Return to War - Human Rights Watch

detaining in its camps. The government replied that the army can arrest individuals
under regulation 18 of the Emergency Regulations, and it is required to hand over to
the police all arrested persons within 24 hours. 93
Colombo
Since August 2006 abductions and “disappearances” have also become a
widespread phenomenon in the capital. Human Rights Watch interviewed 26
families of persons missing from Colombo. In seven of the cases, testimonies of the
family implicate police and other security forces in the “disappearances.”
In one case, for example, the wife of a 21-year-old Tamil man said she saw the police
take her husband on August 23, 2006. According to the woman, she and her
husband had come to the capital from Trincomalee on June 26 so that he could
obtain a visa to work abroad. They stayed at a lodge in the 14 th district of Colombo
while he was waiting for the visa to come through. In the early morning of August 23
the police knocked on their lodge door. She explained what happened next:
It was 12:30 a.m. We were all sleeping. The police came in uniform and
we were all there. They asked for our ID cards. When they asked I saw
there were two boys taken from the room next door. They threw my
card away and grabbed my husband’s card, and they took him. 94
The wife went to the Armor Street police station on Kotehena Road the next morning
but the police refused to take her complaint. She searched at other police stations in
the city and returned to the Armor Street station that evening at 6 p.m., she said.
This time, the police took her complaint and provided a receipt, which Human Rights
Watch viewed.
According to the wife, two men in civilian clothes subsequently came to the lodge
and told the wife that her husband would be released in one week, and that they
93 Sri Lankan government response to Human Rights Watch, July 12, 2007.
94 Human Rights Watch interview with wife of “disappeared” 21-year-old man, Colombo, March 4, 2007.
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Human Rights Watch August 2007