Sumanthiran slams govt. over travel restrictions

By Dinasena Ratugamage

TNA MP M.A. Sumanthiran says the police should be immediately stopped from arresting and harassing people who breach travel restrictions.

Addressing the media on Monday, the MP said that the government should impose and implement travel restrictions for the purpose of preventing the spread of the Covid-19 virus but not to suppress people.

Sumanthiran said that the police made arrests making use of the travel restrictions that had been introduced only recently. The were not laws, but regulations. It was illegal and immoral to convert them into laws by the police. Those restrictions were implemented as per the will of the politicians and the policemen, he said.

Sumanthiran said that everybody knew that it was the duty and responsibility of the government to control the spread of the virus and when imposing travel restrictions the authorities should take into consideration the plight of the people. The government had still not come up with a programme to meet the needs of the people in the North and the East. “There are people in remote villages without food and medicine. It is so unjust that army and police swoop in whenever helpless people come out to find food or medicine and thereafter harass and detain them,” the MP said.