New Democratic Peoples Front

The alleged abduction and the subsequent release of Premakumar Gunaratnam and Dimuthu Attygalle, two key leaders of the breakaway JVP Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) in Sri Lanka, reveal the importance of ‘international pressure’ in safeguarding human rights of people in any country, including the right to life, at least as a ‘necessary evil’ under trying conditions of suppression of dissent and threats of enforced ‘disappearances,’ ‘torture’ and ‘extra-judicial killings.’

It is believed that during the last six months or so, over 50 persons and mainly political activists and journalists have disappeared from the streets of Colomboand Jaffna in Sri Lanka, and two of them were Lalith Kumar Weeraraj and Kugan Muruganathan who belonged to the same political movement as Gunaratnam and Attygalle. The previous two disappeared in Jaffna on the Human Rights Day on 10 December 2011 and their whereabouts are still unknown.

Two activists of the Movement for People’s Struggle, Lalith and Kugan are being held at the 6th floor of the Police Welfare building, it is reliably learnt.

The new state of the art building is located opposite the Manning Market in Pettah and was built when retired DIG Combalavithana was heading the Police Welfare Division. Although the building was constructed utilizing millions of rupees to be used for police welfare work, it is now being used as a torture chamber for persons who are abducted on the Defence Secretary’s directives.