Category: News

A brutal attack by Police Officers caught on a video tape has gone viral in the social media. It has caused expressions of public dismay about the levels of violence that Sri Lankan Police practice. The video shows how a Police Officer jumps on the body of a fallen young driver and attacks him. Though, as an act caught on a video camera, this act of brutality may seem shocking. But, years of observing the practice of torture by the Sri Lankan Police clearly establishes this point. The practice of…

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A Sri Lankan Sinhala newspaper (Mawbima) reported on 18th March that an Army officer in the staff of a state-run Covid-19 quarantine centre had slapped a person who was being quarantined. The victim was admitted to Nagoda hospital in Kalutara district with a damaged ear drum and he was later transferred to Colombo national hospital. He was in a state-run quarantine centre in a tourist hotel in Benthota after paying Rs. 290,000 for his compulsory quarantine period after returning to Sri Lanka from foreign employment. The perpetrator of violence is…

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A video that has gone viral on social media shows a Sri Lankan traffic police officer brutally assaulting a civilian. The police officer who is in uniform flings down the man on the road and then jumps on the man’s body like a television wrestler. However, the police officer bumps on the man’s body and falls down. Another civilian-clad man is seen attacking the victim. The incident took place today (29-03-2021) at Pannipitiya in the Colombo district. The victim was a truck driver who had committed a road accident in…

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About 10 officials led by a Chief Inspector of Peliyagoda police station brutally attacked a law student right inside the police station when the student visited a suspect held by police. The incident took place on February 26 and the Minister of Public Security Sarath Weerasekara ordered the relevant police officers interdicted and the incident investigated. The sources said that the police officers misidentified the victim Migara Gunarathna as a lawyer and assaulted him because of that. The victim visited the police station to give some food to a suspect…

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Ten years on from the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, we have documented evidence of torture of its Tamil citizens in the context of ongoing security operations. This is despite the Sri Lankan government’s stated ‘zero tolerance’ policy on torture, and commitments to promote human rights when it was elected in 2015. In 2015, the new government of President Sirisena pledged to promote accountability and human rights, including to the UN Human Rights Council. Despite this, today we release a briefing based on 16 cases of Sri Lankan nationals who…

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One of the men tortured in Sri Lanka said he was held for 21 days in a small dank room where he was raped 12 times, burned with cigarettes, beaten with iron rods; a Sri Lankan foreign ministry official said will ensure allegations are ‘investigated and prosecuted’. Sri Lanka says it will investigate allegations by more than 50 ethnic Tamils that they were abducted and tortured by police or army soldiers long after the nation’s civil war ended.

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Sri Lanka’s military admitted on Saturday soldiers had abused and tortured female recruits, a rare admission of guilt after years of allegations over its personnel’s treatment of Tamil rebels during an uprising. A military spokesman said it accepted the authenticity of a video leaked on a dissident website that appeared to show soldiers torturing women soldiers, adding instructors had overstepped their authority for an undisclosed act of violating “military discipline”. “The investigation which is being carried out by the Sri Lanka Army Corps of Military Police has so far revealed…

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