ISN SECURITY WATCH (03/01/06) --
Irate students set fire to security checkpoints in Sri Lanka's eastern
Trincomalee town on Tuesday after six students had been killed and one
other wounded the night before in an explosion blamed on rebels, according
to police.
Marauding mobs of students took control
of the streets of Trincomalee, protesting the death of their fellow students,
saying the students had not been killed in the explosion, but had been
shot by soldiers. Resorting to arson and other violence, the students forced
the Sri Lankan soldiers to withdraw into the cantonment.
"They were all innocent kids standing near the beach when the explosion took place," said Sivanathan Thayaparan, a resident of Trincomalee. "After the explosion, the armed forces arrived and they shot the boys in the forehead."
The army said suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels were responsible for the explosion, and claimed that the students had not been shot by soldiers, but had died in the explosion.
Protesting against the deaths, students from the eastern university called for a city-wide strike. All government offices, schools, and businesses closed on Tuesday and are likely to remain closed for the next few days.
Residents of Trincomalee said the situation turned violent when the army refused to hand over the bodies of the dead students to their parents.
"They wanted the parents to sign a paper saying that these boys were working for the Tamil Tigers. The parents refused," Thyaparan told ISN Security Watch.
Meanwhile, the government has appointed a panel to investigate the violence in the embattled northern Jaffna peninsula, where 40 soldiers and civilians have been killed in civil unrest over the rape and murder of a young girl.
Suspected Tamil Tigers have carried out at least three attacks on soldiers and sailors in Jaffna and Mannar district recently.
The attacks have raised fears of war in the country. The ceasefire agreement signed between the government and the Tamil Tigers in 2002 seems to be on the verge of collapsing.
The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which oversees the observance of the ceasefire, has cautioned that the country is sliding towards war.
"This spiral of violence is not conducive to a badly needed high-level meeting between the parties," SLMM chief Hagrup Haukland said in a statement. "If the trend of violence is allowed to continue, war may not be far away."
The SLMM has cautioned that the escalation in violence could prevent the Scandinavian monitors from performing their task.
Reports from Jaffna indicate that a number of families have left the government-controlled areas and moved into the LTTE-administered region for safety. The Tamil Tigers have reportedly asked the families of their cadres to move away from the town of Jaffna, adding to the fears of a possible outbreak of hostilities.
While attacks on armed forces have increased in the Tamil-dominated north and east of the country, the security forces have launched house-to-house search operations in the capital, Colombo.
Hundreds of minority Tamils were rounded up over the weekend and questioned by the police, army, and a special task force. The cordon-and-search operations have sparked off fear among the minority community in the capital.
In November, the LTTE threatened to resume its armed struggle unless the government agreed to grant the Tamil minority wide political powers in the north and east.
Sri Lanka has been paralyzed for 20 years by an ethnic conflict that has left some 70,000 people dead and millions displaced. The LTTE is fighting for more autonomy and rights for minority Tamils.
(By Ravi Prasad in Colombo)