The Sri Lankan government has yet to acknowledge the Tamil genocide that has been happening since before the 1950s and is STILL happening at a slower rate. Countless innocent Tamil lives were burnt alive, shot, raped, and ethnically cleansed during this time. However, the government refuses to accept that Tamils were targeted. Tamil families are still suffering in their indigenous homeland, Eelam (the north and east coasts of the island). Police brutality is prevalent there, and Sri Lankan soldiers are constantly abusing their power to sexually assault young Tamil girls. They have lost their loved ones & have been physically and/or mentally traumatised by the genocide that the Sri Lankan state perpetrated against the Tamils during the civil war.
It is important for the Sri Lankan state to publicly acknowledge the killings and consider all aspects of the genocide constitute a heinous act. Not only does this acknowledgement of the genocide honour the countless lives that were lost, but it gives a sense of hope to those families who had lost and suffered. On top of that, my acknowledging the genocide we can take measures to prevent anything like it to ever happen again.
Click the link below to see the repurcussions of the genocide after post-war Sri Lanka.
The enforced disappearances of Tamil people in Sri Lanka (including the white van kidnappings) since the 1980s is a big problem that still hasn't been solved, even though some of the drivers of the vans have admitted in late 2019 that some of the kidnapped Tamil individuals were killed and thrown into rivers filled with crocodiles. However, this was only admitted after 20 whole years.
Thousands of people have disappeared in Sri Lanka since the 1980s. A 1999 study by the United Nations found that Sri Lanka had the second highest number of disappearances in the world and that 12,000 Sri Lankans had disappeared after being detained by the Sri Lankan security forces. A few years earlier the Sri Lankan government had estimated that 17,000 people had disappeared. In 2003 the Red Cross stated that it had received 20,000 complaints of disappearances during the Sri Lankan Civil War of which 9,000 had been resolved but the remaining 11,000 were still being investigated.
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Asian Human Rights Commission have documented many of the disappearances and attributed them to the Sri Lankan security forces, pro-government paramilitary groups and Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups.
These families who have lost their loved ones need closure. They need to know the truth.
Why do we say acab? (all cops are bastards)
ACAB doesn’t actually mean every single cop is a bad cop. ACAB means every single police officer is complicit in a system that actively devalues the lives of people of color. Bad cops are encouraged in their harm by the silence of the ones who see themselves as “good.”
How does this apply to Sri Lanka?
Police brutality is very prevalent in Sri Lanka and most of the people on the recieving end of it are ethnic, gender and religious minorities (e.g. tamils, muslims, women). Sri Lankan soldiers patrol around Tamil villages and are constantly raping/sexually assaulting young women. Click on the links below to learn more about some recent police brutality incidents in SL.