SOUTH ASIA - House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats

2335persons tried on criminal charges in the high courts and the courts of appeal, butit does not provide counsel in other cases. Private legal aid organizations assistsome defendants. In addition the Ministry of Justice operates 11 community legalaid centers to assist those who cannot afford representation and to serve as educationalresources for local communities. There are no jury trials in cases broughtunder the PTA. Confessions, obtained by various means, including torture, are inadmissiblein criminal proceedings, but are allowed in PTA cases; most convictionsunder the PTA rely heavily on them. Defendants bear the burden of proof to demonstratethat their confessions were obtained by coercion. Defendants in PTA caseshave the right to appeal. Subject to judicial review in certain cases, defendants canspend up to 18 months being held in prison on adminstrative order waiting for theircase to be heard. Once their case comes to trial, decisions are made relatively quickly.Courts held hearings on some 1,000 PTA and ER cases during the year.Most court proceedings in Colombo and the south are conducted in English orSinhala, which, due to a shortage of court-appointed interpreters, has restricted theability of Tamil-speaking defendants to get a fair hearing. Trials and hearings inthe north and east are in Tamil and English, but many serious cases, includingthose having to do with terrorism, are tried in Colombo. While Tamil-speakingjudges exist at the magistrate level, only four high court judges, an appeals courtjudge, and a Supreme Court justice speak fluent Tamil. Few legal textbooks and nolaw reports exist in Tamil, and the Government has complied only slowly with legislationrequiring publishing all laws in English, Sinhala, and Tamil.In Jaffna LTTE threats against court officials disrupted normal court operations.Although magistrate and district level courts functioned during the year, the highcourt suspended activities due to security concerns.The LTTE has its own self-described court system, composed of judges with littleor no legal training. The courts operate without codified or defined legal authorityand essentially operate as agents of the LTTE rather than as an independent judiciary.The courts reportedly impose severe punishments, including execution.The Government claims that all persons held under the ER and the PTA are suspectedmembers of the LTTE and, therefore, legitimate security threats. Insufficientinformation exists to verify this claim and to determine whether these detainees ormembers of the now legal JVP, detained in similar fashion in past years, are politicalprisoners. Between 200 and 300 of those previously detained—mostly JVP members—wereconvicted under criminal law; some remain incarcerated. In many cases,human rights monitors question the legitimacy of the criminal charges broughtagainst these persons.The LTTE also holds a number of political prisoners. The number is impossibleto determine because of the secretive nature of the organization. The LTTE refusesto allow the ICRC access to these prisoners.f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence.—TheConstitution provides for the right to privacy, and the Government generally respectsthese provisions in practice; however, it infringes on citizen’s privacy rightsin some areas. The police obtain proper warrants for arrests and searches conductedunder ordinary law; however, the security forces are not required to obtain warrantsfor searches conducted under either the ER or the PTA. The Secretary of the Ministryof Defense is responsible for providing oversight for such searches. No judicialreview or other means of redress exist for alleged illegal searches under the ER.Some Tamils complained that their homes were searched as a means of general harassmentby the security forces (see Section 1.d.). The Government is believed tomonitor telephone conversations and correspondence on a selective basis. The securityforces routinely open mail destined for the LTTE-controlled areas and seize contraband.The Government censors news reports that cover military operations. Televisionstations practice self-censorship and some international news broadcastswhich deal with the country specifically are blurred over. This censorship tightenedafter the publication of the new ER on May 3 (see Section 2.a.), although some restrictionshad eased by year’s end. For example, although blocks marked ‘‘censored’’were inserted over missing text in newspapers in past years, there was no occurrenceof this action in the last 6 months of the year.Progovernment Tamil militant groups, nominally operating under governmentcontrol, used forced conscription in the past, although it appears this practice abatedafter a 1999 order from the Government. In previous years, there have been crediblereports that Tamil youth (in the east in particular) have been forced to join thesegroups under threats to themselves and their families; however, there were no reportsthat this practice occured during the year.The LTTE routinely invades the privacy of citizens, maintaining an effective networkof informants. There are credible reports the LTTE has warned 66,000 displacedMuslims living in the Puttalam area not to return to their homes in MannarVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:46 Sep 20, 2001 Jkt 071555 PO 00000 Frm 00179 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\COUNTRYR\S71555\71555.036 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1