Scots woman in Sri Lanka 'doesn't feel safe' after having passport seized by authorities amid protests

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A Scots woman who is documenting the protests in Sri Lanka has had her passport seized by the authorities. Kayleigh Fraser, from St Andrews, said six immigration officers turned up at her door on Tuesday, claiming she had violated her visa conditions.

The 34-year-old said they demanded to have her passport “otherwise they would put me in handcuffs”. Kayleigh said she was then told to wait for seven days for “an investigation” to be carried out, before she could retrieve her documentation.

The day before, she said she received “a panicked” phone call from an employee at the company which issued her visa, telling her to leave the country immediately because authorities were investigating her.The British citizen has been vocal on social media about ongoing protests in Colombo, which, since Ranil Wickremesinghe took charge on July 21, have been handled with “intimidation, surveillance and arbitrary arrests of demonstrators, civil society activists, lawyers and journalists”, according to Human Rights Watch.Speaking about her confrontation with immigration officials, Kayleigh said: “They accosted me in the street and were outside my house for about 40 minutes, but they couldn’t even tell me what I had done wrong.

They kept saying I had violated the terms of my visa, but they didn’t even know what visa I was on until they finally got hold of my passport.