2ND LEAD (Correction)

HR Day protests in North-East met with violence, SL Police displays hostility

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 December 2018, 23:08 GMT]
Four Tamil protesters were admitted to Trincomalee hospital as unknown masked men assaulted the Tamils from Moothoor East, who rallied in front of the Trincomalee Bus stand Monday morning for a peaceful protest in connection with International Human Rights Day. The families of the enforced disappeared, and the villagers from Padu-kaadu and Muthalai-madu, whose lands have been seized by the occupying SL military, were staging the protest. In the meantime, the SL Police at Chunnaakam in Jaffna threatened the Tamil villagers of Uduvil who protested in front of the DS office on Monday urging it to not hand over a private property, which the police wants to seize for its use. Later, on Monday night, a petrol bomb was thrown at the property. The people suspect that the SL police was behind the attack, in an apparent threat to force the owners of a fitness centre to vacate the lands.



The attack in Trincomalee took place while SL Police was patrolling the street.

A former civic councillor of Tamil National Alliance, K. Thiruchelvam, who was the opposition leader in the Moothoor Divisional Council (Pradeshiya Sabha) was among the four, who were assaulted by the mob.



The attackers shouted in Sinhala and broken Tamil, the protesters said.

The Sinhala Buddhist extremist group Patriotic National Movement (PNM) has recently increased hostile acts against Tamils in the district.



In Jaffna, the occupying Sinhala Police in Chunnaakam is long known for operating a torture chamber, and it has been credibly alleged for killings of Tamil youth also after 2009. The Sinhala police are also known for maintaining close links with criminal squads and gangs.

Since SL military occupied Jaffna and the people resettled in the late 1990s, the Chunnaakam police station has been operating at a private land on Chunnaakam - Punnaalaik-kadduvan Road, just 300 meters away from the junction on KKS Road.

The land-owner has been demanding to release the lands for a long time, and a court order instructed the SL Police to vacate the grounds.

The administrative authorities in Jaffna allocated alternative lands on the same road.

However, the SL Police is insisting upon seizing the other private property of 140 perches that belongs to an exiled Tamil family on KKS Road in Uduvil.

The attack on the fitness centre inside the premises of the property in Uduvil comes a few hours after the people from Uduvil mobilised in front of the Divisional Secretariat demanding to stop the move.

The SL Police, which is interested in the property did not show up at the site of the arson until the fire brigade from Jaffna city arrived there.

The people in Uduvil fear that the hostile police stationing near their houses would be a threat to their security. Furthermore, the private property should not be turned into a police station, they said.

The SL Police backing violence on Human Rights Day in Trincomalee in the East and at Chunnaakam in the Jaffna peninsula are critical indicators of the dim future ahead, the Tamil rights activists say.

The families of enforced disappeared, the people of Keappaa-pulavu in Mullaiththeevu who have been staging a continuous protest demanding the occupying SL military to release their lands and the grassroots organisations opposing the structural and heritage genocide protested in Jaffna, Trincomalee, Mullaiththeevu, Ki'linochchi and Vavuniyaa.

The Anti-Mahaweli Tamils' Heritage Forum in Mullaiththeevu and several other organisations in the North-East also sent their activists to take part in a protest organised in Colombo on the Human Rights Day.



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