Cut-out of Rajapaksa burnt in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 November 2013, 23:35 GMT]
A large cut-out of SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa, has been burnt down in Jaffna city in the early hours of Wednesday. Coinciding with this incident, the SL military has beefed up the presence of armed soldiers in the streets of Jaffna. The cut-out was put up in connection with Mahinda Rajpaksa’s widespread campaign of the deceptive Vadakkin Vasantham ‘development’ campaign.

The incident has taken place near St. Patrick’s College situated within 1 km of Jaffna city.

Large posters and cut-outs of Mahinda Rajapaksa, have been put up at several locations in Jaffna by the ‘Military’ Governor of Northern Province Maj. Gen. (retd.) G.A. Chandrasiri and SL Minister and EPDP leader Douglas Devananda.

The SL military has been guarding the localities where the cut-outs of their Commander-in-Chief was placed. However, in recent times, some of these cut-outs and posters have been subjected to crude oil attacks and other forms of destruction.

A large poster put up at Stanley Road was also destroyed in recent days, sources in Jaffna said.

The SL military has been engaged in inciting violence by targeted attacks on grassroots activists who were active in mobilising against the mainstream parties from South that campaigned for Tamil votes in the Northern Provincial Council elections. The Eezham Tamils used the NPC election as an opportunity to demonstrate that they rejected not only Mahinda Rajapaksa's UPFA from the South, but also Ranil Wickramasinghe's UNP and and ex-military commander Sarath Fonseka's ‘Democratic Party’ that took part in the NPC elections.