Sri Lanka and its political detainees
Picture courtesy NDTV
- - on 11/01/2015
The jail system in Sri Lanka and the fate of prisoners who are being held therein have been discussed on several occasions, when major violence occurred within the system. However, the most recent discussion was based on a hunger strike a group of detained political prisoners had launched. According to the information we have received, these detainees have been held without charges for a period much longer than the time they would have been spent, even if they had been convicted for any charges possibly brought against them. Some of them would have been taken into custody much before the end of the armed conflict in 2009. Even under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), pre-trial detention of individuals is limited to a maximum of 18 months. Thus, the authorities have violated this provision by holding these prisoners in detention indefinitely.
