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| Roy Samathanam ( Star Photo) |
Tamil Canadian Roy Samathanam, 43, is filing a complaint against the Sri Lankan government before the UN Human Rights Committee for torture. He was detained for three years from 2007 to 2010. He still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Tamil Canadian Roy Samathanam, 43, is filing a complaint against the Sri Lankan government before the UN Human Rights Committee for torture. He was detained for three years from 2007 to 2010. He still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
A Toronto man who was detained and tortured in Sri Lankan jails for three years is taking his case to the United Nations, accusing Sri Lankan authorities of violating international human rights laws.
Roy Samathanam, 44, who has been a Canadian citizen since 1996, was arrested by the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) in 2007 while visiting his homeland.
He says he was handcuffed and blindfolded after failing to provide a bribe demanded by officers, while his pregnant wife and daughter were placed under house arrest.
Samathanam was ultimately released in August 2010. He claims he was coerced into pleading guilty to what he describes as a trumped-up charge of possessing a GPS device.
Samathanam says he has since suffered depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
On Wednesday, with the help of the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for International Justice, Samathanam will file an official complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee to demand remedy and compensation from the Sri Lankan government for torture and other violations of his rights.
“I was kept there, tortured. And they tried to force a confession from me. They also threatened to rape my wife and kill my child,” said Samathanam, who returned to Canada in early 2011 and has since lived on assistance from the Ontario Disability Support Program.
“I am doing this for me and for others who have been tortured and are still detained in jails in Sri Lanka. I want those officials who tortured me to be tried in the court of law and face justice.”
Specifically, Samathanam is demanding that criminal charges be laid against a Sgt. Abdeen, a unit commander at the TID detention facility near Colombo Harbour, and the centre’s Officer in Charge, Prasanna de Alwis.
Born in Colombo, Samathanam said he grew up under discrimination and persecution as an ethnic Tamil. He fled to Canada as a refugee in 1990, when he was 18.
In 2005, he visited Sri Lanka to get married but decided to remain there when his wife became pregnant. He said officers wielding machine guns arrived at his home on Sept. 14, 2007, “on the pretense” that he’d broken the law by helping to import goods for a friend’s electronics shop.
Denounced as a “Canadian Tiger,” he was accused of operating the intelligence wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and obtaining the GPS for the militant group.
Samathanam was detained at three separate facilities: the Colombo Harbour, Boosa Detention Centre in Galle, and Welikada Prison. He said he was beaten regularly and denied medications for his diabetes and chest pains.
Matt Eisenbrandt, legal director of the Canadian Centre for International Justice, said Samathanam’s experience of torture and imprisonment has to be placed into the historical context of oppression and persecution of ethnic Tamils since Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948 and came under the rule of the Sinhalese majority.
Human rights groups and the international community have long condemned the Sri Lankan government’s military and policing operations targeting Tamils. During the final stages of the civil war in 2009, thousands of Tamils were killed.
“This (complaint) is significant on the individual level for Roy. It gives him a chance to pursue justice against Sri Lanka for the torture and detention he suffered,” Eisenbrandt said.
“We are trying to get action from an international body to hold those responsible for the torture accountable.”
The Star