Sri Lankan Parliament to debate report on JVP-era ‘torture camp’ 

Parliament debates 1998 Batalanda report on torture allegations, sparking calls for justice and legal action in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka’s Parliament will debate a nearly three-decade-old report probing allegations of unlawful detention, torture, and extrajudicial killings by the State between 1988 and 1990, the ruling National People’s Power [NPP] government has said.

Leader of the House Bimal Rathnayake on Friday (March 14, 2025) tabled the report in the Parliament and said the government would seek the Attorney General’s opinion on it. The report came into focus recently, following Doha-headquartered television channel Al Jazeera’s interview with former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in which he was asked about torture allegations during the period. Mr. Wickremesinghe — who was Minister of Industries in President Ranaginshe Premadasa’s government at the time was accused of enabling the “torture camp” — denied any wrongdoing.

The ambit of the report, in the late 1990s, covers the period of the second armed insurrection of the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna [JVP], which is the chief constituent of the ruling NPP coalition. The ‘Batalanda commission report’, released in 1998 by a panel appointed by former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, investigated serious allegations of torture, targeting members of or those allegedly linked to the JVP, which had taken up arms [for the second time], against the State, its representatives, government supporters, and dissidents from the Left, as it resisted the Premadasa government’s policies. According to multiple accounts of the period, the state responded brutally.

Also read: Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna: From underground to government

The ‘Batalanda commission report’ pertains to a government-backed counter-subversive unit, or the ‘Batalanda detention centre’, run in Colombo’s neighbouring Gampaha district, as part of the state’s operation to put down the insurgency. The report, which details the violence committed by the JVP, notes, “The terrorism of the JVP was met with State Terrorism”.  

The renewed attention to the 1998 report has generated interest within Sri Lanka’s human rights community that has repeatedly cited impunity for state actors as the main impediment to justice, with activists reminding successive governments of the many calls for justice from the Tamil community that witnessed gross human rights violations during the civil war.