Speaking to Parliament earlier this month, Tamil National Alliance MP M.A. Sumanthiran raised the issue of policing in the North-East and the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Extracts have been reproduced below:
“In the North and East, police brutality is a way of life. Public protests that have erupted all over the North and East in response to the widely believed involvement of the police and the armed forces in the ‘grease devils’ saga have been met with violent retaliation from the authorities. A number of people have died, and scores more badly injured. Some of the assaults were not only brutal but were also designed to humiliate and degrade the citizens, the one particularly in Naavanthurai."
“We must also not forget the fact that today, the Sri Lanka Police is predominantly a Sinhala institution. The word ‘predominantly’ is a very mild term to describe this. Out of its estimated 84,000 strength - that’s the number that is given in the website - only a paltry 1143 officers are Tamil, and that also, after the recent recruitment of 669 policemen, as mentioned by his Excellency the President during his speech at the UN General Assembly very proudly that 669 Tamil policemen have been recruited making a grand total of 1143. What he did not say is that this number is out of a total strength of 84,000 - does not even touch 2%, and before this last recruitment it was under 1%. So that is the situation we have and in the higher echelons the situation is even worse - there are not even 10 Tamil officers in the Senior officer grades.”
“Mr. Deputy Chairman of Committees, the Tamil National Alliance has for many years now raised the plight of young Tamil women and men who are victimized by police brutality. One example is the practice of extracting confessions through torture – a medieval practice that has contributed to the brutalization of the collective psyche of the Tamil community.”
Read the full speech here.
See our earlier posts:
Jaffna petitions pile up against army and police (Oct 2011)
To protect and serve … Sinhalese (Oct 2011)
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