SL Army orders against renting halls to TNA, political parties

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 June 2011, 19:07 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army occupying Jaffna comes out with intimidating ‘unofficial orders’ to owners of public halls in Jaffna, not to rent halls to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) or to any other political party critical of the Colombo regime to conduct political or public meetings, news sources from Jaffna said. Colombo has decided to completely prohibit all political campaign of Tamil parties against it and in this respect, the occupying Army in Jaffna has received instructions from the SL defence headquarters in Colombo to stop the use of public halls in Jaffna, the news sources further said. Meanwhile, the TNA is also prevented from the use of loud speakers for its political campaign in the civic elections. Authorities chased out TNA workers, who went to get permission for the use of loud speakers on vehicles for political campaign.

Officers of the occupying SL Army personally went to the houses of the owners and managers of the public halls, marriage halls etc in Jaffna peninsula and unofficially ordered them against renting halls to TNA and other Tamil political parties not desired by the Colombo government.

A few days ago, the SL Army entered TNA’s inaugural meeting for the civic elections campaign at Chaiva Mahajana Hall at A’laveddi and brutally attacked the participants.

The following day the TNA conducted another meeting at Nalloor to introduce its candidates for the civic elections in the hall belonging to a society I’lang Kalaignar Man’ram.

According to existing rules, there is no need to get prior permission from any authority to conduct meetings in closed halls, TNA parliamentarians said.

The SL Army now engages in unofficially ordering and intimidating hall owners.

Recently, a new political party called United Socialist Equality Party organized a political awareness meeting in Jaffna on international polity and on the uprisings in West Asia and North Africa. Speakers came from the south too. The hall of the Jaffna Cooperative Society was booked for this purpose. Intimidated by the SL Army, the management of the Cooperative Society withdrew the booking in the last minute.

The meeting was later shifted to the Veerasingham Hall in Jaffna. But the intimidating presence of SL troops brought in large numbers to the vicinity prevented the public from attending the meeting. The meeting finally took place with just around 60 participants.

Meanwhile, the occupying SL Army on Thursday took control of the Chaiva Mahajana Hall at A’laveddi. The Army says that it wants to hold a meeting on ‘helping people’ at the hall shortly.

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