Stop-Torture-Report

In some cases women would be raped while their family members, who knew
what was happening, waited for them outside.
“My father would always stay outside the camp until they finished the
interrogation. My father would know in his heart what they would have done to
me in the name of investigation. But he was helpless and would not ask
anything from me about the investigation. We would go back home without
having any conversation. No father should go through this kind of appalling
experience.”
(Witness 103)
Exploiting this acute sense of shame over sexual torture, and demonstrating
their unabashed behaviour, some perpetrators have gone one step further and
filmed their victims being sexually assaulted in order to prevent them from ever
speaking out, as happened to this Tamil woman:
“He had a video of me. He showed it to me. It was a cell phone video. I saw part
of it… I saw my face. I saw one person doing something bad sexually to me. I
do not want to say more at this time because I am upset thinking about what
they did to me.”
(Witness 42)
Monitoring & Surveillance
Tamil survivors of the war – civilians and combatants – continue to be subjected
to pervasive and invasive monitoring and surveillance by the security forces.
The former conflict areas of Sri Lanka are geographically small, and that makes
it easy for the authorities to trace and monitor the family members of former
LTTE members and sympathisers who have been in detention and resettled in
their villages. Civilians and combatants who survived the last phase of the war
were generally photographed on surrender and the details of their National
Identity Cards, their address and their family members and addresses recorded.
This was a conscious decision by the Sri Lankan state at the end of the war in
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