Across South Asia there are many common problems relating to protecting and guaranteeing the basic rights of people. This publication, Protection & Participation, is intended as a place where the commonalities of these problems are identified, strategies proposed, and standard-setting precedents discussed.

In all countries of South Asia we see the general displacement of democracy by increasingly brutal and defective political and administrative organs. Many questions confront us. Why are innocent people compelled to live under the shadow of fear caused by extrajudicial killings and disappearances? Why are there daily threats on the lives of ordinary citizens having no connection with armed groups or paramilitary groups? Why do acts of outrageous brutality persist with impunity? Why do we remain silent when horrendous acts of torture take place?

Where civil society groups, journalists, academics, lawyers and others should be actively resisting these developments and vesting people with a strong sense of civic identity and respect for the rule of law, instead a deep cynicism is seeping across all our societies. We urgently need to counteract this trend, and give voices to the marginalised and oppressed in order that our collective conscience be reawakened. We hope that Protection & Participation will serve to be an important initiative in that direction.

In a Shadow Report on Sri Lanka to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2003, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) pointed out that:

"Often analysis of human rights in Sri Lanka is premised on the assumption that violations of rights is mostly due to the civil strife in the North and the East and that consequently, the resolution of this problem is the most important aspect of improving this situation. Close observation of the sequence of events that led to the breakdown of law and order in Sri Lanka demonstrates that such an assumption is not only simplistic but also fatally flawed.

"It can be argued that without a serious attempt to improve the institutional framework of the rule of law and democracy in the country as a whole, no lasting solution can be found to the conflict in the North and the East of the country. In fact, the cease-fire agreement that had existed in recent months shows that in order to make further progress, it is essential to deal with the country's longstanding problems relating to the rule of law. For people in other parts of the country, where a vast majority of the population live, delays in dealing with the denial of basic rights due to institutional failures has caused tremendous insecurity..."

This inaugural issue of Protection & Participation follows in the reasoning of this argument by turning its attention to the prevalence of torture in Sri Lanka. It includes a critique on the torture prevention policy of the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, a study of Sri Lanka's periodic reports to the UN Committee against Torture, and an interview with the wife of a torture victim. It also contains selected press statements and newspaper articles pertaining to torture in Sri Lanka, and a summary of the views recently expressed by the UN Human Rights Committee with regards to the individual communication of a Sri Lankan father whose son disappeared while in army custody.