FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 19, 2005
AS-82-2005
A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
Extrajudicial killings reflect absence of command responsibility within Sri Lanka’s policing system
The increasing violence and extrajudicial killings in Sri Lankan police stations reflect the absence of command responsibility within the police department. Daily reports of serious police torture, oftentimes resulting in death, come from all over the country. In most of these cases, victims are tortured for the most trivial of reasons, such as stealing bananas or not immediately stopping a vehicle when asked to do so.
The most recent such incident made known to the Asian Human Rights Commission is the custodial death of 52-year-old Hettiarachchige Abeysiri at the Peliyagoda Police Station on July 13, 2005. After being arrested and taken to the police station at midnight, Mr Abeysiri was brought back to his home the next day. Together with one of his family members, Mr Abeysiri was then taken to the house of a woman who had complained of losing a telephone, where the woman allegedly slapped him. After that, Mr Abeysiri was taken back to the police station and tortured by several officers in front of his relative, who after some time moved away, unable to watch the assault. Upon the relative’s return about half an hour later, Mr Abeysiri was being carried by four policemen in civilian clothes. He was taken to a hospital, where he died. When his family visited the mortuary, they saw injuries on his body; a subsequent postmortem confirmed that the death was due to injuries caused by blunt instruments.
What is disturbing about this and other cases of torture and extrajudicial killings is that regardless of the circumstances, it is almost guaranteed that none of the senior supervising officers involved will either be arrested or prosecuted. Only some lower-ranking officers are ever investigated and arrested, if at all. This lack of accountability means that those ultimately responsible for all actions and behaviour within a police station–the Officer-in-Charge, Headquarters Inspector, Assistant Superintendent of Police and Superintendent of Police–are allowed to escape the chain of command responsibility that is fundamental to the effective functioning of any institution.
The Inspector General of Police and the Attorney Generals Department of Sri Lanka have consistently ignored the issue of command responsibility, thereby indirectly allowing police violence and extrajudicial killings to continue. The Asian Human Rights Commission has made constant submissions to both offices regarding the necessity of prosecuting supervising officers when acts of torture and custodial deaths occur at police stations, to no avail. In fact, the Attorney Generals Department appears to have taken an official decision not to prosecute senior officers except where the officer is directly and physically involved in acts of torture. Even in instances of direct involvement, action is only taken against policemen up to the Officer-in-Charge (OIC) rank.
The Asian Human Rights Commission knows of many cases where senior officers have not been prosecuted, such as one Assistant Superintendent of Police, allegedly accused of running a torture chamber at his office and causing an arrestee to lose an eye, who has not been indicted despite a Special Unit inquiring into the case. In two famous cases from the Wattala and Kandana police stations where representations were made on behalf of the victims of the direct involvement of the OICs of the two police stations, there was no response from the Attorney General. In another instance, the Attorney Generals department withdrew an indictment against an OIC on the basis that his responsibility was that of civil and not criminal liability. However, under the Convention Against Torture Act (Act No. 22 of 1994), command responsibility is recognised for acts of omissions on the part of senior officers, and this is a principle of criminal law.
This reluctance to prosecute responsible senior officers leads to a dysfunctional policing institution; no institution can properly function when command responsibility is ignored. It is essential for all officers of any institution to perform their duties competently and to be held accountable for their actions. The police department is a vital public institution with enormous influence on the functioning of other public institutions. If it fails to function in a manner required of a public institution, it lets down all other institutions and paves the way for a state of neglect to set in amongst the entire state machinery. In fact, this charge can be made against the contemporary policing system of Sri Lanka: the breakdown of the state machinery has been caused by a malfunctioning policing system where command responsibility is treated as a trivial matter. Although the problems currently plaguing Sri Lanka are attributed to politicians, rebels, corrupt businessmen or criminals, these are in fact superficial issues. The underlying problem is the inability of the policing system to uphold the rule of law, having succumbed to decay through the abandoning of its command responsibilities.
Police torture and extrajudicial killings should thus not be treated as isolated incidents caused only by a few lower-ranking officers, but as by-products of a system that deliberately neglects command responsibility. It is from this viewpoint that civil society must hold responsible the Inspector General of Police, the Attorney General and the National Police Commission, not only for individual violations, but for allowing the policing system to fall into a state of decay and thereby affecting the performance of other public institutions. The Asian Human Rights Commission therefore urges all concerned groups and individuals to demand the enforcement of command responsibility within Sri Lanka’s policing system in an attempt to address broader issues of rule of law and collapsing institutions.
