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The St Anthony’s church in the Thalladi military camp complex

Recently there have been several news reports on the LTTE artillery hitting the St Anthony’s church in Thalladi in the Mannar district. The reports were based on the press statements made by Sri Lanka defense.

St Anthony’s church in Thalladi is located inside the large Thalldi military complex of the Sri Lanka military. Civilians do not live inside this military complex. People are allowed to prey at the church only once a week for a brief period.

Also noteworthy is the comment by a Catholic church official from Mannar, Victor Sosai, that the military has barred people from worshiping in this church for the last two months and that the church was used by the Thalladi Sri Lankan military complex as a storage facility in recent times. This was reported in some of the news reports.

The pattern of civilian use of St Anthony’s church can be extrapolated to the nearly 100 places of worship that fall inside the huge military complexes that Sri Lanka has built all over the Tamil homeland. For each of these places of worship,

- is located inside a military complex.
- people do not live inside this military complex.
- people are allowed none or very restricted access to their places of worship.

14 February 2008

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