[Balachandran Kajatheepan]
Stepping up its campaign of threat and intimidation in the Northern province, Sri Lankan military personnel in military fatigue on Saturday has questioned an active member of the Northern Provincial Council, Balachandran Kajatheepan.
“Three soldiers in military uniform came to my house in Earlalai and questioned me about the personal details of my family. They said they have received orders from the top to question me. One of them said that he was officer in-charge of the Vasavilan army camp,” Kajatheepan from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) told Colombo Mirror via phone from Jaffna.
He said that although they soldiers did not behave in a threatening manner, it was very evident that “they want to give a message or a kind of warning to the effect that I am under watch”.
“Everybody in Jaffna are under the military watch nowadays. We cannot be bothered too much about these kind of intimidations,” the young NPC member said.
Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry on Wednesday re-introduced the war-time regulations that the foreign passport holders will need prior approval from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to undertake a visit to the Northern province.
It said it was absolutely inevitable for the foreigners to inform the MoD “about the nature of the proposed visit and the area they intend visiting”.
The TNA and the NPC unanimously boycotted President’s three-day visit to the north last week, saying that ‘inappropriate’ for them to attend “politically motivated” at a time when the Tamil speaking people “continue to be marginalized by the Rajapaksa regime”.
Addressing a public rally in Kilinochchi, which was once the politico-administrative capital of the Tamil Tiger rebels, President Rajapaksa said that the intention of “the TNA and the Tamil Diaspora is to create a separate state in the North-East”.
ColomboMirror