Sri Lanka will make its prisons more "humane and effective" by adhering to international standards, days after a top UN official described the condition of detention camps and jails in the country as "deplorable".
Steps will be taken to provide clean water, proper sanitation, and adequate medical care to the prisoners in accordance to the minimum requirements prescribed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Minister of Prison Reforms Rehabilitation, Resettlement D M Swaminathan said.
"The government is committed to make the prisons system more humane and effective by adhering to the UN international standards," he said.
"Using modern technology for security measures in prisons, professionalising the staff at the Prisons Department, improving the rehabilitation programmes provided for prisoners are the other areas that we are focusing on to improve the standards of the prisons system in this country," he said.
Twenty officers from the Sri Lankan Department of Prisons are participating in the Correctional Managers' Conference and the Minister said he is convinced that the programme will assist local officers to balance both security and humanitarian needs in prisons.
"Both these factors need to be improved in our prisons system and prisons cannot be effective correctional centres if these two factors are poorly managed. Hence I believe that the theme of this conference is both timely and practical not only for our country but to the entire Asia Pacific Region," he said.
Swaminathan's comments comes days after UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment Juan E Mendez described the condition of prisons and detention camps in the country "deplorable".
"I am deeply concerned about the conditions of life in all prisons, all characterised by very deficient infrastructure and pronounced overcrowding. As a result there is an acute lack of adequate sleeping accommodation, extreme heat and insufficient ventilation," Mendez said on Saturday.
He said the prisons exceeded capacity by well over 200 or 300 per cent. In one of the prisons, he saw jail cells meant for one person being occupied by 4 or 5 inmates.
The visit of the rapporteurs are in accordance with the UN Human Rights Council resolution of March 2014 when the council prescribed an international investigation on alleged war crimes blamed on both the government troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Sri Lanka's military crushed LTTE rebels in a three decade-long conflict for control of the island's northern Jaffna peninsula.
