This recent film is not directly about Human Rights Defenders (although they are certainly victims of it) nor about the treatment of ethnic minorities. Rather is demonstrates. through a large variety of interviews with victims, lawyers – including Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission – and experts, how a lack of investigative skills and high-level condoning have led the Sri Lankan policy to use torture routinely. Most shockingly a former police officers confirms that this is what is expected from the police by the system. It has become a mindset at all levels, including most of the judiciary. It is a long film but worth it. The Danish film maker, Josefina Bergsten, manages to demonstrate the disconnect between international procedures (which are based on functioning institutions that have to address a few bad apples) and the reality on the ground in Sri Lanka where the good apples are the exception. See it and forward it: https://vimeo.com/41898677
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Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 
May 15, 2012 at 11:52
Politicisation of servies is the cause and not any lack of skills
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May 15, 2012 at 12:05
Click to access K%20Godage.pdf
K.Godage(former Sri Lankan diplomat) addresses LLRC, 15 September 2010:
‘’ …. We have persistently discriminated against the Tamil people from 1956…. The Tamils have undergone, and are undergoing immense hardship. …. Now I must tell you of a very, very sad, bad and dangerous situation. We have in our prisons over 2000 young Tamil men. Some of them have been taken on suspicion. Just picked up and taken. In detention without charges for years, Sir, for years ….’’
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May 15, 2012 at 12:08
Click to access 10.11.2010-Mr._Elmore_Perera-evidence.pdf
Elmore Perera(Founder, Citizens’ Movement for Good Governance(CIMOGG) to LLRC, 10 November 2010: ”….. Tamils were treated as being sub-human. Many of those who could leave the country by lawful or even unlawful means did so. Those who remained were subjected to arbitrary, humiliating treatment. Rounding up of 30 to 40 Tamil youth on Friday evenings, producing them before Magistrates to be remanded, and later releasing them on bail, after they had paid lawyers Rs1,000/- each for this purpose, was a regular occurrence in many parts of the city. Tamils, who could readily be identified as such from their National Identity Cards, were at the mercy of the law-enforcement agencies which arbitrarily enforced even laws of their own making. ….”
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May 15, 2012 at 13:11
I am sure that there is lot of truth in what you say about the tamils but discrimination of tamils was not the main focus of this (filmed) report. Both tamils and sinhalese seem to be victims of police brutality which is rampant and systematic. Indeed the most decisive factor in stopping torture is political will, but lack of skills to obtain confession and other evidence must play a role in individual policeman’s ready use of violence in order to get his score of convictions and thus promotion (as stated in the film).
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May 15, 2012 at 16:20
Tamils and Sinhalese may both be victims – but an analysis of the victim set by ethnicity would highlight 2 different problems – ordinary law & order as well as ethnic targeting & persecution.
The Tamils are disproportionately targeted. Further there needs to be a qualitative analysis of the types of torture used broken down by ethnicity. For example rape as a weapon of war is used against Tamils (both men and women in custody) – is it used of Sinhalese?
This analysis is necessary to move forward. Seeing this as a single, uniform ‘Sri lankan’ problem is a false assumption which glosses over the multiplicity of motivations.
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May 15, 2012 at 17:00
Yes I’d be interested to know if rape of sinhala women is as common in police stations in the south as it is in the north of tamil women.The lady who spoke in yr film talked of terrible abuse but it wasn’t clear if that included sexual abuse. I wondered if she was hinting at it.
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May 15, 2012 at 17:01
Sorry forgot to say – great film though! Tell us more about how u managed to do it – security for your interviewees etc. And i couldn’t watch the last 3 mins as the video kept sticking. Not sure if that’s just me.
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May 15, 2012 at 17:21
Glad you ‘liked’ the film (always hard to use the word like with this kind of film). I was not involved in making and i would suggest to contact the filmmaker, either directly or through the Asian Human Rights Commission (Basil Fernando who appears in the film)
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