State Violence in Sri Lanka - World Organisation Against Torture

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State Violence in SRI LANKA
police force from a crime detection and law enforcement agency to an insurgency
suppression mechanism. As shown in the reports published by the
Commissions on Disappearances, police stations served as detention centers,
torture chambers, and places where many thousands of people disappeared.
Police stations throughout the country were used for these purposes. A profound
transformation of the system took place as a result of this. Extreme
forms of torture were routinely used against suspected insurgents at police stations.
These extreme forms of torture were also used on persons suspected of
petty theft or even on those arrested on mistaken identity.
Some examples may illustrate the existing situation. In one case, the Supreme
Court found police officers from the Wattala Police Station guilty of torturing
Waragodamudalige Gerald Mervyn Perera (Supreme Court fundamental
rights application SCFR 328/2002), arrested on mistaken identity. Within a
few hours of his arrest, he was assaulted so severely by police officers that he
suffered renal failure and had to be kept on a life support system for 2 weeks.
Moreover, he suffered serious damage to his arms when police officers hung
him from the police station roof.
In another case, officers from the Ankumbura police tortured a 17-year-old
boy named B. G. Chaminda Bandara Jayaratne (17) (AHRC UA-35-2003)
from 20-28 July 2003 by hanging him by his thumbs. Doctors later declared
that he had permanently lost the use of his left arm. The method of torture
was described in an affidavit signed by the young victim thus:
“Then my hands were swung behind my back and my thumbs tied together
with a string. They put a fiber string between my thumbs and hung (me)
from a beam on the ceiling. One officer pulled the fiber string so that I was
lifted from the ground. When I was lifted, my hands were twisted at the
elbow and they became numbed. Then the OIC kept hitting me on my legs
and the soles of my feet with wicket stumps used for cricket (AHRC UA-35-
2003 and Supreme Court fundamental rights application SCFR 484/2003)
(see From the Affidavit filed by the victim in his case to the Supreme Court).
Similar forms of torture were also used in the case of Galappathy Guruge
Gresha De Silva (32) (article 2, Volume1, Number 4, August 2002, p. 24)
who also lost the use of both his arms due to such torture. Reports are
received from all over the country of similar types of torture used at the police
stations, which clearly show that the habits formed in the past when dealing
with insurgents are now being commonly, and routinely used at the police stations.
Thus a central issue for implementation of Article 2 of the ICCPR is to