Sri Lanka: UN sleuth urges Sri Lanka crack down on torture
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Tuesday, 30 October 2007 |
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GENEVA, (Reuters) - A U.N. investigator called on the Sri Lankan government on Monday to crack down hard on what he said appeared to be a widespread use of torture by security forces in their battle with Tamil Tiger rebels.
Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture for the U.N. Human Rights Council, issued his call along with a list of recommendations following a week-long visit to the country earlier this month on an official invitation.
The high number of torture indictments filed by official bodies and the many complaints received by the National Human Rights Commission on the island "indicates that torture is widely practised in Sri Lanka", Nowak said.
The practice, he added in a report issued through the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, "is prone to become routine in the context of counter-terrorism operations".
Nowak said he appreciated the challenges the government faced in the violent and long-running conflict with the Tigers.
But he said that on the basis of his findings, the authorities should investigate torture allegations against the country's Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) and speed up criminal procedures in torture cases.
One way to do this would be establishing special courts to deal with torture and ill-treatment of detainees, Nowak argued.
The government, he said, should "ensure that all allegations of torture and ill-treatment are promptly and thoroughly investigated by an independent authority" and establish an independent complaints system in prisons for torture and abuse.
It should also ensure that confessions made by people in custody without the presence of a lawyer and not confirmed before a judge should not be admissible as evidence against the person making the confession, the investigator added.
He also called for the abolition of capital punishment, or at least the commutation of death into prison sentences.
Reuters
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