Category: Stories

(May 13, 2016) In a statement following a nine-day trip to Sri Lanka, Juan E. Méndez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, claimed that criminal and terrorism investigators in Sri Lanka still use torture against detainees, even though the use has declined since the end of the country’s civil war seven years ago. While in the country, Méndez conducted a series of interviews with individuals who had been detained; their stories were confirmed with forensic tests. (Taylor Isaac, UN Rights Expert: Sri Lanka Investigators Still Using Torture, PAPER CHASE…

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“The Tamil community has borne the brunt of the State’s well-oiled torture apparatus,” said Ben Emmerson, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, adding that the law is used disproportionately against the minority group. During his visit between 10 and 14 July to assess the progress Sri Lanka has achieved in its law, policies and practice in the fight against terrorism since the end of its internal armed conflict, Mr. Emmerson heard first-hand accounts of brutal torture. “These included beatings with sticks, stress positions, asphyxiation using plastic bags…

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Thevan (not his real name) has flashbacks of the impossible days he spent being tortured in a police cell in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. These flashbacks force him to relive a story so harrowing that even he sometimes struggles to believe it happened to him. “I was blindfolded and with my hands tied behind my back. Sometimes our heads were banged against the wall or we would be kicked on our chests. Many times I was half conscious or would lose consciousness. When I would come back I would find…

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Today, REDRESS has filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee on behalf of Velauthapillai Renukaruban (‘Renu’), a UK citizen who was abducted, detained and tortured by Sri Lankan officials when he visited Sri Lanka in 2016.   Renu, an ethnic Tamil, fled Sri Lanka in 2001, when he was 19, during the civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In 2016, he returned to Sri Lanka to visit his elderly mother and to get married. Within 24 hours of arriving, he was abducted from his mother’s home and…

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