CAT/C/61/D/725/2016
After that incident, the complainant alleges that members of the Sri Lankan army harassed
him and assaulted his father and brother. He submits that, around 1998, his brother was
threatened and forcibly recruited by the Tamil Tigers. After he managed to escape, the
group looked for the complainant. His father was beaten and the family had to make a
payment to the group. As a consequence, the complainant had to run away from his village
to the town of Batticaloa, where the Tamil Tigers only rarely came. There, his problems
with the Sri Lankan army continued. 1 Between 2004 and 2006, he completed a two-year
production engineering course. Between 2006 and 2007, he studied English privately.
Subsequently, he found employment as an engineering instructor, where he remained for 5
years until he resigned in 2011 owing to a work-related accident that affected his eyes.
Around that time, in January 2011, he got married.
2.2
On 17 October 2011, he started working as a security guard at the Eastern University
in Batticaloa. At that time, the university chief had instructed security guards to stop senior
students from harassing new students. The complainant states that there were lots of
Singhalese students among the senior students, who harassed female Tamil students. He
submits that some of the senior students became angry at him for not allowing them to
harass the new students. He claims that one senior Singhalese student told him that he was
the son of a minister and he would “teach him a lesson”.
2.3
On 11 November 2011, the complainant was working on night shift when the
university was vandalized by a group of people who threatened to kill him and threw rocks
and sticks at him and at university buildings, causing damage, including broken windows
and doors, and injuring the complainant. He managed to run away and called other security
guards, and the attackers disappeared. He and another security guard reported the incident
to the police.
2.4
The following day, a group of students threatened the complainant. They surrounded
him and said they would “take care of him again” if he continued to prevent them from
harassing others. The complainant was warned not to report anything to anyone.
2.5
On or about 15 November 2011, the complainant claims he was dragged into a van
by three men dressed in civilian clothes. They pointed a gun at him, told him they would
shoot and kill him if he accused the Singhalese students of the attack at the university, then
let him go.
2.6
On an unspecified date, the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department
interrogated the complainant about the vandalism incident. He informed them that he did
not know who the perpetrators were because he had been unable to see them in the darkness.
The officers threatened to put him in jail and insisted he must tell the truth. Eventually they
released him in the evening.
2.7
The officers’ continued pressure and harassment led the complainant to take some
time off from work. On 25 November 2011, the officers went to his home to ask further
questions and enquire as to why he had not been at work. They accused him of having
committed the vandalism and of hiding to avoid them.
2.8
The complainant states that he felt threatened by the officers who had said that they
would charge him if he did not reveal who vandalized the university. He was also in fear of
the people in the van who threatened to kill him. He went into hiding and became fearful of
his employer because he had left his workplace without giving notice.
2.9
The complainant left Sri Lanka on 2 February 2012 and arrived in Australia by boat
on 17 February 2012. He was detained upon arrival at Christmas Island as an unlawful noncitizen under the Migration Act. On 7 March 2012, he was transferred to Curtin
Immigration Detention Centre in Australia. He was granted a bridging visa and released
from immigration detention on 3 July 2012. The complainant’s last bridging visa expired
on 12 August 2015. In 2015, after his first ministerial appeal in Australia was rejected, the
claimant disclosed information about allegations made by the Criminal Investigation
1
2
The complainant does not specify what kind of problems he had in the town of Batticaloa with the Sri
Lankan army.