Stop-Torture-Report

Case Study 2: Manik Farm IDP Camp, Vavuniya District
Manik Farm is the generic name for several different internment camps in the
Vavuniya area used to detain survivors of the 2009 war. At its peak, Manik Farm
contained more people than all cities in Sri Lanka except the capital. The
conditions in the camp were appalling but physical insecurity was the greatest
problem for detainees. There are multiple reports of women being detained and
raped in the camps and of former cadres being identified by ex-LTTE informers
and then taken to other camps to be raped and/or tortured. ITJP has
photographs and names of some of the alleged rapists and Tamil informers
who worked in Manik Farm, as well as testimony from security force insider
witnesses that corroborate the accounts of victims.
The Government of Sri Lanka told the UN Human Rights Committee in October
2014 that:
“…there were no military controlled camps holding civilians during or after the
conflict. The IDP welfare centres were administered by the Government
authorities with the process being led by the District Secretaries. 52 ”
However Manik Farm camp, like other internment camps for war survivors, was
a militarised site, guarded by armed soldiers and police, surrounded by barbed
wire, where the security forces could act with impunity.
The CID and military intelligence units operated out of special areas in the
camp, summoning IDP’s for questioning. A Tamil NGO worker, who was some
years later abducted in a white van, tortured and raped, described how the
security forces operated in Manik Farm while he worked there in 2009:
52 112th Session of the Human Rights Committee, Consideration of Sri Lanka’s 5 th Periodic Report under the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, 7-8 October 2014, accessed
at http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/LKA/INT_CCPR_AIS_LKA_18459_E.pdf
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