The tales of the missing are still haunting Sri Lanka six and half years after a bloody civil war ended. (Photo: Amantha Perera/IPS)
Colombo, Sri Lanka – Details of a secret detention center, where serious human rights abuses took place, deep inside the sprawling Tricomalee Naval base in the east of Sri Lanka are slowly emerging.
The site is nothing new to those who were held there. In June this year the South Africa-based International Truth and Justice Project, Sri Lanka (ITJPSL) launched a 134-page report on on-going human rights violations and past cases in Sri Lanka. The report titled An Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka 2009-2014 said. They knew they were being held there, but their family members or others concerned about their state knew nothing of where they were held.
Many of those held were either members or were connected to the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), that was crushed by government forces in May 2009 after over two and half decades of sectarian violence.
“Witnesses described being detained in the Naval Dockyard site along with dozens of other people, however they said it was possible many more were held in the area that they were not aware of because the site was a large area under the control of naval intelligence and well hidden from outside view. The witnesses interviewed were detained here from the end of the war in 2009 for years,” the report said.
Many faced torture at the site and none of the detainees had access to lawyers, human rights groups or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which visits known detention sites.