The Emergency regulations (ER) empower the Defence Secretary to send a detainee under the regulations or the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to a rehabilitation centre under a Rehabilitation Order (ER20). ER also provide that members of the LTTE who surrender to the Sri Lankan authorities must be sent for rehabilitation.
According to Amnesty International, it is possible that people originally detained for preventive or investigative reasons to find themselves subject to lengthy Rehabilitation Orders. Amnesty says a peculiar provision in the regulations requires that people who surrender because of fear of attack by terrorists be detained for rehabilitation themselves. ER20 violates international standards, which require that arrested persons should be promptly be brought before a judge and be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release. In early May, the CIUAH examined the case of Batticaloa resident P Thamilvanan. His mother says that he escaped from the LTTE and is held in a rehabilitation centre at Thellippalai in the Jaffna peninsula for the last nine months.
CIUAH also directed the Attorney General (AG) to release S Piraisoody, who was arrested in Trincomalee in March 1996 and is held at Kalutara prison. Several cases were filed against him, all on the basis of a confession made in custody. The confession was rejected by the High Court. The AG has failed to withdraw the cases or take action for his release. Reports say that following the intervention of the CIUAH, 20 of the 46 Tamils held without trial in Badulla prison were released in mid-May. MP P Chandrasekaran says that the AG agreed before the CIUAH to release Tamil detainee S Napoleon, but has failed to take any action.
In a May letter to President Chandrika, Colombo’s Maha Kaliamman temple priest Ragupathy Sharma says his wife who is a psychiatric patient and he are held without charge or trial for the last 15 months. Both were arrested in February 2000. Their children who are 6 and 8 years old have been sent to an orphanage in Batticaloa.
Mr Ragupathy alleges he suffered severe torture at the hands of the police. Being a Hindu priest, he is a vegetarian, but the police had forced him to eat meat. His head was covered with a plastic bag dipped in petrol. He was given electric shocks and his private organs were crushed. He was forced sign a confession, which was in the Sinhala language. In a letter to President Chandrika, The All Ceylon Hindu Congress say that the security forces continue to harass Hindu priests. On the night of 15 May, Colombo’s Slave Island suburb Sivasubramaniam temple priests Shanmugananda Sharma and Ramachandra Sharma were taken into custody at their residence.
In a fundamental rights application to the Supreme Court, father of two children Subramaniam Kannan alleges that he was arrested at the Poonthottam refugee camp in Vavuniya in June 2000 and severely tortured at the 211 Brigade Army camp. He says he was hung naked by the legs and repeatedly beaten. He became unconscious because of electric shocks. He was handed over to the police Counter Subversive Unit (CSU), who continued to torture him for another 15 days. His head was covered with a plastic bag dipped in petrol and barbed wire was inserted into his rectum. He was also forced sign a confession in the Sinhala language which he does not understand.
Vanni MP Selvam Adaikalanathan says that N Mangayarkarasy was detained when she went to see her brother in Anuradhapura prison on 12 May. Her brother N Maheswararajah was arrested in Vavuniya in October last year. Ms Maheswary has been separated from her three year-old child.
In late May, six Hill Country Tamils held in Kalutara prison, 25 miles south of Colombo, threatened to commit suicide if their cases were not heard. They are in detention since 1998 and their cases are dragging on for months without any reason. They say that Hill Country political parties promised effective action, but have abandoned them.
Jaffna resident Jeyakumary Ravichandran has informed the Human Rights Commission that her husband who went to Colombo on 12 April to make arrangements to go abroad is missing. He stayed in a lodge in the capital. But on 13 May, Ms Jeyakumary received a cable informing that he is held at Matara prison, 62 miles southeast of Colombo. When enquiries were made on 17 May, the prison authorities said that Mr Ravichandran had been released the previous day. He has not returned to Colombo or his home in Jaffna.
Amnesty International says shop worker Murugesu Anandarasa, who went to a military post in Vavuniya on 23 April to renew his residence pass, has disappeared.