“More than 50 young men had been arrested over the past few days for putting up Facebook posts, while a 29-year old government servant was arrested as he had been tagged by someone in a Facebook post which had a photo of Prabhakaran. They have been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). You are ruining their future,” TNA Batticaloa District MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam told parliament.
He was speaking at the budget debate on the votes of the Ministries of Industries and Trade in Parliament last Friday ( 04 December 2020)
Speaking further he said that:
“Look at the Muslims. They are asking to perform their last rites according to their faith. They live all their lives according to the Qur’an, and I am ashamed – as a Sri Lankan – to see what is happening, and the Muslim MPs who voted for the 20th Amendment, too, should be ashamed of themselves. Minorities are being forced to go to court to win their basic rights.”
“There is a mother or father who wants to remember a dead son by lighting a lamp. For them, that is their son, and it does not matter if he was in the LTTE or not. Tamils are going to court to win the right to remember their dead, while the Muslims are going to court to win the right to bury their dead.”
Rasamanickam said instead of making bogeymen of minorities, the Government should tell the Sinhalese about the real economic issues the country is facing.
With the inputs from Daily FT