Protests in Jaffna and Mannar against Sri Lanka's draconian Anti Terrorism Act

by Ephraim
Apr 21, 2023

North-East Women’s Group organised multiple protests in Jaffna and Mannar last month to protest against the proposed Anti Terrorism Act. 

The Government of Sri Lanka has proposed the Anti Terrorism Act as a reform for the PTA. The proposed Anti Terrorism Act has been critiqued by lawyers and human rights activists throughout the island as being worse than the PTA. 


The peaceful protests organised by the North-East Women’s Group were held in Vavuniya in front of the Pattini Magilankulam Muniyappar Kovil and in front of the Jaffna District Secretariat and in front of old District Secretariat on the A9 road, in Mannar and in Mullaitivu in front of the Provincial Secretariat if Oddusuddan on 20th April. The protests demanded a halt to the debate of the Anti Terrorism Act and the repeal of the PTA.

In response to increasing protests throughout Sri Lanka in response to the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), the proposed replacement legislation to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), Amnesty International USA Asia Advocacy Director Carolyn Nash said:

“The ATA poses an urgent threat to human rights in Sri Lanka. If enacted, the law could be used to levy charges of terrorism against people simply for exercising their human right to protest peacefully. The outcry from the Sri Lankan people is evidence that this bill is just as or even more dangerous than the draconian law it aims to replace. If the ATA is enacted, the Sri Lankan authorities will still be empowered to suppress dissent, as they currently do using the PTA. We call on the government to substantially revise or drop entirely this new law, to repeal the PTA, and to issue an immediate moratorium on use of the PTA in the interim. These laws are an affront to human rights.”

Following the arrest of Wasantha Mudalige, the convener for Inter University Student Federation, and Hejaaz Hizbullah, a civil rights lawyers and human rights activist, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the draconian nature and the human rights violations under were heavily scrutinised by the public and the media in the South.

The state has intensified its attempts to stifle Tamil memorialisation by using the PTA to target and arrest individuals who hold commemoration events and seeking court bans to suppress any commemoration activities. 

The PTA has been linked to cases of enforced disappearance, sexual violence and torture but despite domestic and international calls for the PTA to be repealed

In front of the old District Secretariat office in front of A9:

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