Focus on Rights

Where torture has become endemic

On 5 April 2002, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) expressed its views in the case of the death of a detainee in one of Russia's prisons, in a manner that becomes heartbreakingly relevant to Sri Lanka. The UNHRC was considering an application brought by the mother of a twenty five year old youth who had died in a pre-trial detention centre in Moscow in 1995.

The mother pleaded before the UNHRC that her son was healthy when he first entered the detention centre but that he fell ill due to inhumane and torturous prison conditions with extreme overcrowding, poor ventilation, inadequate food and appalling hygiene. She complained that her son was given no medical treatment despite repeated requests and that the Russian Federation had failed to prosecute those responsible for the death of her son. She argued that such action violated her sons' right to life (Article 6 (1), right to freedom from torture, (Article 7) and right to be treated with dignity while in detention (Article 10 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The Russian Federation, on the other hand, defended itself by stating that death resulted from a combination of pneumonia and the stressful conditions of confinement, and that under these circumstances it was impossible to find the detention centre personnel liable.

In Lanskova vs the Russian Federation (CCPR/C/74/D/763/1997, 15 April 2002), the UNHRC, in its seventy fourth session, determined in favour of the mother of the victim. Sri Lanka is bound by the ICCP to the same extent, as is Russia in international law.

The State had conceded that prison conditions were bad and that detention centres at the time of the events held twice the intended number of inmates. Specific information received from the victims' mother, in particular, testified to the fact that the prison population was, in fact, five times the allowed capacity and that the conditions in the pre-trial detention centre where her son died, were inhuman, because of poor ventilation, inadequate food and hygiene. The violation of the right to be treated humanely while in detention was, therefore, found without much difficulty.

So too, was the finding relating to the violation of his right to life. As testified to by several fellow inmates, the victim had received medical care only during the last few minutes of his life and the prison authorities had refused such care during the preceding days. Importantly, the UNHRC stated that, whether or not the victim requests medical help, the State should have ensured that he was, in fact, given such assistance as far as may be reasonably expected. Lack of financial means does not reduce this responsibility. The Russian Federation was requested to award immediate compensation to the mother and take measures to ensure the humane conditions of its prisons.

Why should this finding of the UNHRC be of any relevance to us? One does not need to embark on a far sighted voyage of discovery to answer this question. Instead, see for example, the most horrifying instance of brutalisation of Koralaliyanage Palitha Tissa Kumara from Halawala, Mathugama, reported by the Associated Press and picked up by several other news agencies recently. Tissa Kumara is a respected local artisan of that area, engaged in painting and carving for the past thirteen years, for which he had been awarded a gold medal by the Hotels Corporation as well as certificates from the Housing Development Authority and the National Apprentice Ship Board. This thirty one year old father of two sons had been returning home from Galle where he had undertaken carving work in early February, when he was suddenly arrested by the Welipenna Police simply because he had given food to a person who allegedly committed some serious crimes.

After his arrest, Tissa Kumara was subjected to severe assault by a sub-inspector attached to the Wellipenna police station. Thereafter, with extraordinary brutality, that same police officer had brought a tuberculosis patient who was in the same police station, to spit into Tissa Kumara's mouth, telling him that he too would die within two months of the same disease. After that, he was put into the remand prison on fabricated charges of possession of a grenade and for robbery.

What follows this incident is even more blood curdling. After being diagnosed with tuberculosis some weeks back following a severe cough and blood in his saliva, Tissa Kumara has currently been put in a solitary cell. Food is being passed through to him via a narrow opening in the door as the prison authorities are nervous of contamination. His wife has made frenzied appeals to the various monitoring bodies in Colombo, including the National Human Rights Commission and the National Police Commission but her husband lacks proper medical treatment even to date. This, in effect, is what has happened to an ordinary hard working man with no previous criminal record but lacking political connections in order to get himself freed from a system that caters only to the affluent and the advantaged, if at all.

Tissa Kumara's case is distinguishable in its extreme perversion from the ordinary cases of police brutality currently being reported, bad as they are. There are, of course, many similarities with Lanskova, the Russian youth who died in Moscow years back. The difference is that the Sri Lankan case is even more heinous, given that the initial infringement to the right to life of the detainee stemmed from allegedly deliberate and callous actions of the police rather than prison conditions. However, a continuing denial of proper medical treatment is common to both cases as is the lack of proper investigations into the incident to which cellmates of the victim (in the early stage of Tissa Kumara's detention) have been able to testify to.

Given the above, one is justifiably puzzled as to the efficacy - and indeed the existence - of the various monitoring systems that are so grandiloquently cited in periodic reports to United Nations monitoring committees by the Sri Lankan government, including the National Human Rights Commission, the National Police Commission and various units of the Attorney General's Department? Why is it that none of these systems have been able to gather themselves together and ensure, at the minimum, that Tissa Kumara has been able to obtain medical treatment while in remand despite his case being notified to some as early back as February, this year? Should not at least, one of these bodies have the facilities and the will to initiate immediate visits to the prisons and police stations when complaints of this nature are received?

Very recently, the Government forwarded its combined second and third periodic report to the Committee against Torture (CAT) wherein it expressed its confidence that torture is not endemic in the country, that law enforcement officers who practised torture were being dealt with effectively and that human rights protection systems were working effectively.

The fact that no conviction for torture had yet taken place under the CAT Act despite more than nine years having passed since its enactment, was of course, understandably glossed over. Thankfully, this Periodic Report appeared not to, at first glance, contain any colossal bloomers as what occurred with the report to the UNHRC last year under the ICCPR, which stated that ten convictions for torture had taken place, which mistake was corrected during the reading of the Government Report in Geneva. However, skilful drafting cannot compensate for inaction and apathy and there is no doubt that this Report as well, will be challenged on all fronts before the CAT when it is taken up for consideration.

Meanwhile, Tissa Kumara - and others like him, whose plight is yet unreported - continues to suffer despite Governments changing hands and a new set of political charlatans coming to the fore. This is the reality that Sri Lanka now lives with.

Back to Columns