A set of secret documents obtained by a journalist reveal that during the last years of the war, British aid helped set up a vigilante network which supplied Sri Lanka's notoriously brutal police force with intelligence.
The documents, seen by VICE, show that the British government was aware of the risk of human rights abuses but continued to support the Sri Lankan security establishment regardless of that.
VICE's Phil Miller says that in 2008, the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence "merged" a community policing project, that was being delivered by UK advisers, with civil defence activities which "involved forming unarmed youth vigilance groups to report on any suspicious items/people".
The programmes took place during the most intense phase of the armed conflict, when Sri Lanka's police was involved in abductions, extra-judicial killings, sexual violence and torture.
"'Community police' initiatives may sound fairly benign, but not in this context: at the time, Sri Lanka was a war-torn country where the majority Sinhalese population was carrying out a genocidal assault on the minority Tamil people, Sinhala journalist in exile, Bashana Abeywardena told VICE.
"In every respect, the Civil Defence Committees (CDC) were a mass intelligence network, which effectively converted the Sinhala civilian population into state spies. The true objective of the plan was to re-organise the civilians as vigilance groups that can function parallel to the official state intelligence bodies," he further said.
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