Colombo withdrew Wigneswaran's security after his Remembrance Day statement

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 December 2018, 23:16 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Inspector General of Police (IGP) Pujith Jayasundara instructed his Deputy Inspector General (DIG) in Jaffna W.F.U. Fernando to immediately withdraw the personal security provided to the former Tamil Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran when Fernando reported to the IGP that Wigneswaran had issued a statement supporting the commemoration of Tamil liberation fighters. His statement was released on 26 November, a day before Tamil Heroes Day and the occupying Colombo withdrew his security on 28 November. A Tamil-speaking source with close links to the SL Defence Establishment in Colombo revealed the details on condition of anonymity. The IGP had also told the Jaffna DIG to instruct the two police personnel who were with Justice Wigneswaran in Colombo to report to a police station in Colombo with immediate effect, the source further said.

Justice Wigneswaran issued a statement on 26 November urging the Tamil people to observe the remembrance events peacefully.

Any hostility cannot crush the affection shown by the Tamil people of remembering their liberation fighters, who sacrificed their lives for the rights of Tamil people, Justice Wigneswaran said in his statement.

He described the unfortunate attitude prevailing in the South against the commemoration as “Izhi-Nilai” (moral low ground) and urged the international community to take note of it.

The SL Police has been opposing the commemoration event and had moved to court challenge the commemoration events to no avail.

Following the removal of his police security, Justice Wigneswaran wrote a letter urging SL President Maithiripala Sirisena to reinstate his police security. In his letter, sent on 28 November, Justice Wigneswaran referred to an earlier reported threat to his life, which he had verbally conveyed to the SL President during his visit to Jaffna as well as filing it in writing to the IGP in Colombo and the DIG in Jaffna.

The former NPC CM, also noted in his letter that the personal police security provided to the former chief minister of the Eastern Provincial Council, dissolved much earlier, was still in force.

In the meantime, the SL Police Establishment, as well as Rajapaksa's supporters and the sections of Sinhala extremists in the South have been projecting the slaying of two SL police constables, a Tamil and a Sinhalese, in Batticaloa on 30 November as a retaliatory attack by former LTTE members. The IGP was also directly involved in the investigations, news sources in Batticaloa said.

As reported earlier, the foreign intelligence agency of India, known as the Research and Analysis Wing’ (RAW), was also actively engaged in briefing the SL intelligence and high ranking police officers to curb the Tamil Heroes Day Remembrance, days ahead of the Tamil Eelam Heroes Remembrance.

The RAW, as well as the SL intelligence, have also been recruiting Tamil agents in the East by exploiting and engineering communal conflicts among the Tamil-speaking people.