COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

SRI LANKA 7 MARCH 2012
about whether land cleared of mines was always immediately returned to its original
owners.‖
Police registration
25.03 A letter from the British High Commission (BHC) in Colombo dated 2 February 2012 492
reported that:
―Throughout the civil conflict, the Sri Lankan authorities, acting under Section 23 of the
Emergency Regulations Act, required households to register all residents, the emphasis
being on Tamils who took temporary lodgings. These lists were then used in cordon and
search operations to identify people from whom the police required further explanation
as to why they were residing or travelling in a location. Persons identified as having not
registered, were normally detained by the police for further questioning.
―There was often no uniformity in the implementation of the police registration. After the
new government came to power in November 2005, police visited properties and issued
forms to be completed by the head of the household, asking them to take full
responsibility for the information provided and the persons on the list. The form sought
information as to the purchase date and price of the property, from whom the property
had been purchased, how the purchase had been financed and who had assisted in the
finance etc. This form was issued to almost all houses in the Tamil concentrations in
Colombo and suburbs. Generally the police did not say that they were targeting only
Tamil households, but collection of completed forms / booklets were only strictly
enforced when it came to Tamil concentrations. The main purpose of these booklets
was to assist the Police, when they launched cordon and search operations, to identify
visitors or undeclared persons in the area. In the latter part of 2008 there was a
programme of police registration, specifically targeting persons who had temporarily
migrated to Colombo and Western Province from the North and the East of the country.‖
25.04 The BHC letter of 2 February 2012 493 continued:
―In May 2010 the newly elected Sri Lankan government announced that whilst
extending the emergency regulations, as is required monthly, certain regulations would
be repealed. These included the restrictions on public marches and meetings, curfews,
police entry into private property without a search warrant, restrictions on terrorist
propaganda, and ‗the compulsory police registration of household members‘.
―In July 2010 several Tamil media networks carried the story that police in the
Wellawatte Police Division of Colombo had recommenced the practice of registering
Tamils. The Democratic People‘s Front leader Mano Ganesan was quoted as saying
that ‗This is being conducted only in the city divisions where Tamils live in sizable
numbers‘ and requested that the President ‗intervene to stop this discriminatory act
which is flatly against the spirit of reconciliation‘.
On 22nd July 2010 in response to these allegations, the Police Spokesman Prishantha
Jayakody gave a press release from their headquarters in Colombo. He stated that ‗the
police were acting in accordance with the relevant provisions in the Police Ordinance,
492 British High Commission (BHC),Colombo dated 2 February 2012
493 British High Commission (BHC),Colombo dated 2 February 2012
190 The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February 2012.
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section
to 2 March 2012.