At noon on the 29th of June, the police Special Task Force (STF) commandos and Army troopers broke into the Vavuniya prison, where at least 170 Tamil prisoners were held. By the time the 'military operation' unfolded, the political prisoners were on a hunger strike, demanding information about a fellow inmate who was taken away by the prison authorities. The details of the brutal crackdown that followed were deliberately suppressed by media.
The JDS spoke to Mano Ganesan, a prominent Tamil politician and the Convenor of the Civil Monitoring Commission (CMC), an organization based among the families of the disappeared and political prisoners.
"The prisoners were simply desperate and frustrated after being held for a long period without any legal process" Ganesan said. "We have seen many such incidents in many parts of the island in the past. During the time the Sinhala youth were held in prison in late 80s, similar incidents occurred. But the government projected the recent incident as an unprecedented situation and even went to the extent of portraying the prisoners hunger strike as a 'revival of the LTTE' that needs to be crushed using extreme force."
Excerpts of the interview follow:
JDS: What really happened in Vavuniya?
Mano Ganesan: The Tamil political prisoners held in Vavunia Remand Prison were pushed under shear frustration to take collective action, so that this government and the international community would listen to them. That's what happened. In fact, when the STF, the police and the army went into the prison, everything was over within three minutes or even less. But in government media it was projected as the biggest military operation conducted since May 2009. We totally reject such exaggerations and we see such interpretations are motivated by sinister political aims.
