ranil Wickremesinghe government had denied the existence of such a secret detention centre in the Trincomallee naval base when the matter was raised by Suresh Premachandran, a Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP in the last parliament early this year.
“Both PM Ranil Wickremesinghe and the then Law and Order Minister John Amaratunga denied its existence. But according to the information I had then, the centre was in operation till about two months before I raised the issue in parliament,” he told Express.
While acknowledging the change in the attitude of the Lankan government since the January 8 Presidential election, the UNWGEID said that it is time government started taking speedy action to address the issue of enforced disappearances.
Although enforced disappearances do not occur any more, there is a backlog of more than 20,000 complaints. But action had been initiated in only 150 cases, the UN group pointed out.
The UNWGEID pointed out that the families of the victims complained that CID officials are intimidating them. The group asked government to order its agencies not to do this.
The UN group visited two sites of mass graves, one at Mannar in the Northern Province, and the other at Matale in the Central Province. It found lack of local expertise and resources in exhumation and DNA testing and suggested the use of foreign experts.
Noting that the “culture of impunity” continues in Lanka, the group called for the repeal of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act and accession to the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute will put Lanka under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and will enjoin it to prevent enforced disappearances and torture.
The UNWGEID reflected the victim families’ lack of faith in the Lankan judicial system and sought a judicial mechanism which will have foreign prosecutors and investigators as per the last UN Human Rights Council resolution on Lanka. It also called for a Truth Commission to bring facts out.