Colombo: A group of 11 international rights organizations led by Amnesty International on Wednesday demanding the liberation of lawyers and leading human rights activists and Hijazaz activist Hizbullah was arrested by Sri Lanka security forces under the prevention of Draconian Act (PTA).
Hezbollah was arrested on April 14 years due to alleged involvement in the 2019 Easter suicide bomb which killed 270 people, including 11 Indians.
“In the absence of credible evidence presented before the court, Hejaz Hezbollah must be immediately released and unconditionally,” said a joint press statement issued by Amnesty International and 10 other organizations.
Hezbollah was arrested under the Law of PTA Anti-Terror.
He was accused of helping and conspiring with Inhaf Ahamed, one of the suicide bombers in an Easter attack, said the statement, noting that the allegations had been withdrawn.
Because Hezbollah was taken under detention, “the accusation of him has changed several times and his detention has been extended for more than 15 months,” the groups said.
The latest allegations where the indictment was submitted to Hezbollah in the High Court on February 18 was a violation regarding the words “Causing communal disharmony”, one of a number of too broad violations provided under PTA, they said.
The statement claims that PTA allows prolonged detention, based on mere suspicion, of anyone who causes or intends to cause commissions of acts of violence or religion, race, race or communal or a feeling of hostility between communities or different races.
or religious groups.
“The same provisions have been used in the past to prevent and effectively punish expression of expression exercises, especially by government critics, including journalists,” he said.
The rights groups underline that Hezbollah is the “vocal critics” of the government and advocates of minority rights in “climate increasingly hostile religion and ethnic minority Sri Lanka”.
“Because Sri Lankan authorities so far cannot show evidence of errors, it seems that he is targeted to be solely because of training his rights for freedom of expression,” they said, calling for Hezbollah’s direct release and for the allegations of him to do it dropped.
“We are very worried about the use of the sustainable PTA Sri Lankan to allow arbitrary detention, although there is a commitment conducted to revoke the action,” said the statement.
Hezbollah is one of the many people who is detained because of an uncontrolled time without the process under the law of counter-terrorism Draconian Lanka.
In a study published in December 2020, the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission found that many PTA prisoners were delivered up to 15 to 20 years, the statement noted.
Nine suicide bombers, belonging to the local Islamic extremist Jamaat Thawheed National group related to ISIS, conducted a series of explosions that ripped three Catholic Churches and as much as possible luxury hotels in Lanka, killed more than 500 people on April 21, 2019.
In addition to Amnesty International, signing other from a joint statement including Human Rights Watch; Article 19; Asian forum for human rights and development; Civicus: World Alliance for Citizen Participation; and frontline defenders.
Another group is the International Human Bar Association initiative; International Juris Commission; International movement on all forms of discrimination and racism (imadr); International working group in Sri Lanka; and Sri Lanka campaign for truth and justice.
Global rights groups demanding lawyers’ liberation be held under Lanka anti-terrorism law
