On 8 July 2021, police arrested 31 people, including the general secretary of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU), for taking part in a protest against the proposed National Defence University (NDU) bill. The protest was held near Sri Lanka’s parliament.
The protest was jointly organised by the Inter-University Students Federation (IUSF), the Ceylon Teachers’ Union and the Frontline Socialist Party.
The bill, first presented in 2018 under the previous government, has been widely denounced as a move that intends to curb freedom of thought and expression in universities and militarise higher education on the island. It is feared that if brought into force, it would make universities in Sri Lanka fall short of international academic standards.
The arrests were made because the protests violated restrictions on gatherings brought in as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the protestors were taken before the magistrate, the police requested that they be sent into quarantine, but the magistrate said the judiciary wasn’t empowered to do that, and ordered that those detained be released on bail.
Despite this, the police took Joseph Stalin and ten other protestors away to an army quarantine centre, where they were held for several days, until a campaign for their release, supported by global trade unions, led to them being freed.
The Jaffna University Employees’ Union condemned the detention of Stalin in a statement and emphasised that COVID-19-related health restrictions should not be used to suppress the rights of human rights activists.
“We can never accept the government’s attempts to oppress genuine human rights activism and democratic protests that respect health measures, in the guise of pandemic health and safety restrictions,” the statement said.
