Colombo cripples traders in Jaffna to bring in Sinhala trade

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 December 2010, 22:20 GMT]
The Government of Sri Lanka is alleged to have been involved in crippling the business activities of the Tamil traders in Jaffna peninsula to make way for the Sinhalese to capture it, Jaffna traders who have been subjected to harassment by officers from Criminal Investigation Department of Colombo Police.

A team of intelligence officers from Colombo was interrogating the traders in Jaffna during the first week of December at the office of the traders association in Jaffna alleging the traders of financial dealings with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the past.

The CID has thereafter summoned 20 leading traders to Colombo for further interrogations at the Fourth Floor of the CID headquarters, traders in Jaffna said.

The CID team before leaving to Colombo had also warned the Jaffna Traders’ Association that it would return to conduct another round of interrogation.

Already a leading Tamil businessman in Jaffna was taken to Colombo and was being detained there.

Officials of the Jaffna Traders Association expressed fear that the veiled threats and harassments by the CID were tactics aimed at making inroads for southern businessmen. After military subjugation and development subjugation, Colombo was now engaged in economic subjugation of the business elite of the Tamils in key cities of the Tamil homeland, the traders said.

The three SL government-sponsored pogroms of 1958, 1977 and 1983 were mainly aimed at crippling Tamil trade in the south, especially in Colombo.

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