The families of the 12 political prisoners who are undertaking a hunger strike in Colombo's Magazine prison held a protest yesterday calling for their release.
Relatives held placards outside the Northern Province Governor's Secretariat in Jaffna that read 'free our fasting relatives' and 'don't ruin the future of our children in jail'.
The health conditions of the political prisoners has begun to deteriorate as they have now reached their seventh day of fasting.
The political prisoners, C. Inparaj, U. Umasudhan, M. Partheepan, C. Sudhakaran, S. Udayasivam, P. Nakuleswaran, L. Ajanthan, R. Vivekanandhan, Y. Robinson, S. Sasidhan, R. Sujanthan and V. Satheeskumar, were arrested under Sri Lanka's Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) between 2019 and 2020. The PTA has been used for decades to arbitrarily detain Tamils and Muslims and to force false confessions.
Yesterday, a series of Western states expressed their concerns over the continued use of the PTA, including the recent detentions of Sinhala student leaders, despite the country claiming a moratorium had been in effect on the act since March.
Successive Sri Lankan governments have pledged to repeal the legislation, however, the state continues to use the PTA to target activists, journalists and other dissenting voices.