COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's Tamil political parties have demanded the resignation and arrest of the country's Minister for State for Prison Management Lohan Ratwatte for allegedly threatening to kill Tamil prisoners during his visit to the Anuradhapura prison in the country's north-central region.
Ratwatte allegedly visited the Anuradhapura prison on September 12 and forced two prisoners to kneel and threatened to kill them, the Colombo Gazette reported on Wednesday.
We call on the government to immediately remove the state minister for prison management and have him arrested and charged after an immediate inquiry for allegedly threatening to kill prisoners in Anuradhapura on Sunday, September 12, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) said in a tweet.
Galen Ponnambalam, the leader of another Tamil party Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), also confirmed the incident.
The TNPF can confirm that on the evening of September 12, the state minister for Prisons had gone to the Anuradhapura prisons, summoned the Tamil political prisoners and had got two of them to kneel in front of him, he said in a tweet.
Ponnambalam said the minister had threatened to kill the Tamil prisoners.
The local media reports alleged that the minister visited the main prison in Colombo to show the gallows to a group of his friends late at night before heading to the north-central town of Anuradhapura.
He was allegedly carrying his personal weapon into the prison which the prison officials said was an illegal act.
The minister's office has denied any such incident involving the minister, the local media reports said.
The alleged incident and act of the minister have also been condemned by the United Nations representative in the country.
The UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Hanaa Singer-Hamdy, said that it is the duty of the State to protect the rights of prisoners, the Colombo Gazette news portal reported.
In our work on prison reform and drug rehabilitation, UN Sri Lanka works to strengthen capacities to uphold the rights of all those in custody and condemns any ill-treatment of prisoners, Hanaa Singer-Hamdy tweeted on Wednesday.