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Persecution of Family Members<br />
One of the questions we have asked Sri Lankan asylum seekers and refugees in<br />
Europe and Asia is about reprisals against family members back home.<br />
Worryingly the answers suggest the change of government in January 2015 has<br />
not significantly altered the harassment and intimidation by the Sri Lankan<br />
security forces in the former conflict areas. Indeed they point to on-going<br />
persecution. The government may have changed, but the Sri Lankan security<br />
forces are still very much in control of the north and east.<br />
Of the 80 witnesses we specifically asked about reprisals, who had families<br />
remaining in Sri Lanka, 23 had a close relative who had suffered arrest and/or<br />
physical harm. The physical harm ranged from severe beatings to detentions,<br />
more severe torture, including gang rape, disappearance and killing. In other<br />
words, more than a quarter of torture survivors reported that their close family<br />
members in Sri Lanka had been badly hurt after they had escaped abroad.<br />
Of the 80 witnesses, the majority also reported that their relatives had been<br />
visited, intimidated and questioned in their homes by members of the security<br />
forces after they had left Sri Lanka, most on multiple occasions. The<br />
intimidation of family members is, among other things, part of an on-going<br />
system to deter witnesses to crimes committed by the security forces from<br />
coming forward. Significantly, it is also eroding any vestige of trust in a future<br />
domestic accountability mechanism.<br />
It might seem easy to dismiss the surveillance activities of the security forces as<br />
part of “normal security precautions” in a post-conflict area. However it goes<br />
way beyond acceptable security measures when a quarter of the witnesses say<br />
not only that they have been tortured, but their family members have also been<br />
detained, or beaten or tortured or raped, disappeared or killed afterwards.<br />
Less visible is the emotional damage the reprisal attacks have on families,<br />
many of whom have already survived the last phase of the war. It is dreadful<br />
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