COLOMBO: When the sprawling Welikada prison in the heart of Colombo is pulled down to make way for a commercial centre, a concrete manifestation of Sri Lanka’s troubled history will cease to exist.
Recently, Daily Mirror quoted Minister of Prisons D E W Gunasekara saying that the government planned to sell the 43-acre plot on which the jail was built to commercial interests for about $133 million.
According to Gunasekara, Welikada is a “living hell” due to gross overcrowding and the prisoners here would be transferred to Mahara and Watareka jails, as they have better conditions. Behind the grimy and crumbling walls of Welikada, rape, and violence are rampant.
However, the jail has also been a witness to major events in the history of Lanka since it was built in 1841. So, some people argue that it must be preserved.
It housed pre-independence nationalist agitators like D S Senanayake, and militant Buddhist revivalists like Edmund Hewawitharana, brother of Anagarika Dharmapala, who secured Buddha’s shrine at Bodh Gaya from the Hindu mahant holding it.
Bombardier Gratien Fernando, who led the anti-British mutiny in the Cocos Island near the Andamans during World War II, was executed here. Leaders of the attempted coup d’etat against the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government in 1962 spent many years here.
It was here that 53 Tamil militants and political prisoners were massacred by fellow Sinhalese prisoners in the July 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Colombo.
