Routine police torture devastates families: HRW

Sri Lanka’s police forces regularly torture and ill-treat criminal suspects in custody, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The authorities should create an independent oversight authority and adopt concrete steps to end police abuse that has had such corrosive effects across Sri Lankan society. “The Sri Lankan police treat the use of torture as an ordinary way of obtaining confessions,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The police regularly get away with using torture to falsely ‘resolve’ cases that really aren’t being resolved.” The 59-page report, “‘We Live in Constant Fear’: Lack of Accountability for Police Abuse in Sri Lanka,” documents various torture methods used by the Sri Lankan police against criminal suspects, including severe beatings, electric shock, suspension from ropes in painful positions, and rubbing chili paste in the genitals and eyes. Victims of torture and their families may spend years seeking justice and redress with little hope of success. Human Rights Watch conducted research in greater Colombo and other parts of Sri Lanka in 2014 and 2015. Previous Human Rights Watch reports have focused on wartime abuses, including torture of minority Tamil civilians. This report documents how torture and police abuse are entrenched and devastating to the majority Sinhalese population as well. Human Rights Watch’s findings are consistent with those of domestic human rights groups that have long worked on documenting torture in Sri Lanka’s police stations and jails. For example, Gayan Rasanga died in police custody in 2011 after he was arrested on suspicion of theft. Rasanga’s mother said that when she went to the morgue, she saw her son’s body had “dark marks on his ankles. The soles of his feet looked like they had been burned. There were bruises on his hips, his nose was broken and bloody.” “The Sri Lankan police forces should immediately end the barbaric practice of torture, adhere to the rule of law, and act to earn the trust of the communities they serve,” Adams said. “That can only be achieved by taking strict measures against abuses, ensuring justice for the victims, and punishing the perpetrators – not simply by transferring them or suspending them, but through transparent and impartial prosecutions.”