Sri Lankan prison minister resigns after alleged inmate threats

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Lohan Ratwatte was accused of entering a prison north of Colombo and attempting to force confessions from Tamil inmates at gunpoint.

The government minister in charge of Sri Lanka’s prisons has submitted his resignation following public outcry after he allegedly threatened to kill two ethnic minority prisoners.

Lohan Ratwatte tendered his resignation to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Wednesday and acknowledged his responsibility for both incidents, the president’s office said in a statement. Rajapaksa accepted his resignation, it added.

Ratwatte, state minister of prison management and prisoners’ rehabilitation, was accused of entering a prison in Anuradhapura, north of the capital, Colombo, on Sunday and threatening to kill two Tamil prisoners.

Tamil minority lawmaker Gajen Ponnambalam said Ratwatte summoned Tamil prisoners after going to the prison in Anuradhapura. He “got two of them to kneel in front of him and pointed his personal firearm at them and threatened to kill them on the spot,” Ponnambalam tweeted.

The United Nations (UN) today condemned the ill-treatment of prisoners in Sri Lanka, in light of a recent incident involving a State Minister and two prisoners at the Anuradhapura prison.

It was reported that a State Minister had visited the Anuradhapura Prison and had got two of the prisoners to kneel down in front of him.

Issuing a statement, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka Hanaa Singer-Hamdy said it is the duty of the State, as per the Mandela Rules, to protect the rights of prisoners.

“In our work on prison reform and drug rehabilitation @UNSriLanka works to strengthen capacities to uphold the rights of all those in custody & condemns any ill-treatment of #prisoners,” she tweeted.

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