Sri Lanka’s dreadful anti-terrorism police on Saturday has arrested a 58-year old Tamil man in Kilinochchi for allegedly distributing forms meant to be circulated among the witnesses of the ongoing war crime probe by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Sri Lankan police has claimed that the Terrorists Investigation Department (TID) personnel on Saturday “has arrested Chinniah Krishnarajah at Mulankavil in Kilinochchi while he was distributing UNHRC witness forms”
The police has also claimed to have recovered from Krishnarajah a set of UNHRC witness forms and other materials that were to be submitted to the UNHRC.
According to sources, he has now been brought to the TID headquarters in Colombo for further investigation and is likely to be sent to the notorious Boosa detention camp in the South under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism (PTA) laws .
Several hundreds of Tamil men and women have been held indefinitely in Sri Lanka’s prisons without any charges under the provisions of PTA.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has not only refused to cooperate with the OHCHR inquiry, but has threatened to take action against those cooperating with the investigation, resulting in fear amongst the war-hit Tamil people.
Leading human rights activists, however, have urged the survivors of the bloody war “to quietly and discretely have their evidence sent across” before it expires at the end of this month.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights who presented an oral update during the September session of the Human Rights Council on the progress of the probe, will present the final report to the council’s March 2015 session.
Colombo Mirror