On Remembrance Day

By Raisa Wickrematunge, SundayLeader

Students protesting and being beaten up by security forces

In the North, November 27 is ‘Remembrance Day’ – a day on which people remember those who died in the war, often by lighting candles. But peace was abruptly shattered when Army personnel stormed into the Jaffna University hostels, (both the male and female segregated buildings) and assaulted the students.
The very next day, the students planned to hold a silent, peaceful protest against the Army intrusion. Yet when they exited the university gate they were set upon by armed military personnel in civilian clothing. Ten were injured, according to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP Suresh Premachandran. Democratic  People’s Front leader Mano Ganesan said that the editor of Uthayan newspaper was injured in the melee and a TNA MP’s vehicle was damaged.

In the aftermath, four students were arrested, of which just one, a medical student, received bail. The other three students are still detained at the TID detention centre in Vavuniya under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody confirmed.

Events came to a head with a protest on Tuesday (4), headed by the Tamil National Alliance and the Tamil National People’s Front and supported by civil society organizations.
According to Premachandran, hundreds of civilians attended the protest.
To some it might seem that the outcry over the students is excessive, especially as the heroes these students were commemorating included LTTE cadres.

Yet the TNA insists that Remembrance Day is only about remembering kith and kin, ‘Everyone, whether Sinhalese, Muslim or Tamil, has the right to remember family who died. I can’t understand how it’s not permitted to light a candle to commemorate your children, your parents, or other loved ones who died,’ Premachandran said.

He added that there should not be separate laws for governing different races, and added that as yet there had been no positive response from authorities as a result of the protest. Instead, the road outside the University had initially been ‘like a war zone’ with heavy military presence and special permission needed for access, although this too had cleared once the medical student was released.

However, Premachandran said if the other three students were not released, protests would be held all over the island, starting from Kilinochchi and Vavuniya, until action was taken.

The TNA was joined by members of the Democratic People’s Front during the march. Ganesan said that in his opinion the arrests had united Tamil parties for a cause. He also pointed out that similar celebrations are held in the South on an annual basis, without any kind of repercussions. ‘The JVP commemorate the deaths that happened in 1971 and 1989 every year,’ Ganesan observed.

The 1971 JVP insurrection was started by angry youths who felt that their economic interests were not being served. By its end, an estimated 15,000 insurgents were dead. To prevent an uprising, and amidst allegations of using excessive force to quell the insurgency, former President Sirima Bandaranaike gave JVP Leader Rohana Wijeweera 20 years in prison and issued amnesties for lower-rung members. The JVP was proscribed for six years. Following the signing of the Indo-Lankan accord in 1987, the JVP again resorted to hartals- strikes which were marred by violence from both sides, either in attack or through defence.
And yet each year, as Ganesan points out, Wijeweera’s death is commemorated on November 13.

At one time, the Frontline Socialist Party had held a remembrance meeting which commenced right in front of the Kirulapone police station, Ganesan recalled.  “Therefore we fail to understand why such rights are denied to Tamil youths in Jaffna. The JVP youth also took up arms against Sri Lanka. Wijeweera also took up arms … the JVP too were classified as unlawful elements,” Ganesan said. He asserted that although the LTTE’s struggle was subversive, the theme of both uprisings were the same.

As such, this issue had even come to the attention of the international community, with the LLRC report touching on the inability of the people living in the North to remember and mourn the fallen dead. Yet Plantation Industries Minister and diplomat Mahinda Samarasinghe was ‘drawing a veil’ over the issue by promising to implement the LLRC recommendations, Ganesan said.

Taking this into account, the events on November 27 and the aftermath were ‘unacceptable’ he said. However as a result, more of the general public was joining in to protest, compared to in the past when fear psychosis and intimidation prevented people from joining in. Ganesan cited the May Day rally, where he alleged military personnel in civilian clothing had attended, waving the LTTE flag.

Meanwhile, the JVP also condemned the three student’s arrests. JVP MP Vijitha Herath went so far as to say the incident was totally ‘illegal’ as batons had been used to subdue students. He added that students had a democratic right to commemorate parents and neighbours they had lost – a right, which extended not just to the Tamils but all others as well. Furthermore, he said that if the Government continued with these sorts of incidents people in the North would demand for a separate state in the future. “If the Government doesn’t stop these assaults and arrests, the future will be dark,” Herath said.

He added that while the JVP totally condemned the activities of the LTTE cadres and opposed the movement, students and the general public had the right to express their views. It was for this reason that the JVP, while being unable to attend the protest in Jaffna, condemned the arrest of the three students, he said.
The three students remain in detention in Vavuniya, and look unlikely to be released anytime soon. It appears that there is a feeling of increased anger in the North – as evidenced by the larger number of the general public who joined party leaders in protest. Whether the further protests the TNA have planned will lead to any positive action towards the three students’ release, remains to be seen.

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Jaffna University Community Petitions President

Reported by Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole

Almost a hundred members of the Jaffna University Science Teachers’ Association have petitioned the President expressing concern over the disturbance created there by the army while “no official here seems to be able to deal with the problem or to adequately comprehend our concern.”

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 28 November against the attack on the previous day by merely carrying slogans that were “well within the norms of democratic protest”.

Their 4-page memorandum details the harassment they face. They question how perpetrators of a bomb throwing which was used to arrest students got away despite the place being surrounded by armed forces. They point to the university administration being given, without any intimation as to why, a list of 10 students by the TID to be produced, and state their conviction that the 10 students “were wanted only because they were well known as prominent in student activities or were victims of police assault on 28th November, 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.”