15 Prisoners were released from the Vavuniya Prison on a General Pardon. The Department of Prisons Sri Lanka announced that 988 prisoners were to be released on a General Pardon by order of the President on Vesak. Prisoners are annually released on important Buddhist holidays in Sri Lanka. The 15 prisoners that were released were from impoverished families and were unable to pay their respective fines for petty crimes. 

Additionally, visitation hours were extended on May 5th and 6th so that relatives of the prisoners could visit their loved ones in prison.

The release of prisoners comes as Sri Lanka drafts new legislation to replace the draconian PTA.

The Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), the proposed replacement legislation to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), has brought condemnation from many human rights groups.

Amnesty International USA Asia Advocacy Director Carolyn Nash said:

“The ATA poses an urgent threat to human rights in Sri Lanka. If enacted, the law could be used to levy charges of terrorism against people simply for exercising their human right to protest peacefully. The outcry from the Sri Lankan people is evidence that this bill is just as or even more dangerous than the draconian law it aims to replace. If the ATA is enacted, the Sri Lankan authorities will still be empowered to suppress dissent, as they currently do using the PTA. We call on the government to substantially revise or drop entirely this new law, to repeal the PTA, and to issue an immediate moratorium on use of the PTA in the interim. These laws are an affront to human rights.”

The state has intensified its attempts to stifle Tamil memorialisation by using the PTA to target and arrest individuals who hold commemoration events and seeking court bans to suppress any commemoration activities. 

The PTA has been linked to cases of enforced disappearance, sexual violence and torture but despite domestic and international calls for the PTA to be repealed