JVP dissident undergrad defy closure order

J’pura varsity closed

January 8, 2012, 9:16 pm , The Island.

by Dasun Edirisinghe

University of Sri Jayewardenepura has been closed indefinitely from yesterday except Faculties of Medical Sciences and Graduate Studies.

Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences, Applied Sciences and Management and Commerce closed and students were asked to vacate hostels within two hours.

University sources said that the university administration had to close those three faculties to prevent a further intensification of tensions after the bomb attack on the statue erected in memory of fallen student leaders in the early hours of last Thursday by an unidentified group.

University administration and students accuse each other of being responsible for the attack.

Undergraduates however want the immediate re-opening of the university and denied there being any tense situation within the university premises.

Addressing the media opposite the university’s main gate, representative of the students, Kumbullewe Chandananda thera said that they would continue their protest until all those responsible for the attack on the statue were arrested and Vice Chancellor Dr. N. L. A. Karunaratne was removed from his post.

He said that they received the notice of closing the university at 6.45am in the morning and no reason was given for the closure of the university in the notice signed by the VC.

"We were asked to vacate the university premises within two hours," Chandananda thera said asking how the undergraduates, especially females could vacate within two hours as most of them came from remote areas.

He said that their main demands were removal of VC and security guards deployed there from the Defence Ministry’s Rakna Lanka firm.

A Group of JVP dissident led IUSF undergraduates defying the order to vacate continued to hold a ‘satyagraha’ opposite the Sumangala building of the university up to the time of going to press last night.