NEW YORK – Sri Lankan authorities continue to use the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to target perceived opponents and minority communities without credible evidence to support the allegations despite repeated pledges to end the practice, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday, July 18.
While some victims have suffered years of arbitrary detention and torture, others are persecuted even after the case against them is dropped.
The law, widely known as the PTA, has provisions allowing for extended administrative detention, limited judicial oversight, and inadequate protections against torture. In a 2022 speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the then foreign minister pledged a moratorium on its use, but under President Ranil Wickremesinghe, detentions under the PTA have continued. Such is the chilling effect of the law that in September 2023 the International Monetary Fund found that “broad application of counter-terrorism rules” restricts civil society scrutiny of official corruption.
“Sri Lanka’s extensive domestic security apparatus routinely uses baseless accusations of terrorism to target innocent people, silencing critics and stigmatizing minority communities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Previous international pressure has led to modest improvements, and Sri Lanka’s foreign partners should renew their call to repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.”
Following government promises to repeal the PTA since 2015, draft legislation to replace it, known as the Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB), was published in March 2023. While the new bill contains some improvements, it includes provisions that could facilitate abuse.
Since it first came into force in 1979, the PTA has primarily been used to target members of the Tamil minority during a separatist war led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was defeated in 2009. While many long-term PTA prisoners have been released in recent years, in part due to international pressure by the European Union and others, at least eight who were first detained between 1996 and 2011 remain in prison.
In November 2023, police in the eastern town of Batticaloa arrested nine people under the law for commemorating the war dead. They were released on bail a month later, but one of those detained told Human Rights Watch that he remains under intense surveillance and his family has lost its income because of the case.
A former LTTE child soldier said that she was arrested under the PTA in 2019 and held for three years. Because she was a minor at the end of the war, she had been placed in the care of the Red Cross instead of being sent to government “rehabilitation” with adult combatants. She believes that the ongoing surveillance and harassment is because security agencies regard her as “unrehabilitated.” She said: “I am afraid. I don’t know who is watching me.” Human Rights Watch
