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Sri Lanka’s minister of justice has announced the introduction of a new ‘national security act’ with more “relaxed” provisions to replace the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) according to the cabinet spokesman Minister Bandula Gunawardena. At a cabinet press briefing, he stated that a decision to draft the proposed new bill has been announced. There are numerous calls from civil society and other sectors to repeal the PTA, a draconian law that has been long used to silence dissent, arrest HRDs and activists. However, the attempts to reintroduce new laws replacing PTA has been equally problematic. For example, the Counter Terrorism Act (CTA) which government attempted to introduce in 2018 also contained a number of sections that could have been easily misused by the authorities to repress dissent. Also looking at how the government responds to the recent anti-government protesters, INFORM assumes the proposed act could be more repressive and problematic.