There are more bad apples than good ones in our society. Perhaps 38 years of wars beginning from 1971 is the reason for that.
The bad apples need to be picked out so that they will not influence the good apples. That includes the politicians not only soldiers.

There are cops all over the world abused the very laws they have sworn to protect.
Soldiers all over the world, done dirty deeds.
Priests all over world who have molested the innocent and vulnerable.
Mothers who have killed/dumped their new borns.
List goes on in every role that involves safe guarding innocent and vulnerable.

There are good apples and bad apples. We get it.. No need to be so perplexed.

The soldier is neither a villain or a hero – he’s just another person who got caught up in the tide of flawed decision-making by our leaders of the last 25 years. If you were born in a village in Sri Lanka, he would have been your brother, cousin or husband. His mirror image is the LTTE cadre, who is also someone’s brother, cousin or husband.

The difference between the soldier and one of us is that he chose to put his life on the line to fight and kill for a state, and defend it from those who want to destroy it – sometimes only because he could not think of any other way of making a living. The LTTE cadre also performed the same role of defending a quasi-state – sometimes being abducted and forced to do so. If one takes up arms, one does it with the understanding – you live by the gun, you die by the gun. If they survived 25 years of war they became battle-hardened veterans, for whom fighting is a way of life. Some of them are torturers and rapists but like in any given population, not all of them. Good and evil reside within every person to different degrees. It is the specific context that brings out the best or worst in people. The army and the LTTE both had their torture chambers.

But there are plenty of torturers and rapists outside the armed forces or the LTTE. All the studies we have in Sri Lanka of domestic violence, some pre-dating the war, reveal that up to 60% of married women are abused by their husbands, the majority of them, even while being pregnant. The war has no doubt exacerbated the structural violence that exists in our society. Social change will only come if people understand that violence of all kinds is a problem that cannot be condoned – discussions such as these are vital to this process.

By demonizing people, whether in the army or outside, we cannot move towards reconciliation. So next time you meet that soldier or the ex-LTTE cadre, look them straight in the eye. They need your compassion to rekindle the sense of humanity they have lost because misguided, power hungry Sinhalese and Tamil leaders have used them as canon fodder for the last 25 years.

an interesting article. Sri Lanka has had armed conflicts from 1971 onwards and sections of the armed forces and the police have got used to torturing people to exract confessions, get information etc. The people at the receiving end are mostly the poor and the vulnerable.
Often the orders come from the higher ups in the military and the police and the rank and file carry them out.
It is near impossible to change the status quo. The problem may very well become acute in the years ahead.