The United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) will conduct a 10-day official visit to Sri Lanka from June 15 to 24, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced — the body’s second visit to the country since Sri Lanka acceded to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) in December 2017.
The four-member delegation comprises Aisha Shujune Muhammad (the Maldives), Jakub Julian Czepek (Poland), Anica Tomsic (Croatia) and Nika Kvaratskhelia (Georgia), accompanied by officials of the SPT Secretariat in Geneva, EconomyNext reported. The team will meet ministers; senior officials of ministries, government departments and institutions; the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) — designated as the National Preventive Mechanism under OPCAT — and civil society members.
“The Government of Sri Lanka will engage with the Subcommittee in an open, constructive and transparent manner, consistent with its policy of continued engagement with the United Nations, and in fulfilment of its Treaty Body obligations undertaken voluntarily and enshrined in relevant international instruments, in accordance with the Constitution,” the MFA said.
The visit lands against the backdrop of one of the country’s most contested PTA cases. Former State Intelligence Service chief retired Major General Tuan Suresh Sallay is being held without indictment under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, with his initial 90-day detention recently extended and his Court of Appeal challenge adjourned to July 10. Opposition parties and his family have repeatedly alleged inhumane conditions and have published medical-board submissions documenting PTSD findings and listings of five separate detention locations tied to his interrogation track.
The Communist Party has called for a comprehensive parliamentary review of the PTA framework itself in light of the same case, while the Asgiri Mahanayaka Thera wrote to President AKD seeking equal treatment under the law for Sallay over the weekend. A separate group of former MPs followed with their own letter to the President on June 13.
The SPT’s first Sri Lanka visit was conducted in April 2019, six months after the country acceded to OPCAT.
Source: EconomyNext — UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture to visit Sri Lanka.
