Jaffna tense after killing

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 October 1997, 23:59 GMT]
Sources in Jaffna said today that the Jaffna town was quite tense today following the killing of the SLFP organizer on Friday night in a high security zone of the Sri Lankan armed forces.

On the spot checks and scrutiny at the numerous checkpoints which dot the town have increased as the Sri Lankan army troops have gone on alert said the sources.

"The SLFP organizer was certainly the PA government's most valued political asset in the north and as such it expected the Sri Lankan army to completely safeguard him and assist him in his activities. Many heads in the Sri Lankan army's tight security system in Jaffna might roll" said one source.

Last year a Tamil academic, currently completing his post graduate degree in the US, together with a Tamil activist of a human rights NGO based in Colombo persuaded a person from Kaithady to act as the SLFP organizer for Jaffna.

The person was granted a very lucrative means of income. But he opted to operate from the safety of Colombo and then gradually dissociated himself from the job. It was then that Mr. S. T Tharmalingam was found for the position by the Sri Lankan army in Jaffna town.

In fact the SLFP's Sudu Nelum (white Lotus) movement organizer for Jaffna who was shot dead last year was originally working as an unofficial Tamil translator for the Sinhala speaking Sri Lankan army when it set up camp in that part of the town where the man lived.

" These pro Chandrika Tamil intellectuals want to foist the SLFP into the Tamil polity with the Sri Lankan army's aid regardless of the costs" said a human rights worker in Colombo who laments the manner in which a few long established NGOs in Colombo have fallen into Chandrika's peace trap.

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