Speaking on the issue of Tamil political prisoners, C.V. Wigneswaran, leader of the Tamizh Makkal Thesya Kootanii (TMTK), highlighted the issues with the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) which he has described as an “aberration”.

The legislation, Wigneswaran, whilst initially introduced 42 years ago as the “Temporary Provisions Act”, is now “used mostly now against the Tamils and all those arrested and kept in prisons for political reasons. 

In his speech to parliament, Wigneswaran highlights that confessions, whilst not generally accepted under normal law relating to major crimes, are accepted under the PTA. Human Rights Watch notes that since the measure was introduced in 1978, it has resulted in countless arbitrary detentions and facilitated torture of detainees. 

These confessions, are further discredited due to not only poor Police Interpreter, whose “knowledge of Tamil would almost always be faulty”, but also judges who “were not competent in Tamil”. These judges, Wigneswaran notes, would go by the statement provided by the Police Interpreter, who are “generally the victims of prejudice and bias”. This bias extends to judges who also hold a racial bias.

Wigneswaran maintained throughout his speech that prosecutions under the PTA were not against “violations of the Country’s Codified Laws but for their thoughts and ideas and actions that have fundamentally challenged existing power relations”. 

“When the State is unable to prove any charges against a person but is prejudiced against such person for his or her thoughts and actions or even his or her face or race, then in order to punish him or her, he or she is prosecuted under the PTA”, he added. 

The PTA has been internationally condemned with Sri Lanka’s previous administration agree with the EU to repeal the measure so as to secure positive traditions relations under the GSP+ arrangement. Despite a failure to fulfil this pledge, the EU has reinstated Sri Lanka into the arrangement in 2017, after it was suspended in 2010.

Wigneswaran’s statement also follows police charges under the PTA against the Jaffna-based newspaper, Uthayan, for the publishing of images and quotes of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), on his birthday, November 26. 

Read Wigneswaran's full statement here.