Colombo MP R Yogarajan condemned the round-up as ‘a Gestapo-style operation’. He says that the police finger-printed and filmed the Tamils, treating them like criminals and violating undertakings to President Chandrika Kumaratunge. Hundreds of Tamils were rounded-up in the run-up to the presidential elections on 21 December, in other search operations.
International NGOs continue to express concern over arrests of Tamils. Amsterdam-based Sri Lanka Working Group (SLWN) says that Tamils from Sri Lanka’s north-east region continue to face the risk of arrest in Colombo and detention for several years, without trial. The conclusion of the SLWN follows case studies of nine Tamil asylum-seekers deported from Western countries.
Arrests and detention are arbitrary and extension of detention by the Magistrate’s Court is generally without fully considering the grounds of suspicion. Suspects are sometimes released after the Supreme Court has determined that the detention is illegal. But due to shortage of specialised lawyers and high costs, many detainees cannot initiate a fundamental rights action in the court.
The SLWN says that the introduction of the amendment to the Immigrants and Emigrants Act in July 1998 has heightened checks of deported asylum seekers, at the Colombo airport. The amendment increases punishment by a huge margin, disallows bail, suspension of sentence or conditional discharge, provides for mandatory sentencing and removes discretion of the courts against the concept of a fair trial.
The Refugee Council has received lists of 49 arrests of Tamil deportees under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) or Emergency regulations, between August 1998 and March 1999 and 15 arrests of deportees under the Immigrants and Emigrants Act between November 1998 and March 1999. The Council has also received a list of another 83 arrested deportees, 49 of whom are Tamils and ten Muslims, under the Immigrants and Emigrants Act, whose cases were heard before the Magistrate’s Court, between October and December 1999. The deportations were from several countries, including Germany, France, Poland and Norway.
A third list contains the names of 22 Tamils arrested under the Immigrants and Emigrants Act at the Colombo airport while attempting to go abroad. Human rights agencies which compiled these lists say that as a result of official secrecy surrounding deportations, in Sri Lanka and other countries, preparation of a complete list of deportees arrested has become impossible.
SLWN says further that there are no organisations in Sri Lanka concerned with monitoring the plight of deported asylum seekers. International refugee agency UNHCR is involved only in “passive monitoring”, which means that it will only look into problems brought to its notice. According to SLWN, the monitoring by the Netherlands embassy in Colombo ceased on 4 February 1999, the Dutch government declaring that it is not responsible for deported asylum seekers.
The experience of Ravi Shanker is an example of the plight of deported asylum seekers. Ravi Shanker was returned from Netherlands in February 1998. He was questioned at the Colombo airport by police officers about links with the LTTE. After entering Colombo, he was granted a permit to reside in the capital, but the police made it clear that he must return to Jaffna.
He was arrested on 21 March and again on 15 July. On the second occasion, he was held at the Peliyagoda police station until 25 July, where he was stripped and tortured. He was interrogated about LTTE links by two policemen pretending to be from Sri Lankan government ally, the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) and another man claiming to be from Interpol. During this time, an officer from the Dutch embassy visited him for five minutes.
Ravi Shanker was produced before the Colombo Magistrate on 25 July and detained under the PTA until July 1999, before release on bail. His case has been brought before the Magistrate’s Court on 18 occasions during which neither he nor his lawyer received proper information.
Amnesty International says that Nadarajah Navakrishnan, 27, arrested allegedly by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) in Colombo on 15 December, has disappeared. Mr Navakrishnan, who worked in a telecommunication centre, had been deported from Poland in May 1999. Colombo human rights agency, the Forum for Human Dignity has complained to the Committee of Inquiry into Undue Arrest and Harassment (CIUAH), that Colombo resident Sinnathamby Nadarajah, 63, is missing since 28 December.
Reports say that the Norwegian Justice Ministry suspended deportations of Sri Lankan asylum seekers in mid-December. Norwegian lawyers say 69 Tamils were returned from Norway to Sri Lanka between October 1998 and December 1999.