They do torture and indefinite detentions, too!
"Civil war over, Sri Lankans face abductions by armed squads" by Krishan Francis | Associated Press, August 26, 2012
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The politician knew something was amiss when a suspicious white van pulled alongside him at a Colombo park and four men got out, pretending to exercise. Ravindra Udayashanta alerted his supporters, and police. Soon, the gunbattle began.
In Sri Lanka, anyone who has crossed someone of importance is wary of white vans, said to be the vehicles of choice for shadowy squads who ‘‘disappear’’ opponents of powerful people. So, Udayashanta’s armed supporters immediately went into action.
‘‘I heard the crack of a gun and I too pulled out my pistol and fired back,’’ said Udayashanta, who had been involved in a long-running dispute with another ruling party lawmaker about a business deal. Udayashanta’s brother already had disappeared — dragged away one month earlier, he said, by men in a white van.
But things went differently on this March day. Udayashanta and his entourage surrounded the men from the white van and captured them. Eventually, at gunpoint, the men acknowledged who they were: Sri Lankan government soldiers.
The group later handed the suspects to police, who promptly released them.
In a country where people had hoped the 2009 end of its bloody, long-running civil war would mean a return to normalcy — a country with a history of disappearances that stretches back to the 1970s — the open secret of the white vans has come to exemplify the terror felt by anyone who runs afoul of Sri Lanka’s rulers.
For years, little solid evidence had surfaced on the abductors.
Then came the cases of Udayashanta and that of another man in recent months— an Australia-based activist who says he was freed from abduction only under Australian pressure — who survived to tell their stories....
But neither case has done much to overturn Sri Lanka’s apparent culture of impunity. Police said the soldiers who got into a gunfight with Udayashanta were actually searching for deserters. Officials say the investigation is continuing, though it is unclear what — if anything — they are doing. Government leaders and the military deny any links to abductions.
Apathy on the part of many citizens over extralegal disappearances is partly to blame for their prevalence, said Ruki Fernando, an activist with the Sri Lanka human rights group Rights Now Collective for Democracy.
‘‘This is a sign of an uncivilized and undemocratic society,’’ Fernando said.
Rights activists, opposition lawmakers, and local journalists say top officials send abduction squads in white vans to kidnap political opponents, activists, and outright criminals. White vans are parked in front of the homes of government critics, in clear attempts to terrify them into silence....
It’s not clear why white vans would be used, though many suspect it is because they are so common on Sri Lanka’s streets that they can quickly disappear into traffic....
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Also see: Secret Sri Lankan Video
Related: U.S. Helps Sri Lanka Hold Tamil Tigers By Tail
I guess that is why the U.S. isn't making too much of a issue about it.
