Keeping their agitations on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue alive, students in the city wore black badges and wristbands as a token of protest and attended classes as colleges reopened on Wednesday.
Representatives of Tamil Nadu Students Federation gave away black badges to students in a government college at Kamarajar Salai as they arrived on Wednesday for classes. Parimaindan, co-ordinator, Tamil Nadu Students Federation said colleges in other districts too protested in a similar manner and that the students would continue to wear the badge everyday to college.
The federation will also be distributing such badges to students in other arts and sciences colleges in the coming days, thereby bringing the student community together again in this form of protest.
Students of about 15 engineering colleges in the city wore black wristbands and observed silence between 11 am and 11.02 am during class hours.
“We want to continue protesting and at the same time do not want it to affect our exams. We will continue this token protest till our exams get over. We will start agitations again in a big way after that,” a student said.
The Students Federation for Free Eelam, which had united 15 colleges on Wednesday, had also invited other colleges to also join them.
“We were inspired by seeing various forms of students’ protest across the world, especially that in Venezuela where students went half an hour late to college after observing silence in front of their campuses,” said V Prabhakaran, Students Federation for Free Eelam.
In Tiruchy, law college students burnt portraits of external affairs minister Salman Khurshid, shouted slogans against the Congress and condemned the party’s workers for attacking the students.
In Dharmapuri, students were ecstatic seeing their friends and faculty members again after a gap of 18 days, as classes resumed on Wednesday.
In Coimbatore, a section of the students wore black badges, and observed a two-minute-silence in colleges in a symbolic show of solidarity with Lankan Tamils’ cause.