Sri Lankan detainees tortured while in custody, rights group alleges

Political detainees in Sri Lanka are being tortured while in police and military custody, a human rights lawyer who wrote a report on alleged abuses said on Friday, days ahead of a United Nations human rights summit.

The International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP), a rights group documenting alleged abuses in Sri Lanka, gave details in its report of 15 members of the minority Tamil community, who said they were beaten, burnt, suffocated and sexually assaulted by authorities over the past two years. Together, their testimony is the most detailed account of alleged new abuses in the island nation since former wartime defense chief Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president in 2019.