The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by the Asian Human Rights Commission of the killing of ten supporters of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), in Sri Lanka’s Katugastota district, following 2001 parliamentary elections.

According to the information received, at around 5:30pm on December 5th, 2001, ten SLMC supporters escorted election officials who were transporting a ballot box from the Madawala polls in the Katugastota district to the counting centre in Kandy. En route, a “thug squad” allegedly under control of Lohan Ratwatte, the son of the former Peoples’ Alliance’s (PA) Deputy Defence Minister Anurudda Ratwatte, ran the vehicle off the road, where it crashed into a lamppost. The perpetrators subsequently approached the vehicle, opened the doors, and shot the ten SLMC supporters at point blank range, before fleeing the scene. The names and ages of the ten supporters are:

1. T. M. Fisar (24)
2. F.M. Rizwan (27)
3. M.R.M. Nazir (25)
4. A.M.M. Mohideen (31)
5. A.M.Milsar (23)
6. Z.M. Nazar (19)
7. M.I.M. Ashwar (26)
8. M. Riswan (23)
9. I.M.I. Fasar Yahamod (25)
10.M. Mohamad (25)

According to the information received, high standing representatives within the SLMC, along with other civil society organizations, have also publicly alleged that Lohan Ratwatte is responsible for these killings. During the October 2000 General Election, Mr. Ratwatte was also accused of similar mass scale voter intimidation and ballot rigging.

On 01.12.2020, Speculation is rife of further violence expected inside the Mahara Prison complex overnight , as President Gotabaya Rajapakse made quiet moves to appoint Kandy District MP Lohan Ratwatte as prisons minister to quell the prisoners’ protests.

Ratwatte was the primary accused in the December 2001 Udathalawinna Massacre, before a High Court acquitted him and convicted five military personnel who were Ratwatte’s bodyguards of the gruesome murder of Muslims. Ratwatte was also implicated in inciting the 2018 Thigana anti-Muslim riots although the investigation never went further due to the intervention of President Maithripala Sirisena.

On September 12th 2021, Lohan Ratwatte accompanied by some Ministerial Security Division (MSD) officers assigned to the state minister’s security detail had flown by helicopter to Anuradhapura. The copter landed within the prison precincts at about 6 PM. The State minister was visibly in an inebriated state having consumed strong drink. Compounding the minister’s state further was the intoxication of power he enjoyed as a powerful Govt member.

Announcing to prison officials that he had come on sudden visit to meet Tamil prisoners being held under offences relating to the prevention of terrorism act (PTA), the state minister had ordered that the detained persons be brought before him. Ten Tamil political prisoners were moved from their cells and brought before Ratwatte. The state minister began addressing them in Sinhala.

At that stage one of the prisoners protested saying that they did not know Sinhala. Ratwatte then got angry and began berating the Tamil prisoners for not knowing Sinhala despite living in a Sinhala country. He had abused them in filth using the derogatory term “Para Demala” and told them to go to India if they could not understand Sinhala.

Some of the key officials at the Anuradhapura prison acted diplomatically and pacified the minister . Prison officials fluent in Sinhala and Tamil were summoned to function as interpreters. Ratwatte then proceeded to address the prisoners in Sinhala and at times in English. His words were interpreted into Tamil.

The Ratwatte rampage at Anuradhapura has brought into question safety and security of Tamil prisoners being held under the PTA in Sri Lankan prisons. In a classic instance of the proverbial saying about the “fence devouring the crops” coming true the minister in charge of Prison management has violated all prison related proceduresand also broken the law.

Jailers whose paramount duty was to protect prisoners in their charge have allowed them to be endangered. What would have happened if Ratwatte had fired his gun and killed a prisoner or prisoners? After all the precedents of the Udatalawinna massacre of Muslim youths or the killing of Papua New Guinea rugby star Joel Pera cannot be forgotten.

(Joel Pera, a rugby star from Papua New Guinea was killed in 1997 outside Carlton Club in Col 3. The club shareholder S. L Parakrama confirmed that Lohan Ratwatte was present at the time of the shooting.)