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PRESIDENT ORDERS THE EVACUATED
TAMILS FROM LOW BUDGET HOTELS TO BE BROUGHT BACK IMMEDIATELY
By Walter Jayawardhana
The Sri Lanka Police started bringing back Tamils removed from low
budget hotels in Colombo after the country’s President ordered
the Police to do so, Presidential House sources said.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa ordered the people to be redressed if any
injustice has happened during the evacuation, the sources further said.
The Presidential orders went out after a three bench panel of the Supreme
Court ordered Police Chief Victor Perera to immediately stop evacuating
people by force and sending them to North and the East.
The Police have evacuated about 300 Tamil people from low-budget lodging
places after the police have found out those lodgings have been increasingly
used by terrorists of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE) as
safe houses to carry on terrorist activities in the city.
But sources said those lodgings are also being used as low priced places
by the war torn area Tamils to come to Colombo and engage in lawful
activities like obtain better medical facilities from Colombo, engage
in obtaining passports to go abroad to find employment or simply go
to embassies to apply for political asylum.
Somewhat exaggerating the move as ethnic cleansing some political groups
protested against the government.
But now President Mahinda Rajapaksa has ordered the Police Chief to
give an explanation to the government of his act and immediately bring
back the people who had been sent to a detention centre in Vavuniya
to be sent to their homes.
Police said there is no ethnic cleansing involved in the act but government
sources said their was an error of judgement in the whole security measure
as not only terrorists but genuine citizens of the country were also
affected by these clean sweep from the low budget hotels.
Out of the 272 people evacuated to the Northern town of Vavuniya 186
people were immediately brought back to the original places of lodgings
under the Presidential orders. The detention center was 160 miles North
of Colombo.
The Center for Policy Alternatives filed a fundamental rights petition
against the move before a panel of judges in Supreme Court against the
move. Under the country's constitution all citizens enjoy equal rights
Sri Lanka government sources said there is no ethnic cleansing in the
City of Colombo as it has been exaggerated in the Western press and
the second largest ethnic group according to the 2001 censusof Colombo
were Sri Lanka Tamils.
Under the 2001 census there were 117,510 Sri Lanka Tamils in the city,
against the 117,090 Sinhalese who are the majority ethnic group in the
country. The largest ethnic group in the city are 120,109 Muslims .
Added to that there were 8680 Malays who are also Muslims but consider
themselves a different ethnic group. There were also 3380 Eurasian Burghers
and 7946 Indian Tamils making Colombo a real Cosmopolitan city.
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