Arrest and detention of Tamils continue says British Refugee Council

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !."
- Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa 500 B.C

INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA

Fears over arrest and detention continue to persist says British Refugee Council

"Fears over arrest and detention continue to persist. Thirteen young men arrested in March and April and held in Jaffna were transferred to Kalutara prison in June. On 7 June Kokkuvil Technical College student S Lavakumar was arrested in Kaithady. The following day, M Sivakumar was taken away by armed men accompanied by a masked informer in Jaffna town.

Relatives say S Kanthasamy and R Kanagaraj were arrested by police in Jaffna town in mid-June. Perumal Jeyarasa of Sulipuram was detained on 11 June. Three members of the same family were arrested in Sulipuram in late June. The bodies of three women were found in a cemetery at Chavakachcheri in early June. Two more bodies were recovered at Madduvil on 1 July....

.....Detention of Tamils in southern Sri Lanka continues. A new organisation, the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID), has been added to the plethora of police and intelligence agencies. Human rights agencies allege that an illegal detention centre has been set up at Malalasekera Mawatha in Colombo.

The Peliyagoda area, west of Colombo, was searched in early June and a number of people detained. Fifty people were arrested in Pettah suburb on 17 June. Over 100 Tamils were rounded-up in Ratnapura on 20 June after an electricity transformer was blasted.

In June, the Supreme Court awarded compensation to Mannar resident T Ranjani, arrested by police on 26 November and tortured in custody. In another fundamental rights application, Hill Country youth Christopher Solomon says, following his arrest in Kandy on 17 April, he was assaulted by police and forced to sign a confession. Ninety five people returned from Senegal in March and detained were released by the Negombo court on 25 June. Reports say the government plans to introduce new legislation to punish those who are returned from abroad after leaving the country illegally.

Utrecht Universitys Dr C Pathmamanoharan and his Dutch wife, on a visit to Sri Lanka, were harassed and finger-printed when they went to register with the Welikada police on 20 May. Dr Pathmamanoharan lives in Holland since 1971 and is a Dutch national. He was unable to contact the Dutch embassy in Colombo on the telephone number claimed by the Dutch government as a special number for those in difficulty. Dutch journalists who tried also failed to reach the embassy on the number. Mr Pathmamanoharan says he and his wife were finger-printed for the reason that he is a Tamil and dreads to think of the plight of asylum-seekers who are currently being returned from Netherlands under an agreement with Sri Lanka." (British Refugee Council Publication, Sri Lanka Monitor, June 1998)