Former member of the UN special panel Yasmin Sooka has said the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) should visit Sri Lanka and conduct an independent investigation into the continued abductions, torture and sexual violence allegedly committed by the security forces, the Indian Express today reported.<\/p>\n
Indian-origin Yasmin Sooka is a member of a former UN special panel on Sri Lanka\u2019s war with the LTTE. She heads the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP).<\/p>\n
Her call has come ahead of the UNCAT\u2019s meeting in Geneva this week to examine torture in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
\u201cTorture and abduction are so systematic and entrenched in the DNA of the security forces that even a realignment of political parties in parliament and the new government under President Sirisena are not able to stop these crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt requires political will and a commitment on the part of the Government of Sri Lanka to carry out a comprehensive security sector reform programme which is sadly missing in Sri Lanka,\u201d Sooka said in a statement.<\/p>\n
She was one of three in the panel appointed by the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka during the last phase of the war with the LTTE which ended in 2009.<\/p>\n
Her International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) has collected testimony from 36 Tamil victims in three European countries, who have suffered abduction, illegal detention, torture or sexual violence at the hands of intelligence and security officers under the present Sri Lanka government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 10 of these cases the victims have already been granted asylum, meaning their cases have already been found credible by foreign governments,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall ITJP has more than two hundred statements from Sri Lankan victims of alleged war crimes and post-war torture and sexual violence who have fled the country. The orgnisation has also begun to identify some alleged perpetrators,\u201d Sooka said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want the outside world to know that torture is still happening in Sri Lanka and the torture that I suffered,\u201d the news article said quoting a young Tamil woman allegedly abducted in a \u2018white van\u2019 and gang raped this year in illegal detention in the North.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe international community, including the UN is under an obligation to ensure that the Government of Sri Lanka honours its commitments made in the Human Rights Council in regard to the transitional justice programme in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverlooking the ongoing violations is not doing either the Government of Sri Lanka a favour or the victims, whose suffering should not be swept under the carpet just because of political expediency,\u201d Sooka added.<\/p>\n
Courtesy: The Indian Express<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former member of the UN special panel Yasmin Sooka has said the UN Committee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-srilankan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}