When Ahnaf Jazeem wrote poetry condemning violence and promoting peace in Sri Lanka in 2017, he never imagined his verses would lead to 19 months in detention without trial.
The 26-year-old Muslim poet and teacher was arrested in May 2020 under Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) after authorities claimed his Tamil-language collection, “Navarasam,” promoted Islamic extremism.
A renowned Tamil language professor contested the extremism claims, finding no incendiary content in the work. By the time Jazeem was acquitted in December 2023 for lack of evidence, he had already lost three and a half years to the legal ordeal.
Now, the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL) warns that a proposed law meant to replace the notorious PTA threatens to perpetuate the same cycle of abuse. NCEASL expressed deep concern that the Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PSTA), published by the Ministry of Justice in late 2025, falls short of promised reforms and could continue disproportionately harming ethno-religious minorities, according to a Feb. 11 NCEASL press statement.
45-Year Legacy of Abuse
The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) has cast a long shadow over Sri Lanka since 1979.
Originally enacted as a temporary measure during the civil war between the government and Tamil separatists, the law became permanent in 1982. For more than four decades, it granted security forces sweeping powers to arrest and detain individuals for up to 18 months without charge. The PTA enabled prolonged arbitrary detention, extraction of false confessions through torture, and systematic targeting of minority communities, according to a 2022 report by Human Rights Watch titled, “In a Legal Black Hole.”
The report documented how the law has been used overwhelmingly against Tamils and Muslims, creating what one Tamil-based human rights activist described as a climate where “they can arrest you for anything.”
The cases illustrating this pattern are numerous and disturbing. Hejaaz Hizbullah, a prominent human rights lawyer, was arrested in April 2020 and held for 22 months before being granted bail. Initially accused of connections to the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 268 people, the charges were later changed to speech-related offenses. During his detention, authorities denied Hizbullah the right to meet privately with his counsel, and only after the court intervened in December 2020 was he given confidential access to his counsel.
Children who were questioned by the same Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officers later filed fundamental rights petitions to the Supreme Court claiming they were coerced to falsely implicate Hizbullah. An administrator supporting an Arabic college where Hizbullah allegedly gave a speech reported being threatened with long-term detention if he did not implicate the lawyer in hate speech and terrorism charges. The case reveals how the PTA’s broad provisions created opportunities for coercion and witness intimidation.
Impact on Religious Minorities
While Muslims and Tamils bore the brunt of PTA enforcement, Christians also experienced harassment.
The National Christian Evangelical Alliance documented 94 incidents of attacks on churches, intimidation of pastors and obstruction of worship services in 2019 alone, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2019 International Religious Freedom Report. In many cases, local officials sided with Buddhist majority groups rather than protecting minority worship rights.
The 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which targeted Christian churches and hotels, intensified scrutiny of religious minorities. In the aftermath, 2,299 people were arrested, with police reporting 311 still in custody as of August 2021. Almost all detainees identified as Muslim and had been arrested under the PTA in 2019, according to civil society groups cited in the State Department report.
The U.S. State Department’s 2022 report noted that from April to September of that year, Christians became the most targeted ethnoreligious minority, followed by Muslims, with anti-Christian social media posts accusing them of co-opting nationwide protests.
The NCEASL documented 124 incidents of attacks against persons and groups based on their religious identity between November 2023 and October 2024, according to data published on MinorMatters.org. Christians were the most frequently targeted group with 68 victims (54.8 percent), followed by Muslims and Hindus with 28 victims each (22.6 percent each).
Many of these incidents potentially violated Sri Lankan law, including the Constitution and penal legislation.
The PTA’s impact extended beyond arrests to broader community stigmatization. People became reluctant to employ or associate with those previously arrested under the law, even when no charges were filed. Civil society groups reported that many Muslim PTA detainees released on bail were added to proscribed persons lists, resulting in frozen bank accounts and inability to participate in civic life.
Christians have also faced prosecution under related security legislation. In December 2023, authorities arrested Pastor Jerome Fernando, senior overseer of The Glorious Church in Colombo, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act. Fernando was detained after making remarks in a May sermon that critics claimed offended Buddhist religious sentiments.
Despite a court order directing officials to abstain from arresting him, police took him into custody on Dec. 1, 2023, when he reported to the Criminal Investigation Department to provide a statement, according to Morning Star News.
Fernando had fled Sri Lanka fearing arrest but returned in late November after apologizing, with assurances he would not be detained. He was charged under Section 3(1) of the ICCPR Act, which prohibits advocating religious hatred that incites discrimination, hostility or violence. NCEASL expressed grave concern over his arrest, noting that authorities had invoked the ICCPR Act without thoroughly assessing whether his expressions truly incited violence or discrimination.
The alliance stated that the law has often been used to protect religions against perceived insult rather than shielding vulnerable groups from genuine incitement to violence. Fernando was granted bail on Jan. 3, 2024, but banned from leaving the country. A Christian leader told Morning Star News, “We stand in solidarity, because today it is he, tomorrow it could be us as well.”
Broken Promises of Reform
Successive governments promised to repeal the PTA but failed to deliver.
In 2017, Sri Lanka committed to replacing the law with human rights-respecting legislation as a condition for the European Union to reinstate GSP+ (Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus) trade preferences. Draft laws followed in 2018, 2023 and twice more in 2023, but none passed parliament due to public resistance.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake campaigned in 2024 on a platform that included “abolition of all oppressive acts including the Prevention of Terrorism Act and ensuring civil rights of people in all parts of the country,” according to his election manifesto. The proposed PSTA was supposed to fulfill that promise.
Godfrey Yogarajah, general secretary and chief executive officer of NCEASL, was cautious.
“Sri Lanka has heard promises to repeal or reform the PTA for decades,” he told Christian Daily International. “Successive governments have pledged change, but nothing meaningful has transpired.”
Yet even under the current government, PTA arrests continued. Human Rights Watch reported that in separate 2025 cases, authorities detained two young Muslim men for months who had criticized Israel, releasing them without charge. The government informed the United Nations that 49 arrests were made under the PTA in the first five months of 2025, compared with 38 in all of 2024.
In August 2025, police investigated a journalist for terrorism after reporting on excavation of a mass grave containing remains allegedly executed by security forces during the 1983-2009 war.
What New Law Changes and Keeps
The PSTA makes some modifications to PTA provisions.
The draft includes explicit language exempting protest, advocacy, dissent and industrial action from prosecution, according to analysis by Groundviews, a Sri Lankan civil society website. The law removes explicit powers to prohibit congregations, meetings, rallies or processions that appeared in previous draft legislation.
Critics argue these changes are cosmetic. A suspect can still be remanded without charge by a magistrate for up to one year. Police can obtain a detention order from the secretary of defense under which individuals can be held for up to a year without magistrates having power to release them, even if detention appears unjustified.
The definition of terrorism remains broad and vague. The law criminalizes acts intended to “intimidate the public or any section of the public” or “compel the Government of Sri Lanka or any other government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.” Yogarajah of the NCEASL said this language strikes at the heart of legitimate minority advocacy.
“In any democracy, advocacy, protest, public criticism, litigation and calls for reform are legitimate and protected forms of civic engagement,” he said. “As those working on minority rights and freedom of religion, our work includes documenting violations, engaging policymakers, supporting victims, and urging legal reform. These are peaceful, rights-based activities.”
Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, stated, “Ridding Sri Lanka of its abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act is long overdue, but this proposed law includes numerous provisions that would allow the authorities to commit the same abuses.”
HRW noted in 2021 that U.N. independent experts set out five necessary prerequisites for counterterrorism law compliance with international rights standards, including appropriate terrorism definitions, legal certainty, provisions preventing arbitrary detention, adherence to absolute prohibition on torture and due process guarantees.
The PSTA, Human Rights Watch concluded, does not fully meet any of these standards.
Concerns About Chilling Effects
NCEASL warned that religious work, civil society organizing, humanitarian aid and advocacy efforts by minority groups could face “surveillance, restriction, or criminalization under the guise of national security.”
Yogarajah put the danger plainly.
“When definitions are vague, the line between legitimate advocacy and alleged ‘terrorism’ becomes dangerously blurred,” he said. “Even if not frequently enforced, such provisions create a chilling effect. Minority communities and civil society actors may self-censor out of fear.”
The PSTA’s extraterritorial reach adds another dimension of concern. Section 2(c) applies the law to all Sri Lankan citizens living outside the country, including dual citizens. Civil society analysts warn this provision could be weaponized against diaspora communities documenting human rights violations or commenting on Sri Lankan politics through social media.
The law also criminalizes anyone who publishes or distributes material “with the intention of directly or indirectly encouraging or inducing the public to commit, attempt, abet, conspire to commit or prepare to commit, the offense of terrorism.” Given the vague definition of terrorism itself, legal scholars argue it would be difficult or impossible to know what constitutes a “terrorist publication.”
International Pressure and Political Will
The European Union has consistently pushed for PTA reform.
In January 2021, the EU required amendments including reduction of detention periods from 18 to 12 months. When Sri Lanka failed to comply, the European Parliament passed a resolution in June 2021 threatening withdrawal of GSP+ trading privileges. The U.N. Human Rights Office made similar demands in 2022, requesting definitions complying with international norms, precision protecting fundamental freedoms and processes preventing arbitrary deprivation of liberty.
Despite this pressure, meaningful reform has proven elusive. Yogarajah was direct about what genuine reform requires.
“President Dissanayake’s rhetoric on human rights and reforming repressive laws has been positive, and that gives some hope,” he said. “But what would convince us that this time is different? A repeal of the PTA and withdrawal of any replacement that reproduces its core flaws.”
Path Forward
NCEASL called for outright repeal of both the PTA and withdrawal of the proposed PSTA. The organization argued that genuine security cannot be achieved at the expense of fundamental rights, and that laws protecting the state must also protect people without discrimination.
Former Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, writing in The Island newspaper in January, noted that at the U.N. Human Rights Council’s 50th session in June 2022, he gave a firm assurance that pending legislative overhaul, there would be a de facto moratorium on PTA use.
The Inspector General of Police issued instructions accordingly. After successive government changes, however, this undertaking was not adhered to.
As Sri Lanka approaches potential enactment of the PSTA, minority communities face familiar anxieties. The Centre for Policy Alternatives noted in April 2025 that the PTA “has been used to terrorize generations of Sri Lankans, largely targeting those from ethnic and religious minorities, activists, dissidents, and journalists, and normalized torture, with it entrenching a culture of impunity.”
For Ahnaf Jazeem, acquitted in December 2023 after three and a half years of legal ordeal, the proposed law offers little reassurance. While on bail following his initial release in 2021, he was placed under military intelligence surveillance and required to report to authorities twice monthly, 62 miles from his hometown.
Yogarajah framed the stakes simply: “Any security legislation should protect both national security and democratic freedoms. These goals are not in conflict. True reform would demonstrate that the government is committed not only to strong rhetoric, but to structural change.”
