Latest ITJP report documents widespread use of sexual torture on male detainees

The latest report released by the International Truth and Justice Project ( ITJP ) titled Unsilenced, highlights a form of torture that is rarely spoken about despite being widely practiced – sexual violence against men caught up in conflicts.

The report by Dr. Heleen Touquet, a researcher and an assistant professor at the faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Leuven, Belgium, claims this particular mode of torture is allegedly practiced by Sri Lankan security forces. Further,  the report challenges the commonly held notion that it is women who are primarily subject to sexual violence as part of conflict-related sexual abuse.

Dr. Chris Dolan, who has worked with male survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, notes in his foreword to the report that the weight of evidence of systematic abuse contained in the pages of this report undermines any assumption that those in overall command had no responsibility for this type of torture.

Unsilenced is based on 121 testimonials, all by Tamil men from Sri Lanka. The ITJP’s work for this project required  trained investigators to spend considerable amount of time with the victims to build trust. On an average] each investigator is said to have spent four to five hours per day over three or four days to build this trust. Survivors were willing to speak about their experiences because ITJP could guarantee strict privacy and often the disclosure itself proved to be cathartic. At the same time, as a general rule the victims would not disclose this type of torture to members of their family given the stigma attached to it in Tthe local culture.