PTA-threats against constructing memorial arch for student victims of 2006 aerial massacre

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 August 2019, 20:32 GMT]
The occupying SL Army and its Intelligence have warned the workers, who were engaged in setting up a memorial road arch in Mullaith-theevu on Sunday. The arch was being constructed in memory of 51 school-girls and four staff members, whom the SL Air Force had brutally killed in a targeted aerial massacre at Chengchoalai compound on 14 August 2006 at Va'l'li-punam in Mullaiththeevu. The SL military personnel who came to the site on Sunday and instructed the workers to cease all the work threatened to detain them under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). In the meantime, the SL Police, which took the workers to the station told them that there should be no photographs of the school children, who were slain in the aerial massacre carried out by the SL Air Force. The workers were engaged in completing the construction before the 13th Commemoration on Wednesday.

The SL Police has also told the workers that the name ‘Chengnchoalai’ should not be inscribed anywhere in the arch which is being constructed across Va'l'lipunam Idaikkaddu Road.



The Police OIC was particular on prohibiting the names or photos of white-uniformed school children as well as the term “Chegnchoalai Maa'navarka'l Ninaivaalayam,” Mr Easan who represents the organisation behind the remembrance event told TamilNet.



The permission obtained by the Civic Council (Piratheasa Chapai / PS) an year ago had ‘expired’, the SL Police had claimed.

Vanni Cross, the organisation which conducts the event, had collected money from the villagers to inscribe the names and the photos of the school-girls who were massacred in the air attack.

The school-going girls killed in the 2006 attack were attending a first-aid and emergency training organised by the LTTE at the compound of Chengchoalai - an orphanage, which was a civilian facility operated by the LTTE.

The then SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was also the Commander-in-Chief of the SL military, was briefed at least 12 hours before the genocidal attack by Roshan Goonatilake, the commander of the SL Air Force.

Mr Rajapaksa was celebrating with the heads of three armed forces on 13 August 2006, knowing very well that it was innocent school-going girls who were going to be slain the next morning.

The intention behind the attack was to create a fear psychosis as part of a broader counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign.

Subsequently, the genocidal onslaught which followed in 2009 was dubbed as a ‘humanitarian operation’ by the same establishment.

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