COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

7 MARCH 2012 SRI LANKA
police describe being kept for long periods of time in bare rooms with minimal or no
furniture, often without toilet facilities, meaning that detainees must defecate and urinate
on the floor, in shared cells as well as individual. Food is often insufficient or not
provided for days at a time, and water given to detainees has been reported to be dirty,
or withheld until they comply with interrogation.‖
11.06 The Amnesty International (AI) report Sri Lanka: Forgotten prisoners: Sri Lanka uses
anti-terrorism laws to detain thousands 214 , dated 8 March 2011 observed:
―Many people detained under the act have been held in official custody for years. While
in detention they can be moved from place to place or housed in an unofficial or secret
place of detention while being interrogated. Amnesty International has spoken to
dozens of family members of detainees who say that the removal of suspects to nonofficial
detention centres makes it very difficult for families to track the whereabouts of
their loved ones.
―Sometimes suspects can simply get lost in the system with their family unable to find
out where they are being held. This contradicts a July 2006 Presidential
Directive which stipulates that the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission (SLHRC)
must be informed of an arrest and of the place of detention within 48 hours.
Under the Directive, families must be allowed to communicate with detainees.‖
11.07 The same AI report 215 also noted that:
―In January 2010, hundreds of Tamil political prisoners went on hunger strike
demanding that the government release them or, failing that, allow them to answer
accusations against them in fair trials. The prisoners who took part included those
detained in Anuradhapura, Batticaloa, Colombo, Jaffna and Trincomalee. They
suspended their fast on the eighth day after President Mahinda Rajapaksa pledged to
look into the prisoners‘ demands within two months, however, their demands remained
largely unmet.‖
11.08 Human Rights and Democracy: The 2010 Foreign & Commonwealth Office Report -
Section VII: Human Rights in Countries of Concern 216 , release on 31 March 2011 noted:
―Overcrowding in Sri Lanka‘s prisons is in part caused by a large backlog of cases in the
courts and the large number of prisoners detained on minor charges due to their
inability to pay fines. Remand prisoners and those imprisoned on minor offences are
also held in the same facilities as more serious offenders. Former prison officials report
that the majority of the prison population consists of pre-trial detainees and that the
majority of convicted inmates serve sentences of less than three months. It is alleged
214 Amnesty International, Sri Lanka: Forgotten prisoners: Sri Lanka uses anti-terrorism laws to detain
thousands http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA37/001/2011/en 8 March 2011, date accessed 23
May 2011
215 Amnesty International, Sri Lanka: Forgotten prisoners: Sri Lanka uses anti-terrorism laws to detain
thousands, 8 March 2011 http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA37/001/2011/en date accessed 23
May 2011
216 Human Rights and Democracy: The 2010 Foreign & Commonwealth Office Report - Section VII:
Human Rights in Countries of Concern, released on 31 March 2011
http://centralcontent.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/pdf/human-rights-reports/accessible-hrd-report-2010 date
accessed 24 May 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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