More than 100 Sinhala prison guards and their student-trainees stormed the hostel residence of Colombo prison Monday night in a raid-like brutal assault targeting 40 Tamil prison guard students, who have been recently selected for training for the jobs of prison guards. The genocidal attack has taken place inside the hostel situated in front of Colombo prison and all the Tamil students are all still being held stripped naked and are subjected to torture and abuse inside the premises, one of the victims managed to inform TamilNet Tuesday evening over the phone. Eight Tamil students have sustained serious injuries, he said. The fate of 23-year-old V. Vasantharajah from Ooraath-thu'rai (Kayts), Jaffna, is not known to the fellow prisoners. He has sustained skeletal injuries, the source further said describing the assault as a genocidal attack.
“This is Sinhala country. You are all Tigers. Why did you come here?,” they asked during the attack.
“Don't you remember what happened to your folks in Welikade,” was another comment coming from the attackers, he said.
More than one hundred Sinhalese prison officers from Welikade and Colombo prison had joined 60 Sinhala students who carried out the fierce attack on Tamils.
The attacking Sinhalese burned the clothes of the Tamil students. The victims are refused food and medicine and are blocked from fleeing the premises.
The ‘selected’ Tamil students have become victims for the ‘inclusiveness’ demonstrated by the so-called ‘Prison Reforms’ Minister D.M. Swaminathan, who calls himself a ‘Sri Lankan Tamil’.
The attack should also be seen in the context of increasing attacks on Tamil students in the Eastern University and the violence against Tamil Village (GS) officers that have taken place in recent days.
53 Tamil political prisoners were massacred inside Welikada and Magazine prisons in 1983.
28 Tamil detainees were killed inside the Bindunuwewa detention centre in 2000 during the regime of Chandrika Kumaratunga Bandaranaike.
There have been several reports of killings and torture chambers inside the military camps and SL prisons after the end of war in 2009.
The fate of thousands former LTTE members handed over to the SL military by their families after the end of war in May 2009, is not known.
In the meantime, more than 200 Tamil prisoners of war and political prisoners languishing in the prisons of genocidal Sri Lanka have been struggling for their release.
Maithiripala Sirisena, the president of genocidal Sri Lanka and Ranil Wickramasinghe, the SL prime minister, have both declined to recognise the Tamil POWs as political prisoners, a recognition which was given to Sinhala JVP combatants in the past.
The Tamil prisoners of war, who have been struggling for their release from the jails in Anuradhapura and Colombo after several years of detention, were forced to abandon their hunger strikes after a controversial statement from the UN High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein.
On 10 March, the UN Human Rights Chief went on record describing the Tamil political prisoners in the jails of genocidal Sri Lanka as ‘security detainees’. The remark has evoked severe criticism.
Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in international law and a critic of US-engineered affairs of the island, turned his ire on the United Nations and its Human Rights Chief, Zeid bin Ra’ad, for their failure to recognize the international crimes of the Sri Lankan state and the on-going systemic genocide.
"It should now be crystal clear to everyone involved in the situation that Zeid and his United Nations Human Rights Office are nothing more than the proverbial dog-and-pony show specifically designed to distract international attention and world public opinion from the GOSL's ongoing genocide against the Eelam Tamils,” he said in a comment to TamilNet on 02 April, 2016.
source:[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 June 2016, 19:25 GMT]
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