• Alles defends prog. to identify criminals regardless of residence and to prevent crimes 

The main Parliamentary Opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) has urged the Public Security Ministry to stop the alleged mistreatment of Tamil city dwellers based on their ethnicity when collecting information for various security-related purposes.

Speaking in Parliament yesterday (11), SJB Opposition Parliamentarian and Tamil Progressive Alliance Leader Mano Ganesan claimed that the Police Department is treating Tamils living in Colombo’s suburbs in a separate manner when they collect information from them, highlighting their ethnicity, religion, and language. He also said that neither of the information forms used in this endeavour has been printed in Tamil but only in Sinhala, which is also another injustice that is taking place in this programme. 

Ganesan also said that there is no purpose in collecting information such as ethnicity and religion when there is no ethnic conflict or ethnicity-based terrorism in the country. He also said that Acting Inspector General of Police Deshabandu Tennakoon and Public Security Minister Tiran Alles should take steps to stop this programme immediately without harassing minority communities.

In response to the allegations made by MP Ganesan, Minister Alles said that the particular Opposition MP is attempting to mislead the House by making baseless allegations, while also saying that the respective information forms are given to all city dwellers, irrespective of their ethnicity and religion. He noted that this programme would help in identifying organised criminals and other individuals rapidly, regardless of where they live. 

Speaking further, the Minister said that this programme is carried out with the purpose of having all the details of city dwellers recorded as it would be very helpful in the prevention of crimes. He said that the Ministry has no intention of harassing people or segregating them but that all people living in these areas would be asked to provide relevant information. However, he added that the Ministry would look into the allegations made by Ganesan regarding the language of the information form and would take immediate steps to print it in all three languages if it has only been printed in the Sinhala language thus far.