Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake visited Jaffna last week, where he urged Tamil-speaking youth to apply for vacancies in the Sri Lankan Police Force, despite the decades-long history of abuses and crimes against Tamils.
According to the Sri Lankan president's media division,
“The President announced that Tamil-speaking youth will be given greater opportunities to apply for vacancies in the Police Department and encouraged them to come forward for recruitment.”
The appeal comes amidst Sri Lanka’s security forces long-standing allegations of police brutality, torture, and extrajudicial killings, particularly targeting Tamils.
Tamil representation in Sri Lanka’s police and military has remained disproportionately low for decades. A 2006 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions indicated that Tamils comprised only 1.2% of the police force at the time, despite constituting approximately 15% of the island’s population.
A 2018 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-recurrence highlighted that Tamils remain “severely underrepresented in all institutions, particularly in the security sector and the judiciary.”
The historical exclusion of Tamils from the police force has been deliberate and systematic, with the security sector remaining heavily Sinhala-Buddhist in composition and ideology.
Dissanayake’s call for Tamil youth to join the Sri Lankan police comes despite the institution's extensive record of abuses against Tamils.
The Sri Lankan police, along with the military, have been widely accused of human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances, and extra-judicial killings. To this day, Tamils continue to be arrested and torture by the Sri Lankan police.
Several UN reports and human rights organisations have repeatedly documented the Sri Lankan police’s role in torture, disappearances, and cracking down on Tamil activism. Most recently, Tamil families of the disappeared protesting for justice have faced police repression, with officers deploying intimidation tactics, surveillance, and legal threats against those seeking answers about their missing loved ones.