SLA targets Tamil activists, one killed, another injured in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 November 2006, 00:14 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers and collaborating paramilitaries shot dead a fisheries official in Vadamaradchy, and wounded another seriously in Valigamam East Thursday, sources in Jaffna said. Both were Tamil activists involved in organizing protests against SLA harassment and violence in Jaffna district, civil society sources said.

Arumugam Vignarajah, 50, the President of Koddady Fisheries Society, was shot dead around 10:00 am while returning home from a nearby Temple in a bicycle. Koddady is located in the boarder of High Security Zone demarcated by the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) in Point Pedro in Vadamarachchy region.

He was one of the key organizers of protest marches carried out by the students of Hartly College and Methodist Girls College demanding the removal of the educational institutions out of High Security Zone in Point Pedro. Participants in the protests destroyed some sentry points of the SLA.

Vignarajah was arrested by the Police under the charges of arranging demonstrations against the SLA and causing damage to their properties, and was remanded in the Jaffna Prison. He was later released on bail and the case against him still pending, legal sources said.

Vignarajah was also involved in coordinating the unloading of food shipment at the Point Pedro harbor, relatives said.

Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen shot and injured Sinnaththurai Baskaran, 36, from Avarangal, in Valikamam East region, in front of the Jaffna branch office of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) located close to the SLA's Civil Administration Office around 10:30 am, sources in Jaffna said.

HRC staffers took Mr Baskaran to the Jaffna Teaching hospital where he was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.

Local residents said Mr Baskaran may have earned SLA's ire because of his involvement in exposing the recent SLA's killing of five youths travelling in an auto-rickshaw in Puththur area. Baskaran led the HRC officials to the site of the killing and also openly took part in the agitation against SLA.

Mr Baskaran is health worker at the Jaffna Municipal Council,