Five years after the war that eliminated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the international community remains dissatisfied with Sri Lanka's own efforts at investigating war crimes, which include the killing of allegedly 40,000 civilians, most of them by state forces.
This week in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council will vote on whether there should be an international United Nations inquiry into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka's 2009 war. India is likely to back the resolution, moved by the United States, United Kingdom, Montenegro, Macedonia and Mauritius.
On the eve of the Geneva vote, a new report by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, the International Truth & Justice Project, Sri Lanka, and the human rights lawyer Yasmin Sooka, documents torture and sexual violence in Sri Lanka, not just in 2009 but also since then, as recently as this year.
The report, titled "An Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka 2009-2014," establishes that far from attempting post-war reconciliation, the Sri Lanka government is continuing with post-war crimes. The report is based on 40 sworn testimonies from survivors who now find themselves in the UK.
Here is one statement.
"Who are you really?"
Nitharsan's story
Next time you go into a petrol station in England to fill up, have a good look at the person behind the till. Nitharsan, a Sri Lankan Tamil teenager, worked night shifts in a petrol station while studying management by day. His mother was killed by a shell, his father injured in the war. When the fighting ended in 2009, he was sent abroad for fear that his past would catch up with him.
Aged fourteen, Nitharsan had been secretly recruited by the Tamil Tiger rebels to do undercover work in northern Sri Lanka. As a child he could move around unsuspected, delivering parcels and messages. He didn’t tell his parents. When they eventually found out, they were furious and immediately sent him away.
For years Nitharsan worked in the petrol station in London to support himself and send money home. “It was hard to study. I was always worried about my dad and my brother who were without support, but I had to attend college or they would cancel my visa.”
When his father fell gravely ill last year (2013), Nitharsan decided to return to Sri Lanka for good. It was long after the war and he thought he’d be safe. He’d seen far more important rebels released from detention, so he assumed the authorities wouldn’t be interested in him. “I was homesick and I wanted to go home.”
Nitharsan only survived a few days in Sri Lanka before someone betrayed him.
A white van ambushed him on the way home. Blindfolded and handcuffed, he was kept face down on the back seat. He remembers a bumpy road and then a smooth one with speed bumps. He heard the driver roll down the window and speak to someone in Sinhala. The vehicle stopped and someone held his arms and walked him over grass and then a cement floor. In the background he heard people speaking Sinhala.
Nitharsan’s blindfold was removed, his hands freed and he was pushed into a room. There was no light bulb, no windows, no bed and no toilet. “I was very afraid and worried. I did not know what was going to happen to me. I was praying.”
“Who are you really? What did you do in the UK? Why have you come back here?” the interrogators asked in broken Tamil. Nitharsan hadn’t told them he’d been in the UK and he wondered how they knew.
“What did you do before you left for the UK?” they continued. Nitharsan told them he’d been studying.
A man slapped him very hard on the side of his face and said, “Tell me the truth!” Then he kicked him and punched him hard in the chest.
That night Nitharsan didn’t sleep for fear. He could hear male voices screaming in Tamil. The next day he was taken to another room for interrogation. On the wall was a framed portrait of the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa. The men all wore khaki coloured trousers and white shirts and there was a walkie-talkie on the table. A man with a moustache said, “You’ve come back to rebuild the LTTE here. You worked for them in the UK.” Nitharsan protested that he’d come back to look after his sick father and had no links with the LTTE.
“If you lie to us again, I will shoot you!” the man with the moustache said.
Slapped and kicked, Nitharsan was laid face-down on a table, with two men holding his wrists and a third his ankles. Other men beat him with a plastic pipe filled with something heavy like sand. They carried on asking questions.
“I couldn’t answer each question. I was screaming in pain and saying that I was telling the truth. Some of them were kicking me in the side of the ribs and punching me as well. I didn’t admit being LTTE because I was very scared that if I did, they would kill me.”
Someone covered Nitharsan’s head in a plastic bag sprayed with petrol, tightening the bag with their hands under his chin. Two men held him as he struggled.
The next day, two different men came into Nitharasan’s room, removed all his clothes and stood him against a wall. They lowered their trousers and made him bend over, all the time talking in Sinhala. “One of them was touching my penis and testicles roughly with his hands. He was squeezing and twisting for five minutes. It was very painful.” The second man raped Nitharsan. Then the first one forced him to perform oral sex, ejaculating on the side of his face.
“They were using bad, derogatory words in broken Tamil and laughing at me.” Nitharsan can’t bring himself to repeat the swear words they used. “You Tamil dog!” is the only one he will say, as he wrings his hands nervously.
Male rape is a taboo subject in Tamil society. Nitharsan says it’s even worse that there were two men involved in the attack. “To be subjected to rape in front of other people is a shameful thing. If other Tamil people come to know they will look down on me. They did this to make us ashamed.”
Nitharsan hasn’t told anyone in his family about the sexual abuse. “It is very lonely to keep this to myself, but if they knew they’d worry about me more.”
In detention, Nitharsan eventually confessed to his past in the LTTE. That didn’t stop the torture. He was burnt with cigarettes, whipped with wires and his head submerged in dirty water until he passed out, unconscious.
“It was like a punishment. Maybe because I was a Tamil person they tortured me more,” he says.
After a week, two men came into his room, blindfolded him and put him in a vehicle. A relative had paid money for Nitharsan’s release but he didn’t know that.
“I was very frightened. I thought my life would end. I was crying, ‘Don’t kill me!’
‘Shut up!’ they said.”
Back in the UK, Nitharsan’s friends noticed something was wrong but he couldn’t tell them. “I am very stressed now. I have nightmares. I can’t concentrate properly. I am worried about my future – about my family, my sick father and my immigration status.”
He says his only hope of justice is giving his statement to this project. “It was a very difficult process to give evidence but at the end I was satisfied it would be used for a good purpose. If this is investigated properly the men who did this to me might get punished.”
This week in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council will vote on whether there should be an international United Nations inquiry into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka's 2009 war. India is likely to back the resolution, moved by the United States, United Kingdom, Montenegro, Macedonia and Mauritius.
On the eve of the Geneva vote, a new report by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, the International Truth & Justice Project, Sri Lanka, and the human rights lawyer Yasmin Sooka, documents torture and sexual violence in Sri Lanka, not just in 2009 but also since then, as recently as this year.
The report, titled "An Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka 2009-2014," establishes that far from attempting post-war reconciliation, the Sri Lanka government is continuing with post-war crimes. The report is based on 40 sworn testimonies from survivors who now find themselves in the UK.
Here is one statement.
"Who are you really?"
Nitharsan's story
Next time you go into a petrol station in England to fill up, have a good look at the person behind the till. Nitharsan, a Sri Lankan Tamil teenager, worked night shifts in a petrol station while studying management by day. His mother was killed by a shell, his father injured in the war. When the fighting ended in 2009, he was sent abroad for fear that his past would catch up with him.
Aged fourteen, Nitharsan had been secretly recruited by the Tamil Tiger rebels to do undercover work in northern Sri Lanka. As a child he could move around unsuspected, delivering parcels and messages. He didn’t tell his parents. When they eventually found out, they were furious and immediately sent him away.
For years Nitharsan worked in the petrol station in London to support himself and send money home. “It was hard to study. I was always worried about my dad and my brother who were without support, but I had to attend college or they would cancel my visa.”
When his father fell gravely ill last year (2013), Nitharsan decided to return to Sri Lanka for good. It was long after the war and he thought he’d be safe. He’d seen far more important rebels released from detention, so he assumed the authorities wouldn’t be interested in him. “I was homesick and I wanted to go home.”
Nitharsan only survived a few days in Sri Lanka before someone betrayed him.
A white van ambushed him on the way home. Blindfolded and handcuffed, he was kept face down on the back seat. He remembers a bumpy road and then a smooth one with speed bumps. He heard the driver roll down the window and speak to someone in Sinhala. The vehicle stopped and someone held his arms and walked him over grass and then a cement floor. In the background he heard people speaking Sinhala.
Nitharsan’s blindfold was removed, his hands freed and he was pushed into a room. There was no light bulb, no windows, no bed and no toilet. “I was very afraid and worried. I did not know what was going to happen to me. I was praying.”
“Who are you really? What did you do in the UK? Why have you come back here?” the interrogators asked in broken Tamil. Nitharsan hadn’t told them he’d been in the UK and he wondered how they knew.
“What did you do before you left for the UK?” they continued. Nitharsan told them he’d been studying.
A man slapped him very hard on the side of his face and said, “Tell me the truth!” Then he kicked him and punched him hard in the chest.
That night Nitharsan didn’t sleep for fear. He could hear male voices screaming in Tamil. The next day he was taken to another room for interrogation. On the wall was a framed portrait of the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa. The men all wore khaki coloured trousers and white shirts and there was a walkie-talkie on the table. A man with a moustache said, “You’ve come back to rebuild the LTTE here. You worked for them in the UK.” Nitharsan protested that he’d come back to look after his sick father and had no links with the LTTE.
“If you lie to us again, I will shoot you!” the man with the moustache said.
Slapped and kicked, Nitharsan was laid face-down on a table, with two men holding his wrists and a third his ankles. Other men beat him with a plastic pipe filled with something heavy like sand. They carried on asking questions.
“I couldn’t answer each question. I was screaming in pain and saying that I was telling the truth. Some of them were kicking me in the side of the ribs and punching me as well. I didn’t admit being LTTE because I was very scared that if I did, they would kill me.”
Someone covered Nitharsan’s head in a plastic bag sprayed with petrol, tightening the bag with their hands under his chin. Two men held him as he struggled.
The next day, two different men came into Nitharasan’s room, removed all his clothes and stood him against a wall. They lowered their trousers and made him bend over, all the time talking in Sinhala. “One of them was touching my penis and testicles roughly with his hands. He was squeezing and twisting for five minutes. It was very painful.” The second man raped Nitharsan. Then the first one forced him to perform oral sex, ejaculating on the side of his face.
“They were using bad, derogatory words in broken Tamil and laughing at me.” Nitharsan can’t bring himself to repeat the swear words they used. “You Tamil dog!” is the only one he will say, as he wrings his hands nervously.
Male rape is a taboo subject in Tamil society. Nitharsan says it’s even worse that there were two men involved in the attack. “To be subjected to rape in front of other people is a shameful thing. If other Tamil people come to know they will look down on me. They did this to make us ashamed.”
Nitharsan hasn’t told anyone in his family about the sexual abuse. “It is very lonely to keep this to myself, but if they knew they’d worry about me more.”
In detention, Nitharsan eventually confessed to his past in the LTTE. That didn’t stop the torture. He was burnt with cigarettes, whipped with wires and his head submerged in dirty water until he passed out, unconscious.
“It was like a punishment. Maybe because I was a Tamil person they tortured me more,” he says.
After a week, two men came into his room, blindfolded him and put him in a vehicle. A relative had paid money for Nitharsan’s release but he didn’t know that.
“I was very frightened. I thought my life would end. I was crying, ‘Don’t kill me!’
‘Shut up!’ they said.”
Back in the UK, Nitharsan’s friends noticed something was wrong but he couldn’t tell them. “I am very stressed now. I have nightmares. I can’t concentrate properly. I am worried about my future – about my family, my sick father and my immigration status.”
He says his only hope of justice is giving his statement to this project. “It was a very difficult process to give evidence but at the end I was satisfied it would be used for a good purpose. If this is investigated properly the men who did this to me might get punished.”
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