Observers believe that the enquiry is to pre-empt a meeting between the Justice minister GL Peiris and the Tamil parties on 3 July. The committee includes hard-line Deputy Defence minister Anuruddha Ratwatte who is in charge of the security forces.
At the meeting with Mr Peiris on 3 July, Tamil parties urged the appointment of a five member team from each Tamil party to which civilians can make initial complaints. Human rights activists insist that independent NGOs must be involved and that political appointments will further corruption.
After participants said that Village Headmen demanded money for identity card application forms, the government agreed to establish an office for people to obtain the forms freely. Participants also pointed out that Emergency regulation requiring police registration was not serving the purpose, as many who register are arrested repeatedly.
Rivalries between the Crime Detection Bureau (CDB) and immigration officers at the Colombo airport over Tamil passengers also led to arbitrary Tamil detentions often to spite the other department. In June three groups of Tamils leaving abroad, including 21 to Singapore, were detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) suspected of LTTE fundraising.
Police fear Black Tiger suicide cadre are hidden among the 150,000 Tamil refugees in the capital. As Operation Jayasikurui continued in the Vanni, security operations were stepped up. Colombo newspaper Sunday Times says some policemen took the law into their own hands, treating every Tamil visitor to Colombo as a suspected terrorist.
Over 50 Tamils were taken into custody in the Pettah commercial district on 3 June. A British Tamil couple were arrested near the President’s “Temple Trees” residence on 11 June. Six Tamil youths from Batticaloa were arrested on 18 June and released later.
A fundamental rights application filed in the Supreme Court in June reveals that a whole family which fled the northern war zone is in detention. Seevaratnam Rajanimala from Kilinochchi was arrested in Colombo on 28 November and for two days assaulted with a plastic pipe filled with concrete. Two of her four children are detained with her at the Welikada women prison. Her other two children are held at a Salvation Army hostel in Borella and her husband is detained at the Kalutara prison. She has so far not been informed of the reasons for her arrest.
Arrests are also taking place in other southern areas. Four Tamils were detained in Kandy on 6 June on allegations of spying on Mr Ratwatte’s home. Police say a large number of documents linking them with terrorist activity were uncovered. Three days later Kandy police took into custody a Hill Country youth working in the Nuwara Eliya market. LTTE suspect Chandran, allegedly sent by intelligence chief Pottu Amman to assassinate a top politician, escaped on 25 June from the police station in Nanu Oya, three miles south of Nuwara Eliya.
Seventy youths arrested in Jaffna and held in various prisons in the south, were released in June. But in mid-June another 52 Tamil youths, including 12 women, detained in the peninsula’s Kankesanthurai Army camp were transferred to prisons in Colombo.
A government decision in June to scrap the Human Rights Task Force (HRTF) set up to monitor detainees, and replace it with a Human Rights Commission has outraged local NGOs. They were widely critical over HRTF’s inaction and conciliatory pose but see the new entity as even more pro-government and less effective. HRTF’s mandate has been extended until August but the new Commission still has no office and no operational arm and detainees will remain at real risk.
A large number of Tamils are still held in prisons for several years without trial. A detainee in Kalutara prison says that despite assurances of a number of politicians, no action has been taken to look into their plight. Many detainees allege torture in custody.
Jaffna trader A Sureshkumar, who came to Colombo to go abroad was arrested on 11 January and held by the CDB until 27 May when he was produced before a court. He alleges that he was hung by the feet and tortured. Sureshkumar is currently at the Kalutara prison. The Supreme Court has ordered a medical examination.
Jaffna student R Pragalathan says in a fundamental rights application that after his arrest at Bambalapitiya suburb on 7 January, pins were inserted under his nails and when he refused to sign a confession was brutally assaulted. Another Jaffna student G Balakumar, currently in Colombo Magazine prison, also suffered torture at the Joseph camp in Vavuniya after his arrest in June 1996.