Women protest against new army sentry points in Trinco

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 December 2004, 04:42 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamil women in Trincomalee Thursday protested in front of the Trincomalee office of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) demanding the removal of new sentry points established by the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) following the violent incidents on 2 December in the east port town, sources said.

Earlier several Tamil women groups in the town decided to hold a sit-in-protest Thursday morning in front of newly established army sentry point at Srimavopura located surrounding several Tamil fishing hamlets in the Uppuveli division demanding its withdrawal.

They later deferred their decision on the advice by the LTTE Trincomalee district political secretariat, and decided to hold the tprotest in front of the SLMM, Trincomalee office. The protesters handed over a memorandum to the SLMM office, sources said.

Tamil women groups demanded that establishing new army camps and sentry points in Trincomalee town and its suburbs should be stopped immediately and the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) should commence talks with the Liberation Tigers of Sri Lanka without delay on the Interim Self Governing Authority proposal and to allay fears of Tamil people that the GOSL is preparing for another war.

New army sentry points established after December 2nd should be withdrawn immediately, the memorandum said.

The establishment of new army sentry points in violation of the ceasefire agreement has disturbed the normalcy of surrounding Tamil areas and women fear that they would be subjected to harassment by soldiers when they move about, a spokesperson for the protesting group said.

A representative of the Tamil women groups said if the army failed to withdraw its new sentry points in the Trincomalee town, they would launch a protest campaign very shortly.




Following violent incidents in Trincomalee town and its suburbs the Sri Lanka Army deployed its soldiers by setting up temporary sentry points to maintain law and order but later made them permanent, sources said.

Mr.Elilan, Trincomalee district political head of the LTTE has already made a complaint to the SLMM that the SLA had acted in violation of the ceasefire agreement by permanently establishing several sentry points surrounding Tamil areas raising fear among Tamil people about their safety, sources said.