COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

7 MARCH 2012 SRI LANKA
8.13 Jane‘s Sentinel Country Risk Assessments, Country Report, Sri Lanka 132 (accessed on
3 February 2012) observed that:
―A major block to ethnic harmony in Sri Lanka has been the ethnic composition of all
branches of the security forces. The overwhelmingly Sinhalese Sri Lanka Army and
police force has seemingly validated LTTE propaganda that Sri Lanka is a racist, monoethnic
state that marginalises and abuses Tamils. All branches of the security forces
were accused of committing civilian massacres during the civil war. However, Tamils
were not in a position to join the security forces in significant numbers during the war
years.‖
8.14 With regards to the army, the same source 133 noted:
Desertion
―Established after independence in 1949, the Sri Lankan Army remained small and
ceremonial until the outbreak of the Tamil separatism militancy in the early 1980s when
the force had approximately 12,000 regular army personnel. The Sri Lanka Army
recruited aggressively amongst Sinhalese youth, more than trebling the total army
strength, including reservists on active duty, within four years. The recruitment process
was assisted by high levels of unemployment and poverty in rural Sinhalese areas; at
no time during the war was military conscription a serious proposition.‖
8.15 On 2 February 2011 AFP 134 reported:
―Sri Lanka's military on Wednesday [2 February 2011] offered to discharge all its 50,000
deserters without disciplinary action to mark the country's independence anniversary.
―Officers and enlisted men who have been absent without leave can report to their
regiments and then be released from their duties, military spokesman Major General
Ubaya Medawala said.
"‘This is not an amnesty, but a special concession to mark independence,‘ he said,
adding the deserters needed to register between February 4 and 12.
―Mass desertions have plagued the Sri Lankan army before and since the defeat of the
separatist Tamil Tigers rebels in 2009, which ended decades of bloody warfare on the
island.‖
8.16 On 11 February 2011 the Official Government News Portal of Sri Lanka 135 reported that:
132
Jane’s Sentinel Country Risk Assessments, Country Report, Sri Lanka, Security and foreign forces, 4
January 2012
http://sentinel.janes.com/docs/sentinel/SASS_country.jsp?Prod_Name=SASS&Sent_Country=Sri%20La
nka& [subscription only] date accessed 3 February 2012,
133
Jane’s Sentinel Country Risk Assessments, Country Report, Sri Lanka,
http://sentinel.janes.com/docs/sentinel/SASS_country.jsp?Prod_Name=SASS&Sent_Country=Sri%20La
nka& [subscription only] date accessed 3 February 2012, Security and foreign forces, 4 January 2012
134
AFP, Sri Lanka offers amnesty to 50,000 army deserters, 2 February 2011
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5huxkFbMehc9cK9upg5RvksnN5iMw?docId=C
NG.d21e4138637545580b355321babcdc6e.f1 date accessed 2 June 2011
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.
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