[Human Rights Watch & Times Online, February 2010]

The Sri Lankan government is currently detaining at least 11,000 people, including more than 550 children, in so-called "rehabilitation centers." These individuals, said to be associated with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), were among the almost 300,000 displaced persons confined in detention camps in the final months of the armed conflict with the LTTE.

The government has routinely violated the detainees’ fundamental human rights, including the right to be informed of specific reasons for arrest, the right to challenge the lawfulness of the detention before an independent judicial authority, and the right of access to legal counsel and family members. The authorities’ consistent failure to inform families of the basis for the detainees’ arrest and their whereabouts raises serious concerns that some detainees may have been victims of torture and ill-treatment, which are more likely to take place where due process of law is lacking and which have long been serious problems in Sri Lanka. Given the lack of information about some detainees, there is also a risk that some may have been "disappeared. "

This report is based on interviews with relatives of individuals who have been detained on suspicion of LTTE association. While the government prohibits access to the rehabilitation centers for most independent observers, and access to the camps and former conflict zones remains strictly limited, we were able to conduct more than a dozen interviews with families of detainees, as well as with numerous humanitarian workers and others in Sri Lanka with knowledge of the situation. Many of those interviewed for this report have requested that their names not be used out of fear of repercussions from the Sri Lankan authorities.

The 26-year-long armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, which ended with the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, took a heavy toll on the civilian population in areas affected by the fighting. During the final months of the conflict, both government forces and the LTTE demonstrated blatant disregard for civilian life and suffering.

As the LTTE retreated from government military advances, it forced civilians to retreat with it, effectively using them as human shields. The LTTE on numerous occasions fired on and killed civilians attempting to flee. The LTTE also continued its practice of forcibly recruiting Legal Limbo 2 civilians, including children under 18, into its forces or using them for dangerous military labor on the front lines.

1. Sri Lankan armed forces indiscriminately bombed and shelled civilians trapped in a
shrinking area of LTTE control. Army shelling often struck hospitals filled with civilians harmed in the fighting.

2 The government also prevented humanitarian organizations from delivering much needed food and medical supplies to civilians trapped in the war zone.

The United Nations has conservatively estimated that the fighting killed at least 7,000 civilians during the final five months of the conflict.

3. The government’s refusal to allow any independent observers into the conflict zone or to talk to people who fled the conflict zone makes it impossible to establish conclusively the number of casualties.

Faced with possible starvation or death by shelling or gunfire, many civilians escaped to presumed safety in government-controll ed areas, surviving fire from LTTE forces attempting to prevent their flight, almost continual crossfire and scattered landmines. For the most part people fled in small groups, but a massive exodus of tens of thousands of people took place after the government broke through LTTE defense fortifications on April 20. According to the United Nations, 290,000 people crossed over to government-controll ed areas from the conflict zone between October 27, 2008, and June 1, 2009.

4 .At several checkpoints, security forces screened and registered the displaced before transporting them to detention camps in the north, which the government euphemistically called "welfare centers." The largest detention camp was the multi-camp Menik Farm in Vavuniya district. The government denied the displaced in the camps their rights to liberty and freedom of movement. Individuals in the camps could not leave to work or live with family members or others elsewhere. The government started releasing significant numbers from the camps only in November 2009. By that time, the majority of the displaced had been:

 
1 Human Rights Watch, Besieged, Displaced and Detained: The Plight of Civilians in Sri Lanka’s Vanni Region, December 2008,
http://www.hrw. org/en/reports/2008/12/ 22/besieged- displaced-and- detained, and Human Rights Watch, War on the
Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses Against Civilians in the Vanni, February 2009,
http://www.hrw. org/en/reports/2009/02/ 19/war-displaced.

2 "Sri Lanka: Repeated Shelling of Hospitals Evidence of War Crimes: 30 Attacks Reported on Medical Facilities Since
December," Human Rights Watch news release, May 8, 2009, http://www.hrw. org/en/news/2009/05/08/ sri-lanka- repeatedshelling-
hospitals-evidence- war-crimes.

3 Catherine Philip and Michael Evans, "Times photographs expose Sri Lanka’s lie on civilian deaths at beach,"Times (London),
May 29, 2009, http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/tol/news/ world/asia/ article6383477. ece (accessed January 10, 2010).

4 For a detailed account of the final months of the fighting and abuses by both sides, see University Teachers for Human
Rights (Jaffna), "Let Them Speak: Truth about Sri Lanka’s Victims of War," December 13, 2009, http://uthr. org/SpecialReports/Special% 20rep34/Uthr-sp.rp34.htm (accessed January 10, 2010).