Sri Lanka's former foreign minister concerned about amnesty for Tamil political prisoners

Sri Lanka’s former External Affairs Minister Prof GL Peiris expressed “serious concern” over considerations of a general amnesty for former Liberation Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam cadres in custody.

Mr Peiris added that the Jaffna Tamil student who committed suicide demanding the release of Tamil political prisoners was a “sophisticated plan” to influence the government’s decision making process.

Drawing on foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera’s statement in parliament on the possibility of amnesty for those who had been charge under the prevention of terrorism act, Mr Peiris told a public gathering that “This is a frightening prospect.”

Mr Peiris added,

“LTTE sympathisers displayed the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran’s pictures and  black flags in the Jaffna University premises to commemorate the so-called heroes week.”

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.