SL military-backed Sinhala students clash with Tamil students in Jaffna University
[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 July 2016, 13:37 GMT] Washington and New Delhi imposing genocidal ‘Sri Lanka’ on the nation of Eezham Tamils now manifests into military-backed Sinhala students clashing with Tamil students even in the University of Jaffna. Sinhala students numbering more than Tamils at the Science Faculty of the university attacked Tamil students after violently staging Kandyan dance opposing traditional Thavil and Nathasvaram at the welcoming ceremony to new students in the faculty on Saturday. The episode quickly escalated into a clash between Tamil and Sinhala students for more than one hour. Tamil students from other faculties mobilised to defend their fellow students at the Science Faculty and Sinhala military intelligence personnel in civil clothes entered the premises brutally attacking Tamil students. More than 10 students were rushed to hospital with injuries since the clash started at 2:00 p.m.
Tension prevails in the area surrounding the University of Jaffna and the university administration has asked all students to move out of the premises and hostels. However, unlike the unprotected Tamil students in the military occupied Jaffna, the Sinhala students were provided with ‘police escort’ up to Vavuniyaa to reach their homes in the South.
The dispute about how the new students should be welcomed was earlier resolved and it was decided that the usual Thavil and Nathaswaram would be used in the welcoming ceremony by the student groups. According to another version, the Dean of the faculty was siding with the Sinhala demand and at one point was prepared to cancel the whole event.
However, Sinhala students had prepared a band with Kandyan dance and deployed it in a violent manner against the Tamil students and started to assault the Tamil students when the dance was opposed.
“This is our country. Who are these people to oppose,” was what the attacking Sinhala students said, according to a Tamil student leader.
Following the escalation of clashes between the Tamil and Sinhala students, the SL police deployed in the area was blocking journalists from entering the premises.
The Sinhala military intelligence in civil clothes also entered the University in support of the Sinhala students. It was difficult to differentiate the intelligence personnel from Sinhala students, observers said.
There were also Sinhala students among the injured. Some were seen communicating with SL Police in Sinhala pointing at Tamil students. The Sinhala students damaged the glass panes and furnitures in the faculty and were armed with available material in their attack, Tamil students said.
The occupying genocidal State of ‘Sri Lanka’ has demonstrated its motive of making Tamil students subservient by reducing them into a ‘minority’ in all the universities across the island, including the universities in the North and East.
When the Jaffna University was started in 1974, and even when there were only a few Sinhala students, they demanded that one among them should be the student union president and the demand was conceded by the then university administration. Following the 1977 ethnic pogrom against Tamils in the South, fearing reprisals the Sinhala students were withdrawn from the Jaffna University.
In recent times, there have been several episodes of ethnic motivated violent incidents where Sinhala students were operating in nexus with the SL military intelligence.
Even when some Sinhala students expressed solidarity with Tamils marking their remembrance days, Sinhala military ‘counter insurgency’ operatives were quick to mobilise other sections of Sinhala students to suppress the trend.
There have been reports of Sinhala students at the University being provided with food cooked in the nearby SL military camps. The SL military intelligence personnel used to frequent the campus in the guise of supplying food.
Between 60 and 65 per cent of students at the Science Faculty in Jaffna are now Sinhalese, according to Jaffna University Students Union sources.
The predominantly Sinhala University Grants Commission in Colombo has also been instrumental in exerting pressure on university administrations in the North and East not to take disciplinary action against the trouble-making Sinhala students. All such disciplinary actions, if taken, should equate Tamil and Sinhala students, the UGC had instructed the Eastern University earlier this year.
Colombo's police and military have played a key role in mobilising assaults against Tamil students in the South in the past.
The Sinhala goons attacking Tamils and SL police watching the assaults have been documented ever since the anti-Tamil pogroms of 1950s.
After 2009, this trend has also been extended to academic institutions in the occupied North and East. The recent attacks on Tamil students by Sinhala students at the Eastern University in Batticaloa and its Trincomalee campus have ended without any action.
The other Tamil academic institutions outside the universities are also concerned of the dangerous trend coming to their institutions through Sinhala militarisation and through the conversion of some leading Tamil schools into ‘national level’ schools.
Sinhalicisation is taking place in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils with the backing of global powers, especially Washington and New Delhi.
The powers, advocating ‘development’ and ‘reconciliation’ have been negating territorial Tamil identity, Right to Self-Determination and Tamil Sovereignty in their approaches blinded by geo-politics and imperialist entry. The root cause of the genocidal evil is refusal to righteous solution coming from the powers, said Tamil political observers in Jaffna.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Ms Nisha Desai Biswal and Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Mr Tom Malinowski, were visiting the island this week as part of Washington's ‘Partnership Dialouge’ with genocidal Sri Lanka.
Mr Malinowsky was saying that the the “people of Sri Lanka chose a government that seeks to serve all of its people, rather than setting them against each other.” The Colombo regime is fittingly ‘endorsing’ Malinowsky's statement through Sinhala students in Jaffna University, the Tamil political observers in Jaffna said.
The agenda of Isrealisation is successfully being implemented in the island, threatening the entire region, the Tamil observers commented further.