Jaffna University students resolve to strengthen TPPs protest

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 October 2018, 17:09 GMT]
The student community at Jaffna University has jumped into strengthening the struggle of the hunger-striking Tamil political prisoners. The leaders of the Jaffna University Student Union have called for an awareness protest meeting on Monday. The following day, 20 students are going to launch a protest walk from the University of Jaffna to Anuradhapura prison, they said. In the meantime, SL Minister of Justice, Thalatha Atukorale (UNP) has gone on record reiterating the position of the SL State there are no “political prisoners” in the prisons. SL President Maithiripala Sirisena (SLFP) has also dodged to discuss the matter with Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan at a meeting and told Mr Sampanthan that he would discuss the subject over the phone.

The protest has been strengthened with the arrival of Jaffna University student community under these circumstances, Tamil political observers in Jaffna said.

During a similar hunger-strike protest last year, the student community of Jaffna intervened with a promise of taking up the struggle to the actors within the island as well as to the international actors.

However, the SL President Maithiripala Sirisena and his Presidential Secretariat deceived the student-led protest through false promises.

The renewed involvement of the students of Jaffna University this year would bring momentum to the hunger strike and the grassroots protests taking place in the North and East in support of the hunger-strikers, Tamil political observers in Jaffna said.

Tamil political prisoners should be a matter of international legal concern, the student leaders said last year. They demanded the UN and particularly the USA, which was the co-sponsor of the UN HRC resolution in 2015, to recognise the Tamil Prisoners of War at least as the Political Prisoners.

The occupying Colombo is upholding that Tamil prisoners are ‘terrorist’ (PTA) detainees while the SL President and the foreign powers that brought the regime change in the island are interacting with the Sinhala military of genocidal Sri Lanka in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils through joint training. The SL President Maithiripala Sirisena was praising the SL military in his UN address last month.

Now, the USA has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council. The student community in Jaffna should demand the USA to declare the Tamil PoWs as political prisoners unilaterally, the political observers in Jaffna said.

Otherwise, the SL State would deceive the hunger-striking TPPs also this year, they told TamilNet.

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