Tamils Protesting In Colombo
‘A child weeps, as family members call for Tamil political prisoners to be freed’ photo by Dinidu de Alwis
My friend Dinidu has been following a protest in front of Colombo Fort. I called and he said there were about 150 people protesting for A) release of Tamil political prisoners B) right to Tamil language legal proceedings. One case they were mentioning was that of someone arrested for having batteries (like torch batteries, long been dodgy) and who signed a confession in Sinhala. He said the JVP’s Udul Premaratne was organizing but that there wasn’t an overt political presence.
I think both of these points are valid. The war has been over for like two years now and we’re still under Emergency law. It’s really not necessary no more.
Second, I don’t speak Sinhala and I’ve had to sign stuff I didn’t understand. That’s just normal procedure at a cop shed. Ignoring the kalu suddhas like myself, I think you should definitely have the write to give and sign a statement in Tamil.
If the JVP is just an acronym for you, note that this was the party which started a bloody communist rebellion in the south which killed about as many people as the one in the north. They were nationalist as in racist but now it seems that they are less so, or at least more strategic. Also note that the UNP and Tamil parties were nowhere near, effectively being counterweights to the government as much as an opposition (the UNP more than the TNA).
I should also note that the above’s involvement shows that these aren’t particularly ‘Tamil’ issues. Everybody gets hassled or screwed by the cops and there are countless people tied up in the justice system in numerous unjust ways.
these aren’t particularly ‘Tamil’ issues. – Hello, why aren’t the Sinhalese then not protesting at these ‘unjust’ measures?
They are. The protest was at least partly organized by the JVP, a largely Sinhala (and formerly somewhat racist) party. If you want a specific example, I think Udul Premaratne was there and he’s Sinhala, as much as that matters. At the end of war there were multiple small protests by Colombo ‘elites’ around Lipton Circus and protests for press freedom etc are pretty widely attended.
More recently, on May Day there were huge processions throughout town, including on my street in Dehiwela. They seemed to be JVP organized and included a lot of Tamil women holding pictures of missing people and calling for their release and I think also for proceedings in Tamil.
So, the Sinhalese are also protesting
[...] Samarajiva has a blog post about the protest, along with some commentary here. Did you like this? Share [...]
Asking for proceedings in Tamil is quite reasonable, legalese by itself is confusing enough.
Looks like torture is alive and well in S. Lanka: http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/07/01/canadian-detainee-wants-probe-into-detention-and-alleged-torture-in-sri-lanka/
After reading that, one has to doubt the validity of an internal investigation… Sri Lankans in Sri Lanka are “dirty people” (as my parents used to call them), who will trample each other to make a quick buck. Of course there are a few exceptions to the rule, but they are a miniscule % of the population that will be killed if they open their mouths too wide.
What SL needs is for some nice White people to invade the country, punish the crazy racists in the South, give the Tamils whatever rightfully belongs to them, then leave again.
this tortured guy’s whole story seems dodgy …most likely a made up story without any proof to back up his claims, probably to draw attention on SL. Cheap tactics by the diaspora.
You must have missed this part: “Documents on Red Cross, Government of Canada and Sri Lankan government letterhead support Mr. Samathanam’s account of detention. ”
The man was clearly detained. The portion about torture – you don’t have to believe that, but it’s rather difficult to make up that sort of thing. You have to be a film director to come up with a story like that, unless of course it’s true. How is some guy who was in Canada going to know the TID’s methods of torturing people with this kind of detail? The part about bribes, all of us know how common that is in S. Lanka. The forced confession is nothing new. The part about the wife being raped is news (to me at least).