Tamils faced torture in Sri Lanka long after war, says rights group

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s security forces abducted men and women from the ethnic Tamil minority and tortured them in custody long after the end of a bloody civil war in the South Asian island nation, a human rights group said in a new report.

The 26-year civil war between separatist Tamil insurgents and government forces ended in 2009. Rights groups accuse both sides of abuses during the conflict in which 80,000-100,000 people died, according to United Nations estimates.

In its report, the London-based International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) which has been documenting alleged abuses in Sri Lanka, cited details of 123 Tamils who said they were beaten, burnt, suffocated and sexually assaulted by Sri Lankan authorities between 2015-2022.

Sri Lanka rejects the ITJP allegations, a government minister said on Wednesday.

The report, titled ‘Disappearance, Torture and Sexual violence of Tamils, 2015-2022’, which will be published on Thursday, said 11 of the 123 were allegedly detained after Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as Sri Lanka’s president in July 2022.

Wickremesinghe was appointed after large-scale protests triggered by a spiralling financial crisis forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and later resign from his post.

“The analysis in the current report confirms ... arbitrary and unlawful detentions between 2009 and 2015 were systemic and structurally entrenched, (and) could just as well have been written about the seven-year period between 2015 to 2022,” the report said, adding that the alleged victims were seeking asylum in Britain.