COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

SRI LANKA 7 MARCH 2012
that some terrorist suspects are held without a detention order being in place and
therefore fall outside the legal framework.‖
11.09 The same report 217 also observed that: ―Despite repeated calls by the international
community, the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been allowed access
to all former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fighters. The International Committee of
the Red Cross has, however, continued to have access to other detainees in detention
facilities throughout Sri Lanka.‖
11.10 The UN Concluding observations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights 218 , dated 9 December 2010, noted that: ―The Committee is concerned about the
acute overcrowding and the inhuman detention conditions which prevail in many of the
State party‘s prisons. The Committee is also concerned that children are not regularly
separated from adults.‖
11.11 On 31 October 2010 the Sunday Observer 219 – quoting information from the
Rehabilitation and Prison Reforms Minister D.E.W. Gunasekera – reported:
―Acute congestion is the root cause for many problems and vices in prisons. Over
148,740 prisoners were admitted to prisons in 2009. Of them 37,872 were those
convicted of various crimes while the majority - 108,868 were remand prisoners. The
daily average of inmates at the Welikada, Magazine and Colombo Prisons was around
9,000 in 2009 despite accommodation and facilities available for less than one-third of
them, he said.
―The situation relating to remand prisoners is deplorable. Some of them are in prison for
only a day while others are languishing for years until their release on a court order.
Convicted prisoners have a work schedule and better facilities, the Minister said.‖
11.12 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Annual Report 2010, Sri
Lanka 220 , released in May 2011 noted that:
―…across the country the ICRC visited more than 26,000 people [26,318 detainees,
monitoring 3,575 of them individually, in 123 places of detention], including those
arrested and detained in relation to the former armed conflict, with a focus on those held
under the Emergency Regulations or suspected of affiliation with the LTTE. Delegates
checked on inmates‘ treatment and living conditions and reported their findings and
recommendations confidentially to the detaining authorities. Efforts to obtain access to
people held in rehabilitation centres proved unsuccessful…. More than 9,000 detainees
217 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
218 UN Concluding observations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , dated 9
December 2010 http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/docs/co/E.C.12.LKA.CO.2-4.doc date
accessed 25 May 2011, p9
219 Sunday Observer, Prison reforms to see the light of day, 31 October 2010
http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2010/10/31/sec01.asp date accessed 24 May 2011
220 International Committee of the Red Cross, Annual Report 2010, Sri Lanka, released in May 2011
http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/annual-report/current/icrc-annual-report-2010-sri-lanka.pdf date
accessed 19 May 2011
98 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.