A story from the sky

The co-pilot of the ill-fated Antonov which crashed at Kadirana on March 24 is recovering from the trauma but he is determined to get back to flying as soon as he is well enough.

Co-pilot Victor Penchev, the 46-year-old father of four, spoke to The Sunday Times at the Colombo National Hospital where he is recuperating.

Recalling those horrifying moments, he said: "The engine of the plane stopped when we were some 400 metres above the ground, and the 50 tonne aircraft started dropping. I saw fire engines and ambulances rushing to the scene. Everything was like a horrifying picture."

The co-pilot said he was receiving excellent treatment at the National Hospital and he was grateful to the medical staff.

Gearing up for counting heads

By Faraza Farook

The Department of Census and Statistics will employ more than 100,000 people, including Advanced Level qualified youth, for the national census scheduled to be conducted in March next year, Census Chief A.G.W. Nanayakkara said.

He said the department had worked out all the details for the islandwide census which is expected to cost the state more than Rs. 340 million.

The census which was generally conducted every ten years was last held in 1981. The 1991 census could not be held because of the war.

"The department will conduct a pilot census in May this year to ensure that everything is fine. Preparatory work such as publicity programmes, cartography work, preparation of questionnaires and instruction manuals, plans of enumeration and data processing etc are in progress," Mr. Nanayakkara said.

The project involves a new feature. For the first time, the department will be using maps where boundaries of wards, grama niladhari divisions, estates and villages would be identified and marked.

All housing units, collective living quarters and non housing units will be listed serially and a number affixed to provide a base for the surveys.

Each enumerator will be assigned a census block. During the preliminary census which is to be conducted for ten days, lists are updated and a census schedule is filled for each household.

After about one week, the final census is conducted between 6 p.m. and 12 midnight. A separate code will be given to those absent that night and for visitors present. For those on the move, a special 'outdoor' enumeration will be given.

Grama Niladharis, District and Divisional Secretaries and other officers would assist the Census and Statistics Department in carrying out the census and all its preparatory work, Mr. Nanayakkara said.

In addition, the department would also recruit people with Advanced Level qualifications, on a temporary basis.

Tamil parties focus hopes on Oslo

By Roshan Peiris

Tamil political party leaders expressed mixed feelings on whether the present peace initiative would herald peace in the New Year.

TULF's parliamentary group leader Joseph Pararajasingham said the ongoing talks between the Government and the UNP had not made much progress towards bringing about ethnic peace.

"The way things are moving everybody feels there has to be a settlement to the ethnic problem. We hope that in this New Year there will be a settlement. Let us hope that in the national New Year we can positively look forward to peace with Norway acting as a facilitator," he said.

PLOTE leader D. Siddharthan said his party hoped that with the dawn of the New Year, there would be peace, though the prospects looked gloomy mainly due to the heavy fighting in the north.

EPDP leader Douglas Devananda said everyone was desperate for peace and he believed more pressure must be put on the LTTE to come for talks.

EPRLF leader Suresh Premachandran said that he believed the entry of Norway as a facilitator was a key factor that could lead to peace which has eluded our country for four decades.

The ACTC's new leader N. Kumaraguruparan said that even while talks were going on innocent civilians were being used as a human shield in the latest fighting.

He said his party was concerned about the hard-line attitude of Buddhist prelates but he believed there was no option but to talk to the LTTE.

Former Northeast Chief Minister A. Vartharaja Perumal said the PA-UNP talks gave reason for hope and he believed a joint political package put forward by both parties would provide a solid foundation for a lasting peace.

Focus on Rights

Torture amidst the New Year crackers

By: Kishali Pinto Jayawardene.

That the New Year could be celebrated with such unabashed consumerism in this part of the country amidst fighting intensifying in the North and East with all its consequent horrors is, of course, nothing to be astonished about. Regardless, this almost total disassociation of one manner of crazed self-indulgence with the other manner of basic survival suggests a level of cynicism that is appalling, to say the least.

Life, it seems, goes on in Sri Lanka and would continue to do so in all its perverted manifestations once the crackers (together with the seasonal bonhomie) subsides and the satiated wake up from their feasting in both the towns and the villages. Going by this same opportunistic and self-centered reasoning, that the month of April was heralded in by news of a torture of a school-girl by police in Colombo occasioned scarcely a ripple in the minds of Sri Lankans preoccupied with the festivities and the booming bargain sales in the city.

According to reports, the girl was traveling to school Tuesday morning, April 4th, when the bus she was traveling on was stopped at approximately 5:30am by security forces near Viharamadevi Park. The girl and a few others were taken to a nearby police station, where the girl was allegedly tortured. She was then burned with cigarettes and cut. The girl was apparently released only after a senior police officer intervened. It is thus in this manner that we celebrate the month of April with all its splendidly grotesque contradictions. Considering the above, it was a trifle inconsiderate perhaps that observations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, on the practice of torture and other forms of ill-treatment in Sri Lanka, should have been released to the public gaze at this particular moment of time. His observations comes hard on the heels of a not particularly auspicious report on Sri Lanka by the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances in March this year.

Taken together with the severe observations of the European Union last week, these signal an increased push by international human rights monitoring bodies in getting the Government to demonstrate its bone fides towards protection of human rights in a more effective manner.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has been very clear in his comments. As he informed the Government by letter dated November 15, 1999, he continued to receive information on the prevalence of torture and the continuing use of unauthorized places of detention in the North and East and in Colombo. In particular, the Peoples Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) is reported to run such places of detention, where torture is allegedly routinely practiced with the tacit approval of members of the army and the police who regularly visit these camps.

Elements within the security forces are reportedly helping these paramilitary groups to protect the secrecy of the camps and facilitate the torture being practiced within. Prisoners held in these camps are allegedly beaten, administered electric shocks, have petrol poured on their backs that is then lit and are physically abused. His observations highlight some forty cases of alleged torture, including persons tortured not only in the context of the ongoing conflict. Indeed, a point made by the UN Special Rapporteur is that torture of common criminal suspects and people taken into custody in a non-political context (in order to extract confessions from suspects in theft and other criminal case)is widely practiced in Sri Lanka.

Even more disturbingly, there is evidence of easy resort by law enforcement officials to torture of minors. Thus, we have the case of Ehamparam Damayanthi, a fifteen year old girl who was tortured and sexually assaulted by soldiers at the Patpodi Army Camp. She was kicked, hit with clubs, submerged in water and had gasoline poured over her face. In this category is also classified the now well known case of Gamage Malsha Kumari, a fourteen year old girl who was tortured by the police at Hunugama in an effort to make her confess to theft.

In both these cases, their petitions before the Supreme Court for infringement of fundamental rights were accepted and they were given compensation, small retribution though this was for what they had undergone. As harrowing a tale is that of Selvarajah Thenuka, a ten- year-old Tamil girl from the village of Pathameny, who was allegedly gang raped by soldiers at the Putur VC army camp at Atchuvely.

These cases and others like them demonstrate in no better way, the complete brutalisation of this subverted society of ours. For the Special Rapporteur, what is of concern is that despite the existence of legislation to punish torture including the Torture Act of 1995, the violation is still committed "with impunity". No one has reportedly been convicted in relation to the crime of torture in Sri Lanka. Seven indictments are said to be currently before the High Courts, arising from eight judgements by the Supreme Court during 1997 and 1998.

In these judgements, the Supreme Court had found certain police officers responsible for torture, had awarded compensation for their victims and had recommended further investigations. The Special Rapporteur points out however, that the Supreme Court had reportedly expressed its frustration at the lack of follow-up by the relevant authorities, consequent to its recommendations.

Those Sri Lankans with a better level of civic awareness may remember the presentation of Sri Lanka's first Periodic Report to the Geneva based UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) in 1998. As was evident on that occasion, the Sri Lankan Report on its obligations under the Convention Prohibiting Torture was a model of decorum, one wit commenting that such faultless mechanisms to protect human rights must indeed be the envy of less fortunate countries.

For not only did the Constitution explicitly forbid torture with the Supreme Court "jealously protecting this right" and the Torture Act making torture a criminal offence punishable by stringent penalties but procedures relating to investigation, taking a suspect into custody and detention outlawed torture as an acceptable practice. Human rights education and information formed a significant part of the training of police officers, members of the armed forces and prison officers. A plethora of committees, commissions and bodies including the Human Rights Commission was meant to supervise the actions of law enforcement officials.

Complaints against police officers, including complaints of alleged torture were directed to be made to a special sub-unit set up under a senior DIG and action was taken to refer complaints against police officers to an independent panel and set up a "cell" directly under the IGP to monitor these complaints. In a burst of exuberance, it was even announced that a separate directorate has been established at army headquarters to deal exclusively with international humanitarian law.

That was in 1998. Two years later, as the observations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture indicate, all these remain grandiloquent promises and no more. Sri Lanka would, indeed, have been far better advised to have followed the example of Israel at the 1998 sessions and maintained the profoundly less hypocritical position that interrogation practices such as violent shaking, handcuffing in uncomfortable positions, hooding for long periods and sleep deprivation amounted to "moderate physical pressure" and could fairly be applied to terrorist suspects in order to obtain information that might foil future attacks. Instead, we preferred to state that whatever acts of torture that were being committed were "isolated acts carried out by some individuals" This strategy may have worked in 1998.

In the present context, while one cannot still maintain that torture is the outcome of "a deliberate state policy" in Sri Lanka, it is clear that verbal jockeying around will not work any longer. In the face of such emphatic and sustained pressure, much more is needed to convince the international monitors that the country is living up to its international obligations.

It is in this respect that the 1998 recommendations made by CAT still continue to be relevant. CAT asked the government to ensure a review of the emergency regulations and PTA. It recommended that the Human Rights Commission be strengthened to ensure its impartiality and effectiveness and urged that the government allow individual communications on alleged torture to be submitted to CAT.

It further suggested that Sri Lanka commemorate all victims of torture on June 26th of each year, in line with a naming of this day as the International Day Against Torture by the UN General Assembly. Sadly, each of these recommendations still remain in the realm of speculation.

More News/Comment

Return to News/Comment Contents