[Wed, 02 Feb 2011, 03:47 GMT]
For new immigrants, America is the face of liberty, palladium of justice and the embodiment of the ideal of government under law, not under men. In this deliberative democracy, where the nation is perpetually arguing with its own conscience, debates spawn statutes that afford redress to victims who have suffered under despotic states around the world. The Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) is one such statute enacted in 1992 that enables U.S. citizens and non-citizens, whose relatives have suffered torture or extra-judicial killings, to assert a civil claim for damages. The recent legal action in the US by three Tamil plaintiffs in the US Federal Court against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse is based on the provisions in the TVPA.
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