Hunger-striking Tamil political prisoners rushed to hospital

by Abi
Oct 8, 2017

Three Tamil political prisoners hunger striking at the Anuradhapura prison have been rushed to hospital today following severe deteriorations in their health.

The detainees have been fasting for 13 days in protest at the Sri Lankan attorney-general department’s attempts to move their cases from Vavuniya to Anuradhapuram.

The three detainees decided to abstain from drinking water from this morning, leading to a rapid decline in their health.

They were admitted to the Anuradhapura general hospital by the prison administration on Sunday evening.

The current protest is the 11th time the detainees have engaged in hunger strikes during their detention.

A team of Northern Provincial Council members that visited the detainees and urged them to drop the fast due to health concerns.

The detainees refused to cease the strike.

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button