Police fired tear gas at the Pallansena Open-Air Correctional Centre in Dalupotha, Negombo, on Friday after a group of inmates climbed onto the roof of a prison ward and began pelting stones at prison officers.
Police, the Special Task Force, the Police Riot Control Unit and Sri Lanka Air Force personnel were deployed to contain the situation, according to the Daily Mirror and Ada Derana, whose correspondent reported from the scene.
What the inmates are demanding
Hiru News reported that the protest began over a lack of space and sanitary facilities at the camp, and over demands that the inmates’ court cases be concluded quickly.
Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala told Parliament that around 30 inmates climbed onto the ward roof after being allowed out of their cells for breakfast, and that prison officials and police were continuing efforts to resolve the situation peacefully.
Police first confirmed a “tense situation” at the facility at around 11.00 a.m., saying at that stage that no further details were available. Tear gas was used as the protest escalated through the early afternoon.
Update: 28 inmates injured, control restored
Twenty-eight inmates injured during the disturbance were later transferred to the Welikada Prison Hospital for treatment, Ada Derana and the Daily Mirror reported on Friday evening. Hiru News described the injuries as minor. This supersedes earlier reporting, carried in this article, that no injuries had been recorded at Pallansena.
Security forces subsequently restored control of the facility, with its administration handed back to the Department of Prisons, according to Ada Derana. Authorities said the situations at both Pallansena and Kuruwita had been brought under control.
Hiru News reported that across the three facilities affected within roughly 12 hours — New Magazine Prison, Kuruwita and Pallansena — three inmates had died and more than 50 people had been injured.
A facility that took in Negombo transferees
Hiru News and Ada Derana both noted that a group of inmates was transferred to Pallansena after the deadly clash at Negombo Prison in July, in which 22 inmates and 10 prison officers died.
Pallansena is the fourth facility to report unrest since Thursday night, after Negombo, New Magazine Prison in Colombo and Kuruwita Prison in Ratnapura. Wijepala told Parliament that intelligence reports have raised suspicions the incidents may be organised and coordinated.
The emergency meeting Wijepala said the President would convene was held on Friday afternoon, and agreed to establish a joint mechanism for inmate safety across all 33 prisons.
Sources: Daily Mirror, Daily Mirror, Ada Derana, Ada Derana, Hiru News, Ada Derana, Daily Mirror, Hiru News.
