Four students from Jaffna University have been transferred to Colombo after being arrested by the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) on Friday.
The arrested students are:
Paralingam Tharshananth (Secretary of the Jaffna Students Union)
Ganesamurthy Sudarsan (Medical Faculty Student)
Kangasundaraswamy Janamejeyanth (Arts Union President)
Sanmugam Solomon (Final year Science Faculty Student)
The arrests took place after a complaint against the students was lodged with Sri Lankan police by the government-backed paramilitary group Sri TELO. 7 students, including Tharshananth and Sudarsan, were named in the complaint.
However, Janamejeyanth and Solomon were arrested at their homes, despite not being named in the complaint.
The other five named in the complaint include past student leaders who have left Jaffna University and students from other districts.
The Sri TELO group have opened a new office behind the Jaffna University campus and were reportedly involved in the raid on student halls of residences on the 27th of November. Their police complaint alleged that a petrol bomb was thrown at the office, despite the large presence of Sri Lankan security forces in and around the university campus.
Speaking on Sri TELO, a source from Jaffna told the Tamil Guardian,
”The fact that they moved to a compound behind the unversity campus kit last week is no coincidence.
They were and continue to be involved in the government’s counter-insurgency project”.
Tharshananth, the JSU Secretary, was attacked earlier this year hours before he was due to address a Mullivaikkal remembrance event in Jaffna
See our earlier post: Jaffna student leader attacked before remembrance event (18 May 2012)
University teachers have since staged a protest at the university gates expressing solidarity with the students.
See our earlier post: Jaffna uni teachers protest in solidarity (30 November 2012)
