Sunday 27 May 2012

Dr Vickramabahu Karunaratne writes

With the bourgeoisie to fight chauvinism The parties of the opposition who joined in the campaign of Virodhaya, the VV, were jubilant that general Fonseka was given freedom. If there are restrictions, obviously we should continue our campaign for release of political prisoners. In any case Sarath is only one of them. There are more than 800 such political prisoners, who are variously dubbed as Tigers, Sinhala Tigers, etc. In addition, the regime arrested over a hundred in the recent searches in the Tamil homeland and they are kept illegally in various illegitimate places. Even though there is no emergency, people are kept under arrest without explaining the legality of the action. Lawyers say that parents and members of the families are scared to take legal action, as it could lead to disappearances! It is a sorry spectacle to see these affected people going around in circles pleading and crying. There were hunger strikes by prisoners, demanding equal treatment to all political prisoners and freedom now. There are many prisoners who are not charged at all. Issue of political prisoners came up in the discussions held by TNA with the government recently. It was reported “Though the talks between the government and the TNA seemed to be going ahead, the TNA has charged that not a single pledge made by the government has been met so far. TNA MP M. A. Sumanthiran said that though the government had assured his party of providing access to relatives to visit those being held in detention centres during the talks held in April, so far they have failed to honour that promise. He said that as per the agreement with the government those relatives ought to have been given access to visit those held in detention centres by the end of April. However, when relatives had arrived at the camps they had been turned away by the security officers. MP Sumanthiran lamented that when they had questioned the government in this regard, govt. representatives had merely expressed apologies. In the meantime all promises made to the TNA with regard to the freeing of political prisoners have also been broken, the MP charged.Read more...