Police seek glory amid paranoia

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 October 1997, 23:59 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police arrested three persons near Wennapuwa (forty kilometers north of Colombo) with four hundred machetes on Sept.23.

The Police claimed that the machetes were meant for the Liberation Tigers. A brouhaha ensued in the local media.

The government owned national television showed the machetes in its news bulletins saying that they were intended for the Liberation Tigers to massacre Sinhala villagers.

It has now transpired that these machetes were made by a French aid organisation.

The knives were being taken for distribution among very poor Sinhala farmers in Padaviya, Horowapothana and Keppitigollawa which are Sinhala colonization schemes in Tamil areas in and near the Trincomalee district.

The French aid organization had already announced in these areas the dates on which the machetes and other agricultural implements were going to be distributed free to the poor farmers.

The Wennappuwa Police had completely ignored the statements of the arrested persons and had hastily informed the media that they had captured a cache of lethal LTTE weapons.