Photo from the Daily Mirror
I’ve been to the Welikada Jail, where the recent riots and slaughter of nearly thirty people took place. It’s a strange place, right on a main road with prisoners going in and out (on work detail I guess). There’s a waiting room and a canteen and you enter through a vaguely secure tunnel. But it’s really a rather open jail. Here are my comments from an earlier visit, with some lawyers:
Welikada is an open prison. There are buildings, but the space between them is open. If you walk right you get to the garbage side, where there is an eeriely dark building playing eerie prayer music. It’s eerie. I think that’s where the extra bad people go. Walk up and you enter a sawmill. Another striking thing is that Welikada is a work prison, so the prisoners have 12-inch saws, 12-foot saws, hammers, chisels, etc. All the equipment is British, colonial era stuff. The rice is cooked in huge boilers, the vegetables are cut on huge wooden tables (with large knives, by prisoners). There’s also an enormous laundry with those heavy coal powered irons and large, industrial machines.
In another room the men are making furniture. So they have saws, chisels, vises. Looks like decent furniture, I guess. Asked what one of them was in for and he said murder. (Welikada Prison, What I Remember)
The issue with Welikada is that, well, it’s a jail and people want out. I think it’s definitely not as horrific as, say, American jails but there are still obviously drugs and weapons inside. Whenever there’s a search prisoners get riled up, and this time things seem to have gotten way out of hand. I mean, there were prisoners on the roof holding assault rifles.
What makes this so much worse was that all of this happened essentially in the middle of town. Prisoners could walk five feet out and catch a trishaw, indeed, they’re still looking for some that escaped. It also meant that the riot snarled traffic and injured civilians, like photojournalists. Which makes you wonder why the prison is even there.
In fact, they are going to move the prison from that big and valuable block of land, just as they’re also moving the prisons out of central spots in cities like Kandy. What has happened is that the prison system really hasn’t changed since colonial days, so you get spots that were once on the outskirts that have now had a city spring up around them. I mean, the Kandy prison is near a shopping mall. At the same time, conditions haven’t really changed either, and we obviously have more prisoners.
So it’s a bad situation overall. They need to move the prisons out of city centers ASAP, and make them more humane as well. Wouldn’t hurt to reform the justice system as well, but that may be too much to ask.
Well, Borella was probably a remote suburb when the prison was built, and it was stuck out there with the fuel storage depot and the railway yards. We all thought it was crazy to have the Army HQ in the middle of the city too. These things don’t happen in planned out cities, and eventually the move has to be made. I think the Kandy prison was also moved after a series of jailbreaks.
The prisoners would have been more manageable if the likes of Duminda Silva didn’t get away so easily with murder in broad daylight.
The last instance when there was a sudden raid on the prison in search of drugs, the word was that rioting prisoners had hammered the poor police officers asking them to first go get the big shots like Mervyn Silva.
This is prime land in Colombo! Perch value today Rs.2 million plus. Do your own maths. The thing is this government has got the shakers & movers in their grasp. Wait a few months a Chinese or Indian conglomerate will put a City within the city!
Since the prison was established in 1841, boralla would have been a village at best. or probably it was a jungle?
What the hell are you on about?
Exactly. Think Pannala or somewhere off Homagama and you get an idea of what Borella was back then. People would go there to hunt wild boar in the mid 19th century, I’ve read.
People have been asking for the prison to be moved as far back as the 1980s. I believe the Kandy prison was moved after several jailbreaks.
This is prime land in Colombo! Perch value today Rs.2 million plus. Do your own maths. The thing is this government has got the shakers & movers in their grasp. Wait a few months a Chinese or Indian conglomerate will put a City within the city!
Yes, Rakapaksha’s well get another billion Rupees from selling this prime land and good on them too.
I think you may need to go a little more further (away from homagam or pannala) to imagine what walikada was back then. :)
They make the guess at the same time, or at least they do not know what are the guesses of the oterhs.I wrote:> The prisoners knew about this event in advance and have had some time to agree on a strategy.This is the only information they can pass additionally to that they see each other’s hats. So no communication after they’ve got the hats.
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Waahh penuh perjuangan yah,, btw selamat atas hadirnya dedek Diana nya.. semoga makin rame dan makin bahagia ya… Dani Setiyawan selesai posting Adelle : Theme Feminim Untuk Cewek