COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office
COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office
COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office
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SRI LANKA 7 MARCH <strong>2012</strong><br />
about whether land cleared of mines was always immediately returned to its original<br />
owners.‖<br />
Police registration<br />
25.03 A letter from the British High Commission (BHC) in Colombo dated 2 February <strong>2012</strong> 492<br />
reported that:<br />
―Throughout the civil conflict, the Sri Lankan authorities, acting under Section 23 of the<br />
Emergency Regulations Act, required households to register all residents, the emphasis<br />
being on Tamils who took temporary lodgings. These lists were then used in cordon and<br />
search operations to identify people from whom the police required further explanation<br />
as to why they were residing or travelling in a location. Persons identified as having not<br />
registered, were normally detained by the police for further questioning.<br />
―There was often no uniformity in the implementation of the police registration. After the<br />
new government came to power in November 2005, police visited properties and issued<br />
forms to be completed by the head of the household, asking them to take full<br />
responsibility for the information provided and the persons on the list. The form sought<br />
information as to the purchase date and price of the property, from whom the property<br />
had been purchased, how the purchase had been financed and who had assisted in the<br />
finance etc. This form was issued to almost all houses in the Tamil concentrations in<br />
Colombo and suburbs. Generally the police did not say that they were targeting only<br />
Tamil households, but collection of completed forms / booklets were only strictly<br />
enforced when it came to Tamil concentrations. The main purpose of these booklets<br />
was to assist the Police, when they launched cordon and search operations, to identify<br />
visitors or undeclared persons in the area. In the latter part of 2008 there was a<br />
programme of police registration, specifically targeting persons who had temporarily<br />
migrated to Colombo and Western Province from the North and the East of the country.‖<br />
25.04 The BHC letter of 2 February <strong>2012</strong> 493 continued:<br />
―In May 2010 the newly elected Sri Lankan government announced that whilst<br />
extending the emergency regulations, as is required monthly, certain regulations would<br />
be repealed. These included the restrictions on public marches and meetings, curfews,<br />
police entry into private property without a search warrant, restrictions on terrorist<br />
propaganda, and ‗the compulsory police registration of household members‘.<br />
―In July 2010 several Tamil media networks carried the story that police in the<br />
Wellawatte Police Division of Colombo had recommenced the practice of registering<br />
Tamils. The Democratic People‘s Front leader Mano Ganesan was quoted as saying<br />
that ‗This is being conducted only in the city divisions where Tamils live in sizable<br />
numbers‘ and requested that the President ‗intervene to stop this discriminatory act<br />
which is flatly against the spirit of reconciliation‘.<br />
On 22nd July 2010 in response to these allegations, the Police Spokesman Prishantha<br />
Jayakody gave a press release from their headquarters in Colombo. He stated that ‗the<br />
police were acting in accordance with the relevant provisions in the Police Ordinance,<br />
492 British High Commission (BHC),Colombo dated 2 February <strong>2012</strong><br />
493 British High Commission (BHC),Colombo dated 2 February <strong>2012</strong><br />
190 The main text of this <strong>COI</strong> <strong>Report</strong> contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February <strong>2012</strong>.<br />
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section<br />
to 2 <strong>March</strong> <strong>2012</strong>.