UN to look into alleged torture of staff member in Sri Lanka

08 Mar, 2016

The UN says it will look into allegations that one of its staff members was abducted and tortured when he served in Sri Lanka.

Responding to a question posed by Innercity Press,?Farhan Haq the Deputy Spokesman for UN?Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the UN?has a duty to all staff members to make sure that their basic rights are respected.

“If there’s a report of a staff member being tortured, we would have to take that up. We’ll need to follow up on? on what happened with this particular case,” he said.

Innercity Press reported that a?UN staff member had made a witness statement to?the team from the Office of?the High Commissioner for Human Rights, investigating Sri Lanka, in which he states that, during the time he was?in Sri Lanka he was picked up by a “white van” and tortured.

He has said that despite being a UN employee?absolutely nothing was done for him since?and he is?now in exile in Chennai in Tamil Nadu. (Colombo Gazette)

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