3RD LEAD (UPDATE)

SL Police shoots and kills young Tamil motorcyclist at Chuthu-malai in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 July 2019, 23:54 GMT]
The SL police has shot and killed a 23-year-old Tamil man who was riding a motorbike on Maanippaay - I'nuvil Road in Jaffna around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday. Another youth, injured in the incident, has managed to escape with fellow motorcyclists. The police was quick to claim that the man belonged to a criminal sword gang and that they had fired as the group of six in three bikes didn't adhere to the instructions to stop. However, the residents suspect the SL police was manipulating evidence by planting a sword at the site of the incident, especially before allowing the media to photograph the scene. The youth group had come from Kodikaamam in Thenmaraadchi 40 km away from Maanippaay. It is unlikely that the group had such a large sword visibly during their long trip across several police posts, the journalists who inspected the site and talked to the residents said.



The victim was identified as Selvaratnam Kavikajan from Kodikaamam.

The incident has taken place near Chuthumalai North Government Tamil Mixed School.

This is the sixth controversial killing by the SL Police within the last four years of the so-called ‘good governance’ rule.

Each time, when people mobilise against the Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism, such killings take place to instill a fear psychosis among the young Tamils, grassroots activists in Jaffna said pointing to the active participation of Tamil youth in Neeraaviyadi and Kanniyaa protests in the recent days.

The latest police crime has also taken place while the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, was visiting the peninsula.

The Sinhala policemen in the area are known for rogue behaviour. Recently, they had severely beaten up a Tamil motorcyclist, a mason worker, who had stopped his bike to talk to a friend near a petrol-shed.

The occupying SL military and the police were imposing stringent practices at will in the Tamil areas using the Emergency Regulations, the people complain.

The SL Police shot and killed two Tamil students in October 2016, at a time when the expansive set of regulations were not in force.

The students were subjected to a hate crime by the Sinhala policemen at Kokkuvil. The students had failed to stop at a previous roadblock and became victims to a premeditated act of vengeance.

The SL Police comprising overwhelmingly Sinhala personnel in the predominantly Tamil area, behave like an occupying force of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka. The SL State has been refusing to allow the establishment of a Provincial Police Force even to the extent of devolution envisaged by the 13th Amendment.

In July 2017, a 24-year-old youth from Thunnaalai in Vadamaraadchi South-West was shot and killed while he was escaping a police hunt after illegal sand scooping in Kudaththanai. The SL Police was meting out a systematic ‘collective punishment’ for several months as the people of Thunnaalai had smashed a police post after the brutal killing, which they interpreted as a planned encounter.

Similarly, a 32-year-old Tamil man was shot and killed by the SL Police within the premises of a Catholic church at Mallaakam in June 2018. The man was trying to protect his nephew from an opposing gang.

Chronology: