Social:Batalanda detention centre

The Batalanda Detention Centre was an alleged detention centre located within the Batalanda Housing Scheme of the State Fertiliser Corporation in the village of Butalanda during the 1987–89 JVP insurrection which was used by the Counter Subversive Unit of the Sri Lanak Police to detain persons suspected to have links to the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) as part of the counterinsurgency campaign launched by the United National Party (UNP) government led by President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

Background

Unlike in the previous uprising, the JVP relied heavily on the use of assassinations of important religious and political figures, subversion, and terror attacks. The government responded just as brutally; the government has been accused of using detention camps in several locations, including Batalanda, to quell the JVP uprising. The camps were said to be run by anti-subversive units of the police who were tasked with destroying rebels.

Batalanda Commission

Following the election of the United People's Freedom Alliance in the 1994 general election and the 1994 presidential election defeating the UNP, the newly elected President Chandrika Kumaratunga appointed several Presidential Commissions of Inquiry to investigate allegations of human rights violations during the 1987–89 JVP insurrection. One of these commissions was the The Commission of Inquiry into the establishment and maintenance of places of unlawful detention and torture chambers at the Batalanda Housing Scheme, which was commonly known as the Batalanda Commission.

It is believed that nearly 5,000 to 10,000 JVP activists were brutally tortured and killed in the Batalanda camp alone. Incumbent President and current leader of the UNP Ranil Wickremesinghe has been accused of being the political authority behind the alleged detention centre. The Batalanda commission was appointed by the government of Chandrika Kumaratunga to look into the violations of human rights and crimes committed in the Batalanda torture and detention centre. In its report, the commission recommended the government to take legal action against then-opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and to strip him of his civic rights, which would have made him ineligible to run for elections. No legal action has been taken against Wickremesinghe by any government to date, however, and many who were arrested for their involvement in the alleged killings have been revealed to be from organizations such as the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party, a political party founded in 1984 by Kumaratunga and her husband, Vijaya Kumaratunga, who was assassinated by the JVP in 1988.