The US State Department says the total number detained during 1999 under Emergency regulations (ER) and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) was consistently close to 2,000 and hundreds of Tamils arrested under the PTA were held without bail, some upto five years. According to the AG, almost 1,000 PTA and ER cases are before the High Court.
Arrests of Tamils continued in February. Nine Tamils were taken into custody during a search operation in the Colombo suburb of Dematagoda on 11 February. Ten Tamils, including two Moratuwa University students, were arrested on 20 February in the same area. A week later, 74 Tamils were rounded-up in Colombo, Negombo and Kandy and 31 were detained. Twenty young Tamil men and women were arrested in lodges in Pettah on 1 March. In a massive search operation in the Kandy area on the same day, 24 people were detained.
Police say that a number of LTTE units have penetrated the heavy security in southern Sri Lanka. In eight separate bomb attacks on buses, between 30 January and 8 February, three civilians died and over 150 were wounded. The Information Department says that the Cabinet appointed a committee on 9 February to probe the bus attacks.
Batticaloa resident C Pushparajah was taken into custody in Negombo in early February with explosives. The police also arrested M Sivalingam at a Colombo hospital. He had been injured by his own bomb in a bus at Pettah on 8 February. On his information, the alleged mastermind behind the bus bombings, Nageswaran, was arrested on Poonagala Estate in Bandarawela. Colombo MP R Yogarajan says Nageswaran is a member of the People’s Liberation Front (JVP).
The police allege that guns and grenades were found in the Muthumari Amman Hindu temple on Bloemendhal Lane in Colombo’s Kotahena suburb in early February. The temple was closed and a priest was arrested. Four other Hindu priests in temples at Grandpass and Navagampura were also arrested and released after enquiry.
Amnesty International has expressed concern for the safety of Chitravel Manivannan arrested by police in Vavuniya on 10 January. He had just been released after serving a five year sentence. Student T Thavaruban, arrested under the PTA and detained for 26 months, was released after the AG’s Department withdrew the case in early February. According to the Judicial Medical Officer (JMO), he had suffered severe torture. Another Batticaloa resident K Selvachandran, arrested on 5 May 1998, had also suffered extreme torture in security force custody, according to the evidence of the JMO.