This is a journey through a country recovering from decades of civil war - a story about secret meetings. It's 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm not sure where the next leg of our journey will take us. People too terrified to reveal their identity or location and harrowing claims of abduction and torture by the security forces.

YASMIN SOOKA, AUTHOR: It's absolutely brutal.

Including failed asylum seekers sent back from Australia.

BHANU, SRI LANKAN ASYLUM SEEKER: They tied my leg with wire and lifted me up with my head down.

REPORTER: So they're hanging you upside down?

On any weekend in Colombo, the beach is a great place to relax, the capital is bustling five years after the once feared Tamil Tigers were finally destroyed. As the nation grows, Australia is developing close ties, including a Federal Police presence. And providing patrol boats in the battle against people smugglers.

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: It's terrific to be here in Colombo. It's good to be here with senior members of the Sri Lankan Navy, particularly the admiral commanding the navy.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is pledging a bright future for the nation and reconciliation between Tamils and Sinhalese, but today, I'm on my way to hear a very different story. A woman we'll call Anusha, who was returned from Australia, has agreed to meet me. Elaborate precautions are in place to protect her identity.

REPORTER: So I need to call her and then she will give directions.

I meet her at a construction site. She says she's made two attempts to reach Australia and that man from the Sri Lankan security forces gang-raped her before she got on the boat.

ANUSHA: If you are human, you won't do this, you don't try to rape the woman. Maybe I cried, then he hit me all over my body with the weapons. Seven soldiers tied my hands and then seven soldiers raped me. They really raped me very badly.

On her second attempt, Australian officials sent her back. Anusha says because of her political associations, she spends her life in fear, and moving constantly.

ANUSHA: We are going to leave the country as soon as possible. This is some of our baggage to take with us. You can see.

REPORTER: Thank you.

ANUSHA: OK. OK.

Not far from Anusha's is another secret location and more allegations of abuse. Narada says he was also returned from Australia and assaulted by police.

NARADA (Translation): He hit me, but he also kicked me. I said "œDon't hit me, Australia is watching everything." He said "œSri Lankan law is different from theirs so mind your own business. Their law only applies over there." He said Australia didn't matter.

Narada's case is known to Australian authorities and we will return to it later. Today, my contacts have lined up another secret meeting. It's a drive that takes us past more of Sri Lanka's charms. But, again, I'm about to experience some of this country's hidden side. This man claims he was returned by Australia and then abused by Sri Lankan officials during a nine-hour interrogation.

AADI (Translation): At this time it was about 12 o'clock.

We'll call him Aadi, he says the security forces accused him of being with the Tamil Tigers, or LTTE. Five years after the resounding defeat of the LTTE, the Government is determined to prevent a resurgence and find out what they can about any surviving Tigers.

AADI (Translation): They said that we knew and stamped on our feet and hit us with water bottles to get it out of us. They hit me across the mouth - my lips were bruised and bleeding.

Shortly after the interview, my translator receives a phone call.

TRANSLATOR: He advised that we leave immediately from this place because people have identified you as a foreigner doing an investigation into human rights.

REPORTER: What are the implications do you think?

TRANSLATOR: We can be taken and interrogated.

REPORTER: OK, let's go.

The Government is also deeply sensitive to accusations that it committed war games in the final days of the war - a charge it strongly denies. The same allegation is also levelled against the Tigers. On the road the next day, I receive another call saying I should take the battery and SIM card from my phone to avoid being tracked.

I was planning to return to Colombo, but I received a call saying that I should instead spend a day being a tourist. Sigiriya, or Lion Rock, is one of the premier tourist destinations.

REPORTER: Yesterday was a pretty dramatic turn of events. I wasn't expecting that. I was contacted by somebody else, who suggested that we might be being tailed and so, we needed to stop, have tea, watch our backs. And then move on with caution.

It's hard to reconcile the natural beauty and hospitality here with what I've been experiencing - a sense of dread and constant surveillance. Is this paranoia or is the level of fear justified? Both the Sri Lankan and Australian governments say this country is safe. The answer may lie almost 9,000km away.

It's summer in London, the locals and tourists are lapping it up. But it seems not everyone is able to enjoy the good times. I've come to meet Sri Lankans who claim they've been brutally abused. They fled not to Australia but here to the UK.

This is barrister Patrick Lewis. For twenty years he has been specialising in immigration and human rights law and has represented up to 70 Sri Lankans seeking asylum in the UK. He says there's a consistency to their claims.

PATRICK LEWIS, BARRISTER: So it's of individuals being detained, arrested, and then subjected to various forms of beating, of various forms of torture, including burning, including sexual abuse, including rape.

NATHAN (Translation): They had a bag of petrol, a plastic bag doused in petrol, they covered my head with it and hit and kicked me. It was excruciating, my eyes were burning and became swollen.

Last year, four years after the end of the war, Nathan says security forces picked him up.

NATHAN (Translation): I was coming back from the shops close to my house and an armed group which I could not identify, pulled up in a white van and pulled me into the van. While I was still in the van, straightaway they began hitting me and asking if I was a member of the LTTE. When I denied this, they kept hitting and kicking me. Next day, they tied my legs and hung me upside down and started to hit me. I was unable to handle the pain. He demanded I have sex with him, I refused - he then forced his penis into my mouth.

Nathan says he was also racially abused.

NATHAN (Translation): "œYou are a Tamil dog, go and die! You tried to oppose and fight us in our country."

ROMANY (Translation): Every night, four to five men would take turns and come and rape me. They used wire and current to burn me and I still have marks on my back. I experienced constant torture and abuse - I suffered so much. I was too ashamed to tell anybody.

Horrific stories like these have been compiled in this report, published in march by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and the International Truth and Justice Project Sri Lanka.

YASMIN SOOKA: It's absolutely brutal and, you know, I felt like a voyeur sometimes having to deal with what I would call a pornography of violence, because both men and women are raped, both anally and, in the case of the woman, vaginally and anally.

The report's author is Yasmin Sooka, an internationally respected human rights lawyer. She has advised many governments and sat on the UN Secretary-General's expert panel on post-war Sri Lanka.

YASMIN SOOKA: None of our witnesses actually know each other. None of them were actually interviewed in the same places, by the same investigators. And yet, if you read the accounts of torture and sexual violence, it is strikingly similar, and that really gives, you know, support to my view that this is planned, it is systematic and that to me, indicates a high level of support at the highest level and, secondly a high level of impunity in the country.

DR FRANK ARNOLD: When I go before the courts I'm there as an independent expert. My primary duty is to the court, not the individual.

Medical experts, including Dr Frank Arnold, a surgeon who specialises in assessing torture survivors, examine the victims in detail.

DR FRANK ARNOLD: The results of the examination were that she had scars diagnostic of cigarette burns.

REPORTER: Which means what? What's that mean in laymen's terms?

DR FRANK ARNOLD: That means it could not have happened any other way.

BRAHMI (Translation): He burned me with cigarettes - to this day, I still have the burn scars. When I shower I am upset as I see them and I am reminded.

Brahmi sought asylum with her daughter in Europe but was returned to Sri Lanka. She says she was also abducted by men in a white van and was subjected to relentless torture and sexual abuse.

BRAHMI (Translation): There were four or five men in army and civil uniform and after a while I stopped resisting and fighting them as they came to rape me, as I saw no point. I accepted the fact that I was going to be raped and I just let it happen.

DR FRANK ARNOLD: She also showed marks from branding with hot metal rods on her back. And that's a particularly shocking and uniquely Sri Lankan phenomenon, which I've seen again and again and again. We have here also a couple of photographs, not of her but of a man who said he was branded with hot metal rods, and this is one of the people who I saw in 2013, long after the end of the civil war.

It's not only London doctors who are dealing with Sri Lankans who report being branded. In Melbourne last year, the ABC's Heather Ewart reported on Kumar.

HEATHER EWART, ABC: Kumar, do you mind showing me the scars on your back.

KUMAR: Yes, sure.

HEATHER EWART: Are you OK? Oh, that's terrible.

Kumar also says he was sexually assaulted. He says he eventually bribed his way out of Sri Lanka. Also in Melbourne is a man we'll call Bhanu. His asylum claim was rejected and he was sent back to Sri Lanka, but he's since made his way back again. He says while in Sri Lanka, he was also accused of being a Tamil Tiger and tortured.

BHANU: They always hit me. They took this nail and this nail and this nail, they removed, with one of those things they use with electricity.

REPORTER: Like pliers?

BHANU: Yes? Yes.

On another occasion, at a different location, he says his ankles and wrists were tied behind them.

BHANU: They put two chairs with a pole between them and tied me like this - very painful.

REPORTER: So you're sort of hanging?

BHANU: Yeah.

He says that his torture happened here on the fourth floor of the CID building in Colombo. It was also here that the man I met earlier, Narada, who was known to Australian authorities, says he was tortured.

NARADA (Translation): They hoisted me up, with my torso hanging down. After that, they used a hammer, they placed a book on my head and hit it with a hammer. It made me pass urine and defecate when they hit me like that. After that, they hosed me from my head down. I think they did that because of the smell of faeces.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information show that the Australian Government was aware of Narada's torture claims.

DFAT DOCUMENT: We have been forwarded an email containing claims that a suspect has been severely tortured by police. The email is signed by the suspect's lawyer.

Alerted to these allegations, an Australian Federal Police Officer went to investigate, inquiring of the very people accused of torturing Narada.

DFAT DOCUMENT: AFP raised the allegations with the Director of the Criminal Investigations Division; he subsequently advised that the allegations had no basis.

The AFP also cited, Narada, who they said:

DFAT DOCUMENT: Appears to be in good health.

NARADA (Translation): Then they hit me again with a wooden plank, which broke.

But the Federal Police chose not to ask him personally whether he'd been tortured, asserting that:

DFAT DOCUMENT: In the interests of keeping our distance from the Sri Lankan investigation, we do not intend to take up the offer to meet with him.

That statement would appear to contradict this briefing note prepared for the Department of Foreign Affairs, which states that:

DFAT DOCUMENT: Any reports of harm befalling individuals following their return from Australia are taken seriously and would be followed up where appropriate.

Narada's torture, if true, casts doubt on the assertions of former Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr.

BOB CARR, FORMER MINISTER: Since 2010 there has been no evidence of returnees being discriminated against or arrested - let alone tortured and I think it is wrong to say that Tamils live in fear and are fleeing their country.

Since late 2012, over 1,300 Sri Lankans have been returned under a policy known as enhanced screening.

GREG LAKE, FORMER DIRECTOR OF OFFSHORE PROCESSING: This governments' policy is the same or effectively an extension of the last Government.

By his own estimate, Greg Lake, the immigration department's former director of offshore processing and transfers, says he was responsible for returning approximately 1,000 of these people.

GREG LAKE: The idea of it being somehow enhanced or better is exactly the opposite of what it is. It was enhanced by making it shorter - less questions, less opportunity to put your story. We are going to apply this interview for legal purposes really and then send you home.

The interview is brief and, according to Anusha, was not the place to tell her full story.

ANUSHA: We are giving an interview over the phone, when they are asking;.taking the interview, three or four Sri Lankan passengers are with me, so my personal things even I can't tell to them. I'm scared because I can't trust these people 100 percent.

GREG LAKE: There's a huge chance that quite a few people, and by that I mean tens, possibly 100s, have been subjected to all sorts of treatment on return to Sri Lanka. I don't know how many but I think it's a worry that any might have been.

No-one, it seems, knows just how many of those, Australia has sent back to Sri Lanka have been mistreated. A spokesperson for Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, says they rely on assurances given to Bob Carr by the Sri Lankan Government and have not received any new information that would enable further investigation. A lawyer in Colombo with up to 200 returnee clients estimates half have had some problems.

LAKSHAN DIAS, LAWYER: Some people were detained. Some people were tortured. Some people were, like, followed a lot. And they are monitored.

It was Lakshan Dias whose email alerted the Australian High Commission that his client Narada has been tortured.

LAKSHAN DIAS: I think torture is a kind of accepted way of interrogation in Sri Lanka, even though it is illegal, totally, but everybody knows what's happening. So how can someone say that is not going to apply to those returnees?

It's not only human rights defenders who say that torture is pervasive. Concerns have reached the highest levels.

PATRICK LEWIS: It's systemic, it's so systemic that the British Government in a recent case conceded that those individuals who are at risk of detention in Sri Lanka are at risk of torture and sexual abuse, rape, whilst they are in detention.

Clearly, not everyone returned to Sri Lanka is in danger, but Yasmin Sooka is dismayed at Australia's willingness to return as many as possible.

YASMIN SOOKA: This is quite frightening and in fact, is tantamount to collaborating with a government that is responsible for human rights abuses.

For many, this once war-torn nation has become an inviting tourist playground. But for those sent back to where they came from, it may be a very different story.

INTERVIEW:

MARK DAVIS: David Corlett with that report and I'm joined now by Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Australia, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe. Thank you for joining us sir. There were some horrifying allegations in that story. How did you feel about hearing them?

ADMIRAL THISARA SAMARASINGHE, SRI LANKA'S HIGH COMMISSIONER: Mark, your word "horrifying" is absolutely not the right way to describe that. Doctored, orchestrated, bias documentary which is absolutely baseless and any person with an ounce of common sense can read and understand certain languages of that documentary...

MARK DAVIS: Sure...

ADMIRAL THISARA SAMARASINGHE: ;is clearly - give the evidence that how biased that documentary is and it's trying to portray absolutely wrong picture of Sri Lanka and I totally reject that.

MARK DAVIS: Alright. But let's look at just some of the specific claims. They're not generic claims of intimidation. They're quite specific allegations of rape and of course, the rather horrific instances of branding. Whether the overall flavour is to your liking, they appear to be true, those accounts. Do they disturb you?

ADMIRAL THISARA SAMARASINGHE: It could be appearing to be true to you, to any particular person. The specifics are that it is obviously doctored and it has been timed at times when there are a lot of attempts by various quarters to damage Sri Lanka's image and bring out certain atrocities that are not true...

MARK DAVIS: So do you accept - I won't banter with you. I understand the Sri Lankan Government's position, there have been false accusations made against the Government before, but there's an essence of truth at the very least through much of that story, would you agree...

ADMIRAL THISARA SAMARASINGHE: No...

MARK DAVIS: ;.at a personal level, how do you feel when you hear your security forces treating detainees in that manner?

ADMIRAL THISARA SAMARASINGHE: Mark, there are 11,000 hardcore terrorists who are either arrested or detained or surrendered who have been released to normal life after rehabilitation. It would be very unprofessional to pick up somebody returning from Australia and go ask him, "Are you an LTTE Member?" That is absolutely unprofessional for the Sri Lankan military and authorities. Self-infliction of injuries are common in this kind of atrocities.

There are people who committed suicide to bring discredit to people. So these pictures - and also people who are arrested, tortured, abducted, raped, are free to leave the country and go to other parts of the world I mean, there should be consistency in what something is said. And I'm expecting anyone, that reporter, if he can bring any credible evidence and bring such person to my notice, I'll give you the guarantee, 100% guarantee, that particular person who is claiming that X, Y and Z has happened, will be absolutely safe. This is an attempt to support the separatists of Sri Lanka, paint the wrong picture, and we have stopped with the help of the Australian Government people dying at sea...

MARK DAVIS: Sure.

ADMIRAL THISARA SAMARASINGHE: ...and the criminal human smugglers are struggling now...

MARK DAVIS: There's no arguing on that point sir - I think it is more specific to these instances. I'm sure our journalist will take you up on that offer. The basis of that story was the UK report, which was delivered in March. Has there been an investigation into that report? If not, my last question is, if not, why not?

ADMIRAL THISARA SAMARASINGHE: We are not investigating into various reports done by various people done for vested interests. The UK and other countries have harboured this terrorist leadership and that is why our country suffered for so long in our attempt to eradicate terrorism. Even now, they are harbouring terrorists. So harbouring these kind of people and spending various moneys to discredit Sri Lanka is very open and the double standards, which have been meted, and if there are people who are returning after are people who are returning after fleeing the country for greener pastures and economic opportunities, when they come back, there are thousands who are living a normal life... Thank you.

MARK DAVIS: We'll have to leave it there. We'll have to pursue it on our website, any comments you've got to make. There's more online from David Corlett's story, including the Federal Government's full response to our questions and the link to the human rights report featured in that story. That's at sbs.com.au/dateline.

Reporter/Camera
DR DAVID CORLETT

Camera London
THOMAS RELPH
JEREMY IRVINE

Camera South Africa
ZAHEER CASSIM

Camera Melbourne
SCOTT CARDWELL

Camera Sydney
DAVID OLLIA
GRANT JORDAN
RYAN SHERIDAN

Producer
GEOFF PARISH

Producer 'White Van'
BERNADINE LIM

Graphics
MICHAEL BROWN

Editor
NICK O'BRIEN

30th September 2014