Mullipottanai Muslims protest against attack

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 October 2003, 14:41 GMT]
A group of Muslim villagers of Mullipottanai in the Trincomalee district Wednesday held a hartal (general shutdown) and a picketing campaign on the Trincomalee-Kandy highway, blocking all traffic to and from Colombo and Trincomalee, protesting an attack by unknown persons that injured at least three Muslim civilians Tuesday night at 4th milepost on the Mullipottanai-Kinniya road, police said.

Mullipottanai is one of the new settlements established under the Kantalai colonization scheme, located about 30 km off west of Trincomalee town, police said.

Meanwhile, the Trincomalee district political head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Mr.S.Tilak, Wednesday promptly informed the Police and the Sri Lanka Army that the LTTE was not involved in these incidents that had taken place in the SLA-controlled areas, sources said.

On receipt of information, the head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission in Trincomalee district, Mr.Abdel Burkan, with his deputy, Mr Kurt Spur, rushed to the scene and started negotiation with the organizers of the protest. Finally they succeeded in their attempt to defuse the tension, sources said. 

Later, the SLMM monitors visited the injured who have been warded at the Kantalai district government hospital, medical sources said

On Tuesday evening, an elderly Muslim person was shot and wounded by unknown persons while taking a bath in a rivulet, which falls in the SLA-controlled area at Kattaiparichchan in Muttur division, where a SLA detachment is located close by. The wounded seventy-year-old Muslim villager was admitted to the Trincomalee general hospital, police said.

In another incident, also on Tuesday evening, unknown persons burned down four fishing boats belonging to Muslim fishermen on the Muttur coast. A complaint has been lodged with the SLMM in Trincomalee, police said.

Fresh violence broke out in Muttur last weekend when four Tamil persons were attacked by Muslim mobs and thereafter a lorry belonging to a Muslim was burnt down in a Tamil village, Mallikaitheivu, police said