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 taken to a secret facility nearby. He was severely beaten and interrogated about this ties to the LTTE, which he denied. When he refused to confess, the officials threatened to kill him.
