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Associated Press, Wed October 2, 2002 03:30 EDT . DILIP GANGULY - Associated Press Writer - COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - (AP) A leading Asian human rights group has accused Sri Lanka - 's 60,000-strong police force of torture, saying police "barbarity" has become so widespread it threatens the rule of law. Sri Lanka - 's Interior Minister John Amaratunga declined comment, saying he had not seen the report.
"We are already moving toward institutional reforms to introduce an efficient police service that will protect the people and safeguard everyone's human rights," Amaratunga told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate.
Sri Lanka - 's police have undergone changes since the new government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe assumed office in December.
The government appointed a separate ministry in charge of police, who earlier functioned under the Defense Ministry.
Saying that its report was the "first serious attempt at recording the routine use of torture by police," the human rights group said: "The cumulative effects of these events has contributed to a culture of barbarity in policing at all levels throughout the country." The group based its report on 22 case studies involving 38 alleged victims and said the cases were deliberately chosen because they all arose out of day-to-day criminal investigations. "They depict a systemic crisis of immense proportions that is not confined to a particular part of policing or region," it said. "That such an endemic problem exists does not diminish the dangerous situation existing in 'special' situations," the group said, in an obvious reference to widespread allegations of abuse in the north and the east, the center of Sri Lanka - 's civil war, where police operated with near impunity before a cease-fire was signed between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam in February.
Link to this news: http://www.theacademic.org/stories/10335473670/story.shtml
Posted on 2002-10-03
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