Jaffna dons petition president

December 9, 2012, 9:57 pm , the island


Almost a hundred members of the Jaffna University Science Teachers’ Association have petitioned President Mahinda Rajapaksa expressing concern over recent incidents at their institution. They have accused the army of causing unnecessary trouble, while blaming Jaffna based civilian authorities of failing to address their concerns.

The dons accuse the government of default "through continued presence of the military without tangible moves towards a political settlement." At a time the petitioners are trying hard "to make our university one that respects differences and advocates pluralism," the army, they say, entered the halls, "separating the Sinhalese from the Tamil students, showing hostility to and even threatening only the latter."

Attesting that there "is now no anti-state terrorism in Jaffna," they accuse the police of physically attacking the students who demonstrated on Nov. 28 by merely crying slogans that were "well within the norms of democratic protest."

The university teachers’ four page memorandum details the harassment they face. They question how a bomb throwing incident was used to arrest students after the perpetrators got away despite the place being surrounded by armed forces.

They claim the university administration was given, a list of 10 students by the Terrorism Investigation Department (TID) to be produced. They are of the view that the 10 students "were wanted only because they were well known as prominent student activists or were victims of police assault on Nov. 28, whose pictures featured in news reports on the Internet."

They question the "practice of the university authorities ‘handing over’ students without questioning "the police as to the reasons." The situation is so bad, they say, that even lawyers are afraid to represent students.

The petitioners politely remind the President that he has been in politics for several decades and at the centre of two Southern insurgencies and "that the defeat of an insurgent force does not extinguish the feelings or causes that gave rise to it. Such feelings are not a police matter, but are rather to be handled as part of the political task of reconciliation and rebuilding."