Making Torture Possible

Abstract

The escalation of the violent conflict in Sri Lanka since 2006 has put the spotlight on the role torture played as a military strategy against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Despite Sri Lanka being a State Party to major United Nations treaties on human rights, the Sri Lankan government secretly used torture to gain confessions, intelligence and to punish the LTTE. Torture techniques were brutal, including burnings with soldering irons, beatings and electric shocks. How was this use of torture possible? Using a discursive practices approach, I examine how a 'reality' was constructed that placed the LTTE outside moral boundaries and made the use of torture possible.

Magical Realist Motors and the Fictive Chats of the Dead of the Sri Lankan Civil War in Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

“…Maali floats to Palace and observes "the naked bodies of Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and Burghers are indistinguishable" (Karunatilaka, 2023, p. 317). Barnes (2013) supports this fact by saying that Sri Lankan authorities subscribed Sinhala nationalism and they tortured every ethnic group which stood against it. U.N. Human Rights Council evidences that "beating on the soles of the feet (falaqa), blows to the ears (telephono) and burning with metal objects" were practiced by military forces.…”

Buddhist extremism, anti-Muslim violence and civil war legacies in Sri Lanka

“…84 The democratically elected Rajapakse government, the victorious armed forces and a co-opted Buddhist nationalism were unhindered in their efforts to construct a narrative that demonized Tamils and portrayed the LTTE as a group that could not be negotiated with, only destroyed. 85 This occurred through nationalist discourse that elevated the mythological and historical importance of Sri Lanka as a pure land that preserves the Buddha's teachings whilst emphasizing a victim mentality whereby the island has suffered at the hands of a series of invaders, including Tamils from India, Portuguese, Dutch and of course the British and now from Muslims. The cessation of the war permitted a resurgence of Sinhalese nationalism, which exulted in the long-overdue vanquishing of the LTTE terrorists but also denied other minorities their own suffering in the conflict.…”