Tamil Law students protest discrimination in admissions

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 December 2006, 13:18 GMT]
Tamil students who were denied admission to Law College staged a token hunger strike in Colombo outside the Law College on Wednesday morning at 10:00am protesting against discrimination in admission process. Colombo police officials at the scene warned the students that protests were banned inside the High Security Zone, and forcefully removed the students.

The students carrying placards continued their protest outside the office of Sri Lanka Legal Aid Commission demanding justice based on proportionate representation and not discriminated on the basis of nationality, religion or region. Parliamentarian Mano Ganesan leader of Western People’s Front visited the scene and listened to their grievances

A spokesman for the protesting students alleged even though a number of Tamil students scored fourteen marks more than the required aggregate were denied admission to the Law college.

“There were numerous errors in English-to-Tamil translation of questions, and incorrect technical terms were used in many places. The number relating to a particular Legal Act in one question is different in the Tamil translation. The distribution of marks for the various questions are not indicated in the question paper. Over 10,000 students sit for law college entrance examination out of whom more than 3000 candidates are Tamils .While over 240 students from Sinhala and English medium are chosen annually since the year 1999, only one or two Tamils are able to gain admission. This is great injustice. If this trend continues in the next twenty years there will be noTamil speaking lawyers in Sri Lanka,” the students spokesperson said.

The students continued their protest till 3:00 pm.