Torture's Link to Profit in Sri Lanka, a Retrospective Review
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28 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE Mercy for money: Torture’s link to profit in Sri Lanka, a retrospective review Wendell Block, M.D.,* Jessica Lee M.D.,* Kera Vijayasingham B.A.* between 1989 and 2013. We tallied the Key points of interest: number of incidents in which claimants • This paper supplements earlier studies described paying cash or jewelry to end on prevalence of bribe payments to end torture, and collected other associated data torture in Sri Lanka, adding trends such as demographics, organizations of the throughout the war, after the war, perpetrators, locations, and, if available, involving multiple armed organizations, amounts paid. We included torture perpe- and across wide geographic locations. trated by both governmental and nongovern- • Victims may not genuinely be consid- mental militant groups. Collected data was ered to be a security risk but are used for coded and evaluated. Findings: We found extortion. that 78 of the 95 subjects (82.1%) whose • Significant economic and social impact reported ordeals met the United Nations on families is likely. Convention Against Torture/International • Torture unlikely to stop until financial Criminal Court definitions of torture incentives are removed. described paying to end torture at least once. • High prevalence suggests that perpetra- 43 subjects paid to end torture more than tors act in collusion with their superiors once. Multiple groups (governmental and and benefit from impunity. non-governmental) practiced torture and extorted money by doing so. A middleman Abstract was described in 32 percent of the incidents. Background: The purpose of this retro- Payment amounts as reported were high spective study is to describe the pattern of compared to average Sri Lankan annual bribe taking in exchange for release from incomes. The practice of torture and related torture, during and after the decades-long monetary extortion was still reported after war in Sri Lanka. Methods: We reviewed the end of the war, inclusive of 2013. the charts of 98 refugee claimants from Sri Interpretation: Torture in Sri Lanka is Lanka referred to the Canadian Centre for unlikely to end while profit motives remain Victims of Torture for medical assessments unchallenged. As well as health injuries, prior to their refugee hearings in Toronto victims of torture and their families suffer significant economic injuries while their assailants are enriched. The frequent link between torture and impunity means *) Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture multiple populations the world over are TORTURE Volume 27, Number 1, 2017 Correspondence to: [email protected] vulnerable to this abuse. 29 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE Keywords: Sri Lanka, torture, bribe, extor- consequences. Outsiders such as ourselves tion, retrospective chart review will inevitably omit or misrepresent what are important facts to many. In the following Introduction paragraphs, we give what is assuredly a very Reports of bribe payments to end torture are limited sketch of the context for this paper. commonplace, yet the phenomenon is rarely Four hundred years of colonial rule led given detailed attention. Torture's efficacy as to identification and administrative represen- a tool to increase security, and the related tation through essentialized ethnic catego- legal and ethical problems, are frequent ries. 2, 3 (p3-39, p47-54) After Sri Lanka subjects for public discussion. Medical achieved independence from Britain in 1948, accounts generally focus on the physical and there was increasing friction between the psychological impacts torture has on affected Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. individuals, rather than on torture's profound Government legislation and successive new social sequelae.1 The purpose of this constitutions promoted majority aspirations retrospective study is to illuminate one of but eroded Tamil and other minority rights torture’s socio-economic dimensions within and their traditionally held protections. a particular context: the link between torture A war for an independent Tamil state in and bribe extortion during the 1983-2009 the north and east of the island was eventu- war in Sri Lanka, and during the war’s ally led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil immediate aftermath (2009-2013). Based on Eelam (LTTE, or Tamil Tigers). It began the reports of 98 Sri Lankan refugee after years of political frustration and the claimants assessed in Canada during that development of several militant Tamil time, this study identifies organizations groups. Ultimately, open war broke out after whose members gained financially through the 1983 “Black July” riots in which one to torture, the amounts of cash involved, and three thousand Tamil citizens were killed in the frequency with which detainees were retaliation for the killings of Sinhalese released because they paid bribes. The soldiers in the north. political/security aims of the perpetrators, as The LTTE developed their own sophisti- reported by the victims as the overt motiva- cated army and navy, and also used suicide tion for their torture, distinguish these and other bombings to attack their detractors actions from the criminal form of kidnapping and civilians to instill fear throughout the for ransom, which in itself is not considered country. “Ethnic cleansing” of Sinhalese and torture. Muslim people took place in Tamil “home- By reporting descriptions of recurring lands”. The LTTE also accepted and TORTURE Volume 27, Number 1, 2017 patterns involving torture-ending bribes, it conscripted women as members of their can be argued that financial extortion is fighting ranks, including the elite “Black intertwined with torture in Sri Lanka and Tigers” who carried out suicide attacks. This that the profit motive is thus a potent driver meant that young Tamil women, as well as of the practice of torture. men, would be suspected of being “terror- ists”. The LTTE were notorious for con- Background scripting children and forcing them into their Civil conflicts, and the locations in which fighting ranks.4 For years the LTTE enforced these conflicts devolve into open violence, their de facto governance over large regions involve multiple histories, causes and under their control. 30 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE For its part, the government was brutal in over in May of 2009. A long military cam- its response. The authorities were already paign had pushed the LTTE out of their empowered by emergency regulations, strongholds and cornered them on the east originally promulgated in 1971 under the coast, where they were either killed or taken Public Security Ordinances Act to facilitate into detention. Velupillai Prabakharan, the suppression of the largely Sinhalese, class- supreme leader of the LTTE, was killed in based Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) the fighting, along with many other top uprisings. The Prevention of Terrorism Act leaders. Thousands of Tamil civilians had (PTA) of 1979, made permanent in 1982, been coerced by both sides to retreat with the had given the authorities further powers to LTTE - as many as 40,000 civilians were arbitrarily detain terrorist suspects and move killed in the final conflict and thousands were them to undisclosed locations. Millions of detained in “rehabilitation camps”. 7 (p32) In civilians were displaced by the war’s violence spite of the war’s end, military suppression and tens of thousands were killed.2 (p278) and abuses of human rights are ongoing in Detention and torture of civilians was traditionally Tamil regions of the country. common, as were disappearances. This did Detentions and torture continue to be not change after Sri Lanka ratified the reported by Sri Lankans. 8 United Nations Convention against Torture in 1994. Also of note is that, in March of Methodology 2004, Sri Lanka ratified the United Nations The reviewed charts were those of all 100 Sri Convention against Corruption. Lankan refugee claimants assessed by two Multiple Tamil paramilitary groups family physicians from 1990 through worked alongside the military in support of December 2013. 89 of these medical the government’s aim to destroy the LTTE, examinations were originally conducted by and presumably to extend their own power Dr. Wendell Block, one of the authors of this and influence. In a major blow to LTTE article. The medical assessments consisted of hegemony in eastern Sri Lanka, “Colonel” relevant history-taking, careful examination Karuna and his fighters split from the LTTE of any scars or injuries attributed to torture, in 2004 to form their own paramilitary group a detailed description of the physical findings in support of the government. 5 Government in the medicolegal report along with a intelligence agencies, “home guards” and the statement as to whether the findings were police were all involved in the conflict. consistent with the given history. The Over the years of the war, there were a claimants had been referred to the Canadian number of poorly observed ceasefires. The Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT) by Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 brought the their immigration lawyers for medical Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to the documentation prior to their refugee north and east of the island, until heavy hearings, where these medical reports were losses inflicted by the Tigers forced their accepted as evidence by government departure in 1990. Another important immigration adjudicators. ceasefire was brokered by Norway and signed The charts reviewed for this study in 2002, but peace-talks failed and open included the claimant’s legal narrative and conflict resumed in 2006. (6, p243) the medical report. Two claimant files were The war between the Sri Lankan govern- excluded because they did not contain both TORTURE Volume 27, Number 1, 2017 ment and the LTTE was declared officially of these documents (n=98). For each 31 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE individual, while reviewing their chart, a not refugee claimants. A common theme was separate document was created to note their the police use of torture to gain confessions demographic data (including ethnicity, of crimes and/or to extort bribes from gender, year of birth, education level, randomly arrested individuals, usually from occupation, marital status, year assessed by the poorer classes.