Sri Lankan government refuses to release Tamil political prisoners
By Subash Somachandran and S. Jayanth -15 March 2016
Fourteen Sri Lankan Tamil political prisoners ended a hunger strike of nearly three weeks last Friday at Welikada prison in Colombo after Prison Reforms and Rehabilitation Minister D.M. Swaminathan claimed he would expedite their cases. The government, however, refused the hunger strikers’ demand for the unconditional release of all Tamil political detainees.
The continued incarceration without trial of hundreds of Tamils not only exposes the ongoing repression and discrimination against the country’s Tamil minority. It is part of an escalating attack on the democratic rights of all sections of the Sri Lankan working class.
On February 29, 75 detainees at the Welikada prison held a one-day hunger strike in support of the 14 Tamil hunger strikers. Relatives and supporters of the protesting Tamil prisoners also held pickets and sit-down demonstrations in Jaffna, Vavuniya and Mannar in the north of the island over the past two weeks. Last Friday, Jaffna University students demonstrated to demand the release of the Tamil detainees.
There are still over 160 Tamil political prisoners being held without trial in Sri Lankan jails. Some were arrested during the nearly 30-year communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Others were taken into custody after the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009.
All are held under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, which allows the police to use so-called confessions to charge and detain people for more than 18 months. The police force and its intelligence wing are notorious for extracting false confessions by torture.
The latest hunger strike was the fourth such prison protest in the last six months. In October 2015, over 220 detainees in 14 jails began an indefinite hunger strike over their ongoing imprisonment. The protests ended after the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a coalition of the Tamil bourgeois parties, convinced the hunger strikers to end their action, claiming the government was ready to release them.
Fourteen Sri Lankan Tamil political prisoners ended a hunger strike of nearly three weeks last Friday at Welikada prison in Colombo after Prison Reforms and Rehabilitation Minister D.M. Swaminathan claimed he would expedite their cases. The government, however, refused the hunger strikers’ demand for the unconditional release of all Tamil political detainees.
The continued incarceration without trial of hundreds of Tamils not only exposes the ongoing repression and discrimination against the country’s Tamil minority. It is part of an escalating attack on the democratic rights of all sections of the Sri Lankan working class.