Report: Sri Lankan forces raped Tamils to teach lessons

New Delhi, Feb 22: After photographs of brutal killing of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Velupillai Prabhakaran's son Balachandran surfaced, report suggests that Sri Lankan security forces raped and sexually assaulted Tamil

to teach lessons.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) 140-page report, "‘We Will Teach You a Lesson': Sexual Violence against Tamils by Sri Lankan Security Forces," states horrific incidents of sexual violence, rape, and third degree torture unleased on Tamil women and men by Sri Lankan forces.

The HRW report will be released on Monday.

The report chronicles 75 cases of alleged rape and sexual abuse that occurred from 2006 to 2012 in Sri Lanka.

HRW, a global human rights organisation, has demanded a thorough and high level international investigation into the matter.

"HRW found that politically motivated sexual violence by the military and police continues to the present, " said HRW Asia Director Brad Adams.

"The Sri Lankan security forces have committed untold numbers of rapes of Tamil men and women in custody. These are not just wartime atrocities but continue to the present, putting every Tamil man/woman arrested for suspected LTTE involvement at serious risk."

"I was taken to the fourth floor of the CID office in Colombo. I was not given any food or water. The next day, the officials, who included a uniformed armed official, photographed me, took my fingerprints, and made me sign on a blank sheet of paper. They told me that they had all my husband's details and kept asking me to disclose his whereabouts. When I told them my husband was abroad, they continued to accuse him of supporting the LTTE. I was beaten with many objects. I was burned with a cigarette during questioning. I was slapped around and beaten with a sand-filled pipe. Throughout the beatings, they asked me for my husband's details. I was raped one night. Two men came to my room in civilian clothes. They ripped my clothes and both raped me. They spoke Sinhala so I could not understand anything. It was dark so I couldn't see their faces clearly,"says an account of a 31-year-old Tamil woman in HRW.

The woman was said to be picked up from her Colombo house by CID personnel in November 2011.

OneIndia News