The PTA has been condemned as a draconian legislation and declared by the International Commission of Jurists as 'a blot on the statute book of any civilized nation'. Several UN bodies, including the Human Rights Committee have demanded the government to repeal the Act or bring it in line with international standards. Many of the thousands of Tamils arrested under the PTA have suffered torture and many others have disappeared. Observers say that the Sri Lankan government would like to retain the legislation for future use, in the event the peace talks collapse.
Over 1,170 prisoners were released on 13 January under a presidential amnesty. But none of them were PTA detainees. The Attorney General's Department says less than 100 are held under the PTA. In a letter to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in January, Tamil detainees in Kalutara prison allege that confessions of LTTE links had been extracted from them under torture.
They also say that some detainees are in custody for more than ten years under the PTA or Emergency regulations and that some were murdered by prison officers after they began hunger strikes to draw attention to their plight. The detainees accuse the Tamil parliamentarians of failing to help them.
The Colombo High Court released 23 suspects in the Bindunuwewa massacre case on 21 January, because of lack of evidence. The trial-at-bar, without a jury, against 18 other suspects will proceed. Twenty seven Tamils were killed in a mob attack on the Bindunuwewa rehabilitation centre in October 2000, in the Hill Country. Immediately after the massacre, Amnesty International called for a comprehensive review of the PTA.
The trial relating to the Mirusuvil massacre was scheduled to begin in January in Colombo. According to the Human Rights Commission’s Jaffna officer Ruwan Chandrasekara, the main witness in the case fears for his safety in the capital and has requested transfer of the case to Jaffna. Five soldiers are accused of killing eight Tamils at Mirusuvil in Jaffna. Their bodies were found in a grave in December 2000.
Press reports say that in January, the southern Mother’s Front applied to courts for an order for DNA tests to identify the remains of 540 soldiers killed in LTTE’s military operation Oyatha Alaigal III (Unceasing Waves) in November 1999. The Tigers say they burned bodies of soldiers killed in action, after the PA government refused to accept them and listed the soldiers as ‘missing in action’.