File photograph.
Tamils in the North-East say they are “still living in an open prison,” reports Hannah Ellis-Petersen for The Guardian this week, highlighting imprisonment and torture on the island 13 years after the armed conflict ended.
“The roots of the conflict remain unresolved,” wrote Ellis-Petersen. "The country is as segregated as ever, with the Sinhalese Buddhist-majority concentrated in the wealthy south and the Tamils in the less-developed and heavily militarised north and east of the country.”
“What never disappeared was the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA),” the piece continued. “Since it was passed in 1979, the PTA has been a stain on Sri Lanka’s human rights record, enabling arbitrary arrest, detention without charge or evidence, forced confessions and torture of anyone suspected of terrorism.”
“They say the war is over but they are still doing what they have always done to Tamils: abducting us, torturing us, taking our land and using PTA to imprison us on no evidence,” said one Tamil man who was arrested by Sri Lankan authorities in June 2020.
“Tell me what has changed?... We are still living in an open prison.”
“The abuses of PTA, the surveillance never went away,” said Ambika Satkunanathan, the former human rights commissioner of Sri Lanka, told The Guardian. “But since 2019 when Rajapaksa came back to power, it’s just become more overt, more brazen. Every week, I can give you a minimum of one or two incidents related to the PTA being used to harass and intimidate civil society organisations and journalists.”
“Under the present government the situation for Tamils is getting much worse,” said Komahan Murugaia, who was held under the PTA for 7 years.
“It’s not as bad as 2009 when the war ended but there’s torture, and harassment, our right to freedom of speech is reduced, more arrests are happening, more surveillance,” said Murugaia. “My passport has been blocked and I have been summoned in for a police inquiry for participating in a memorial. There is a lot of fear.”
“Life is so difficult,” said Kamalaharan Easwary, whose husband is being detained under the PTA. “This law is being used to repress the Tamils even after the war is long over, and it is radicalising people, pushing them back to war again.”
Read more from The Guardian here.