Sri Lanka’s Special Task Force (STF) has been deployed to ramp up security outside a police station in Jaffna after a Tamil youth was killed in custody on Sunday.
25-year-old Nagarasa Alex was declared dead just hours after he described on video how the Sri Lankan police were brutally torturing him. He had been detained by the Sri Lankan police in Vaddukkottai. The video has been widely shared, with anger brewing over the killing of another Tamil youth.
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Tamil youth killed in Sri Lankan police custody, multiple injuries found on body
‘They beat me whilst I was hanging there’ - Torture at the hands of the Sri Lankan police
The occupying Sri Lankan security forces have since set up roadblocks on Ponnalai road, with tensions between local Tamils and the armed forces heightened. Alongside a heavy police presence, armed STF officers were seen on patrol.
The STF is a paramilitary unit widely understood to be responsible for a range of human rights violations and extrajudicial killings, including a string of massacres of Tamils, such as the 'Trinco 5' murders.