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Jaffna education community remains at the mercy of SLA

SLA entered several schools in Jaffna yesterday and collected by threat the names of all the senior students attending the schools. For several weeks Jaffna schools students were boycotting classes demanding the release of four fellow students who were arrested by the SLA in the beginning of May 2007. They had only a few days ago called off their boycott temporarily. It was in this context that the SLA entered the school and collected the names of the senior students. Two weeks ago SLA circulated pamphlets threatening school students who were selling the school magazine “Chalaram” that is published with contributions from school students in Jaffna.

While the school students are facing up to this bullying tactics and threats by the SLA, letters were received by senior university dons from paramilitary group supported by the SLA demanding protection money worth of millions of rupees.

Jaffna that was once blessed with the most advanced educational institutions in the island has been gradually stripped of this status by deliberate policies of successive Sri Lankan governments through deliberate discriminatory practices in teacher appointments and university entrance. This mentality evolved eventually into the most abominable act of destroying the Jaffna library with hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable texts. Presently it is exhibited as bullying and threatening of the university community by a military whose control over Jaffna has been described by many as that of maintaining an open prison.

26 May 2007

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