COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A visiting United Nations envoy said that torture remains “endemic and routine” in Sri Lanka’s counterterrorism methods and a number of persons being detained without trial under a harsh anti-terror law is a stain on the country’s international reputation.
Ben Emmerson, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, said at the end of a five-day visit to Sri Lanka Friday that he is concerned that even those arrested as recently as late last year had been subjected to torture despite a new government promising to end such practices.
The abuses continued even after Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war ended in 2009 when government troops crushed ethnic Tamil rebels’ 26-year campaign for an independent state. Both sides were accused of serious human rights violations in the conflict………….