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Inter University Students’s Federation (IUSF), a confederation of more than 70 students’ unions, played the crucial role of coordinating between universities in various cities during August’s #GotaGoHome uprising. On 24 August, the Convener of the IUSF, Wasantha Mudalige and two other student leaders were issued detention orders under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) by the new Wichremesinghe government. Mudalige and Galwewa Siridhamma have been imprisoned for more than 75 days. PTA is a draconian law that has been used since the early days of the Tamil Eelam independence movement by the State to indefinitely detain and extract confessions through torture. It allows the state to label anybody a terrorist, without even clearly defining what ‘terrorist activity’ is. Though the law does not permit for those detained under it to be in custody for more than 18 months, many of those arrested have been held on remand for years on end. PTA has specifically been used to target, silence and threaten minorities, and Left activists.
The new President, Ranil Wickremesinghe, ordered a near complete ban on protests and demonstrations in the country. Trade unions, Opposition are launching disobedience in November.
Since the start of the protests, around 3,400 protestors have been arrested, most under charges that would never hold up in courts. Many of them still remain in the custody of the police. They have been kept in deplorable conditions, denied access to lawyers and threatened. The police have attacked, and used tear gas and water cannons on people protesting for the release of activists and students detained under the PTA. The protests are picking up again, as the people have realised that the same neoliberal capitalist system that led to the cost-of-living crisis, with any amount of loans from the IMF, will never lead to improvement in the situation of the working masses in the country. We demand that the Sri Lankan government release all protestors who have been detained, repeal the draconian PTA, and uphold the human rights of all the protestors in the country. From COLLECTIVE, we once again affirms our solidarity with the protesting students and workers of Sri Lanka in their fight against their authoritarian government and the neoliberal capitalist system.
