COLOMBO: As tension rose in Tamil-speaking North Sri Lanka over the killing of two Jaffna University students by police near a checkpoint on October 20, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Saturday ordered an impartial investigation and the five policemen involved have been arrested and remanded.
Meanwhile, fearing angry public demonstrations against it, police have beefed up security for the Jaffna police station with men brought in from outstation units. The police fear that the funerals planned for early next week, might turn into public demonstrations of anger against for what people consider as “wanton killing of innocents by trigger happy cops.”
Nataraya Kajan (23) and Paunraj Sulakshan (24), riding a motorbike, had ignored an order to stop when they passed a police checkpoint in the outskirts of Jaffna at about 11.30 pm on October 20. Instead of giving them a chase on their powerful motorbikes, the police promptly opened fire killing one on the spot. The other died when the vehicle crashed.
As Kajan and Sulakshan were both students of the highly politicized Arts Faculty of Jaffna University, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) got worried about an adverse political fallout. Its leader R.Sampanthan immediately contacted President Sirisena ,who quickly ordered an impartial investigation and suspension and arrest of five cops.
Given the potential political importance of the incident, leaders of political parties came out with their comments and appeals. Rehabilitation Minister D.M.Swaminathan appealed for calm, assuring action against the culprits. The Minister of National Dialogue, Mano Ganeshan, wondered why the police shot them above the waist when they had been trained to aim at the legs, and why they had not used the motorbike issued to them to give the errant boys a chase? Former MP and social justice campaigner, M.Chandrakumar, said that the problem of cops killing suspects arises from the fact that even constables are issued firearms, which they can misuse.
Northern Province Chief Minister C.V.Wigneswaran ,who is currently on tour in Europe, has been pleading with the Central government in Colombo to replace the army with civil police to maintain law and order in the hope that the police will be more sensitive to peoples’ needs. But the shooting incident at the police checkpoint shows that a police constable, like his army counterpart, can be equally inclined to use the firearms issued to him.
Jaffna and the Northern Province are now undergoing a phase of radicalization because in the last one and a half years of being in power, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime has shown very little progress in implementing its pledges to set up mechanisms to bring about post-war ethnic reconciliation.
And the TNA is also blamed because it is seen as an accomplice, being the government’s chosen and loyal opposition in parliament. Students, intellectuals and the media have ganged up against the TNA and its leaders. Ironically, the leader of this movement is Chief Minister Wigneswaran, who was nominated to the post by the TNA.
Unless the Sirisena government pursues the shooting case to its logical conclusion through a quick and impartial investigation and punishes the culprits, its ally, the TNA, might suffer erosion of support in the Tamil heartland.