Amidst international outcry over Sri Lanka’s crackdown on peaceful demonstrators, Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe has issued an extraordinary gazette summoning the tri-forces to maintain public order across the island with effect from August 22.
This comes despite the president not extending the state of emergency claiming that normalcy has returned to the country.
The decision follows the arbitrary arrest of student demonstrators, abduction of activists, and the forceful crackdown on protesters. Earlier this month Sri Lanka’s president met with an EU delegation that stressed protecting freedom of expression and the right to protest.
The EU delegation maintained that Sri Lanka must take “concrete steps” to ensure that their GSP+ commitment, IMF discussions, and Human Rights Council succession are “a success”.
Whilst those arrested in the South have not been subject to Sri Lanka’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), it has been routinely used across the decades to detain and terrorise Tamils and Muslims arbitrarily. Numerous reports detail how the act has been linked to cases of enforced disappearance and torture and was used to target Tamil youth. Successive Sri Lankan administrations have pledged to repeal the PTA and meet their commitments under GSP+ but have failed to do so.
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