*groundview journalism For citizens
Photo courtesy GlobalPost. Stephen Hird/Reuters.
In January 2012 I traveled to Sri Lanka with a group of fellow students from the University Virginia School of Law.[1] We wanted to learn about legal issues in other countries, and we arrived in Sri Lanka eager to hear views from government officials, NGO workers, and local citizens. I chose to focus on arbitrary detention in a number of settings including the internment of IDPs from May to December 2009, the rehabilitation of former LTTE members, and the labyrinth of Sri Lanka’s prison system, including many who have disappeared while in custody or are being held without charge. The following is a brief summary of the testimony gathered from nearly three weeks of interviews in Sri Lanka. My interviews took place primarily in Colombo and the Vanni. A more in-depth exploration of arbitrary detention in Sri Lanka based on these interviews, including a substantial examination of Sri Lanka’s obligations under Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, will be published in May 2012. Please contact me if you wish to be notified when the final paper is published or if you would like to be interviewed on this topic.
1. Internment
The first type of detention I looked at was the internment of IDPs from May 2009 to December 2009, immediately following the war. This form of detention has received a fair amount of international coverage, but beginning in December 2009 most of the IDPs were allowed to move about more freely and attention to this issue receded. An argument could be made, however, that the IDPs are entitled to some type of compensation for the time they were detained if such detention was in violation of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Article 9, as Article 9 states, “Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.”[2] The information below came from interviews with IDPs who were held against their will in the IDP camps from May to December 2009. Seven of the interviewees are still living in Menik Farm, one of the IDP camps, because of land issues that have prevented their resettlement. The rest were released in December 2009 and have moved in with family members or returned to their home villages.Continue reading »
