Sri Lanka Police and Sri Lanka Army soldiers beat a mentally ill Tamil youth and forced him to drown near Bambalapitya,
The attack on the mentally ill youth, who had been known to throw stones at passing vehicles, was caught on camera by a Sri Lankan news channel and shown on national TV.
Balavarnam Sivakumar, 26, had been attacked an beaten by a gang of police constables for throwing stones at passing vehicles.
He tried to escape the attack, and eventually took refuge in the sea near Bambalapitya.
At this point two police men, Dimuthu Somnas and a colleague, followed him into the sea to attack him.
As Sivakumar pleaded for mercy, the two heavily built men, who were armed with batons, charged towards the youth forcing him to back into the sea and drown.
The other policemen, who had been involved in the initial attack, stood by watching as the youth was murdered.
Some reports said passersby were too fearful of their lives to intervene. But other reports said though a few concerned citizens had called Bambalapitya police station, no action had been taken.
So someone called the TNL News channel and alerted them of the incident. The TV station responded by filming the incident from the window of a nearby building.
“Considering the sad fate of many media institutions and personnel during the past few years, TNL TV and its personnel deserve our thanks and praise for their courageous exposure of this terrible episode,” reported the Daily Mirror newspaper, commenting on the incident.
Somnas was allegedly remanded following the attack and a few other constables are believed to have been taken into custody.
“These arrests will predictably divert attention away from those criminals who started the whole thing by beating and chasing Sivakumar into the sea initially, and the other policemen who helped Somnas and his accomplices finish off the job by looking on, doing nothing,” commented the Daily Mirror.
The killing of Sivakumar lead to protests outside the Fort Railway Station less than a week later, on November 4.
Political parties and human rights organisations participated in the protest.
Political parties at the protest included Democratic People’s Front (DPF) led by parliamentarian Mano Ganeshan and United Socialist Party (USP) led by Sritunga Jayasuriya. Mothers and Daughters of Lanka and Platform for Freedom were among the human rights organisations at the protest.
The protesters charged that the Sri Lankan police had undermined standard norms in democratic countries as well as human rights abuses.
All speakers addressing the event said that the attack was an image of the state terrorism in practice and it is time that everyone despite political differences, race or religion, join their hands to stop the government from putting democracy, human rights and media freedom of the country in danger, reported TamilNet.
