COLOMBO: Various forms of torture are still practiced by the law enforcement agencies in Sri Lanka, but there has been a decline in the number reported incidents, says Juan E Mendis, UN Rapporteur on Torture, who toured detention centres in the island nation between April 29 and May 7.
Briefing the media on Saturday, Mendis said that 90 per cent of the convictions under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in Lanka are based on “confessions” made to the police in detention. As such, it could be safely assumed that these confessions were made under duress, including various forms of torture, he said.
Detailing the common methods of torture, Mendis said that these could range from striking with poles and cricket bats to hanging the suspect upside down while being handcuffed, asphyxiation by covering the face with a polythene bag drenched in kerosene, throwing chilli powder into the eyes, to mutilating the genital area.
The period of torture could vary from a short time to several days or weeks. Those detained under the PTA are the worst sufferers because they could be detained without charge for 18 months to conduct investigations. Mendis found detainees under PTA being in remand up to 10 years.
He acknowledged that the Lankan authorities had given him unrestricted access to detention centres and prisoners, but noted that while some prisoners spoke boldly, others said that they were instructed not to complain of torture.
As he was accompanied by a forensic expert, Mendis was able to verify complaints of torture and found them factual. He observed that only 20% of the cases that came to court had been examined by a Judicial Medical Officer to ascertain if torture had been resorted to. He observed that Magistrates who visited detention centres tended to be police rubber stamps.
The detention centres run by the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) are not ventilated and are often without electricity. On the infamous detention centre at the Trincomalee Naval Base, which was discovered in 2015 when it was defunct, he said conditions there must have been “horrific”.
In her report, the UN Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Monica Pinto, said that the Lankan judiciary must not only evolve a Code of Conduct for judges, but it must address the glaring ethnic imbalance in its composition. There is only one Tamil-speaking judge in the higher judiciary. In the Supreme Court, only the Chief Justice is Tamil-speaking.
There is none in the Court of Appeal. Likewise, there is a marked ethnic imbalance among the government’s law officers, Pinto pointed out.
Those detained under the PTA are the worst sufferers because they could be detained without charge for 18 months to conduct investigations