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or the grounds for such a declaration. A 1987 constitutional amendment grants legal
immunity to the president for declaring a state of emergency in good faith. 135
Numerous governmental and nongovernmental organizations have criticized abuses
related to Emergency Regulations. In 2001, a report by human rights lawyer N.
Kandasamy indicated that some 18,000 people may have been arrested under
Emergency Regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 136 from January to
November 2000. The vast majority of those arrested were Tamil, some of whom were
ordered detained without trial for more than two years. Often the only evidence
against them was a confession extracted under torture. 137
In its most recent review of Sri Lanka on December 15, 2005, the UN Committee
Against Torture expressed concern about “allegations that fundamental legal
safeguards for persons detained by the police, including habeas corpus rights, are
not being observed.” The committee said that “the lack of an effective systematic
review of all places of detention, including regular and unannounced visits to such
places (art. 11), by the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka and other monitoring
mechanisms,” was a serious concern. 138
More recently, in December 2006, the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives
commented on the recent reimposition of the full Emergency Regulations:
135 See
http://www.law.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofLaw/Research/HumanRightsCentre/Resources/StatesofEmergencyDatabase/Sri
Lanka/ (accessed July 25, 2007).
136 The government of President J.R. Jayewardene first introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in 1979 amid
widespread criticism from opposition parties and human rights groups. The PTA allows arrests without warrant and permits
detention without the person being produced before a court, initially for 72 hours, and thereafter on an administrative order
issued by the defense minister up to 18 months, which could be followed by detention until the conclusion of trial. The law
allows for release during trial with the consent of the attorney general, but it does not provide any mechanism to secure such
consent. The government may hold a person under the PTA on suspicion and need not charge the person with an offense.
Currently the PTA is suspended. The 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), article 2.12, provided that the government would not
conduct arrests or search operations under the PTA, but rather “in accordance with the criminal procedure code.” The act was
never formally repealed but, according to the government, since the CFA “no person has been arrested under the relevant
provisions of the PTA.” Sri Lankan government response to Human Rights Watch, July 12, 2007.
137 Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002, Sri Lanka chapter, http://www.hrw.org/wr2k2/asia10.html.
138 Committee Against Torture, ”Issues Concluding Observations on Reports of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Ecuador, Austria, France, and the Democratic Republc of Congo,” November 25, 2005,
http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/A8C1CC94A9128EAFC12570C400502F1D?opendocument (accessed July
24, 2007).
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Human Rights Watch August 2007