| Reported by
Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
( December 7,
2012, Jaffna, Sri Lanka Guardian) 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 Nov. 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.”
 Almost a hundred members of the Jaffna...){kind=link}