Building on a previous report published late last year - 'Returnees at Risk: Detention and Torture in Sri Lanka', Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) published their latest report on Wednesday: 'Activist Intimidation: Surveillance and Intimidation of Tamil Diaspora Activists and their Supporters'.

Analysing afresh data collected from the 'Returnees at Risk' report, this new report includes five interviews with diaspora activists conducted in January 2013, as well as a further eight successful asylum appeal determinations.

Speaking to Tamil Guardian, Henrietta Briscoe of TAG said,

"Our report shows that the government of Sri Lanka is not only committing egregious human rights violations against Tamils in Sri Lanka.. disappearances, torture and so on. It's also increasingly hostile towards foreign countries where significant Tamil populations live, in particular Europe, the United States and Canada."

"We now have evidence of surveillance carried out in Europe, the data from which is used to target for torture persons returning to Sri Lanka from abroad. It's now a global problem and we hope the UN Human Rights Council will take note of that in this and following sessions."

See here. Extract of the report's Executive Summary reproduced below:

'The GoSL defines ‘traitor’ and ‘terrorist’ broadly to include both those who call for an independent international process of accountability for the crimes committed during the Sri Lankan conflict and human rights abuses since the end of the conflict, and those who are considered to bring Sri Lanka into international disrepute, such as asylum seekers and protesters. Commensurate with its assessment of the threat, the GoSL allocates resources to collecting (both through surveillance and interrogations) and then acting upon that threat. Those accounts of interrogations under torture that are detailed in our data sets reveal the information requirements of GoSL officials.

The findings from the data sets confirm that the diaspora is considered the locus of the ‘LTTE’ threat.  Members of the diaspora are treated as suspicious, by virtue of the fact that they are in the diaspora. The risk to returning members of the Tamil Diaspora is further heightened when that member:

- Is an actual or perceived member of an organisation that is (actual or perceived) to be critical of the GoSL
- Has been (or is perceived to have been) involved in protests and/or activist events against the GoSL
- Is believed to have brought the Rajapaksa Administration into disrepute in any way - this includes asylum seekers and witnesses of war crimes or human right’s abuses who dare to speak out.'