Detention of three leftists by Sri Lankan government signals new round of state repression

The military seized the three men on February 5. Nihal Serasinghe, a typesetter, was abducted in central Colombo; Lalith Seneviratne was dragged from his home by armed men that night, while Sisira Priyankara, a railway worker, was arrested later at night at the gate of the main railway complex at Dematagoda in Colombo. The three had been involved in producing Akuna, a bi-monthly journal of the Railway Workers Combine (RWC), a trade union formed a decade ago.

Hundreds of railway workers and journalists held a demonstration on February 6 in Colombo to protest the abductions and several trade unions threatened to take strike action. Military authorities first claimed that they had no knowledge of the three men. On the night of February 6, however, the defence ministry posted a statement on its website acknowledging that the three “LTTE suspects” were in military custody.

The statement announced that the suspects had confessed to receiving military training at LTTE bases in Kilinochchi. The military also claimed to have “found a cache of weapons hidden at several locations in Colombo”, including high explosives, automatic rifles, claymore mines and electronic detonators.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/sril-m12.shtml