Police assault protest youths

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 May 2002, 11:50 GMT]
Nine youths were assaulted by Sri Lanka police for participating in a general strike observed in Batticaloa last Friday to protest at the police's arrest and assault of a Liberation Tiger cadre earlier in the week, press reports said.

Mr. Sinnaiyah, the Liberation Tigers' representative with the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) in the region has filed a complaint with the SLMM's Batticaloa representative Mr Lars Lars Tio Beck over the incident, the Colombo-based Tamil daily Virakesari said.

Subsequent to the complaint, Mr Lars Tio Beck, a Swedish national with previous experience working in Batticaloa, interviewed the nine youths.

The paper named the assault victims as Somasundaram Sooty (18), Vadivel Ragu (17), Ilaiyarajah Kandeepan (17), Nesathurai Ranjan (30), Rajalingam Thayaparan (18), Nadarajah Pathmarajah (18), Iruthayan Yogasanthuru (16), Arulananthan Logan (19) and Sivasubramaniam Sivarajah (17), all from the village of Kallaru.