COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — About 150 loss of life row inmates had been on a starvation strike Friday to demand their sentences be commuted after Sri Lanka’s president pardoned a former lawmaker who had been condemned for an election-related killing.
A number of inmates protested on the roof of a jail within the capital, Colombo, holding up banners demanding equal remedy and bail consideration. “Grant pardon to us such as you did to terrorists and infamous politicians,” one banner mentioned in native script.
The previous lawmaker’s shock launch Thursday after he was pardoned by President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has drawn widespread criticism, together with from the U.N. human rights workplace and the U.S. ambassador in Sri Lanka.
Duminda Silva is broadly seen as a favourite of Sri Lanka’s ruling Rajapaksa household and had been serving a loss of life sentence over the killing of a rival lawmaker from his personal get together in an election-related assault about 10 years in the past.
The strike concerned about 150 inmates sentenced to loss of life who had been demanding their sentences be commuted to life phrases, jail spokesman Chandana Ekanayake mentioned.
He mentioned jail officers had been discussing with the Justice Ministry and different authorities officers to resolve the problem however declined to present additional particulars.
Sri Lankan prisons are extremely congested with greater than 26,000 inmates crowded in services with the capability of 10,000. Unrest associated to COVID-19 erupted in a single jail final yr, and no less than eleven inmates had been killed and greater than 100 wounded when guards opened hearth to manage the unrest.
Silva’s shock launch appeared to have set off the protest.
The United Nation’s Human Rights Workplace mentioned Silva’s case “is one other instance of selective, arbitrary granting of pardons that weakens rule of legislation and undermines accountability.”
U.S. Ambassador Alaina B. Teplitz in a tweet on Thursday mentioned the pardon of Silva “undermines rule of legislation.”
Sri Lanka has not hanged a prisoner since 1976 despite the fact that courts routinely move loss of life sentences. Rajapaksa’s predecessor, Maithripala Sirisena, had vowed to finish the moratorium on capital punishment and to make use of it towards these convicted of drug crimes.
Jail officers employed two executioners to hold out the hangings, however none passed off throughout Sirisena’s tenure.