afp,  Thu Feb 16 14:18:34 EST 2006

    COLOMBO, Feb 14, 2006 (AFP) - Sri Lankan authorities interrogated 12 elite police commandos Tuesday over the massacre of five students which sparked major unrest in the island's north-east, official sources said.
Detectives were grilling an inspector, a sub-inspector and 10 constables of the Special Task Force (STF) who were at the scene of the massacre on January 2 in Trincomalee, a top police source said.
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- The Academic

In any war colateral damage is well known.

These are tamil youth, loitering or trespassing around army camps. There were not dummies who did not know anything. They knew what they were doing and came for some reason.

This haressment of STF is just political.

Just leave them alone.

This is the same attitude taken by the LTTE and their supporters when innocent people are killed. By using the excuse of “it is war and collateral damage is part of it”, you are no better than the LTTE. In fact you are legitimizing the LTTE killings. If you, as a Sinhalese Nationalist can support these kinds of killings it is perfectly justifiable for the LTTE supporters to do the same. You cannot have it both ways. Remember this is not 1983... every action has a reaction. This law is practiced by Tamil now too, you know.


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'Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.'

- Henry David Thoreau

The area where the youths were shot is a High Security Zone (HSZ).

What were they doing in a HSZ? playing marbles?
If I goto hang around an HSZ I can expect to get shot too...and the security won't even come close to verify if I am Sinhala or Tamil. So there is no race issue.

Also, they are University students, don't they know that they are supposed to abide by the law.

Dear AnuD

Orwell once said that the extreme nationalist was incapable of seeing the atrocities on his own side. let alone committing them.

Your attitude is deplorable. Five youths are sitting on the beach near Fort Frederick, which incidentally also contains the most important Hindu Temple in Sri Lanka, and you call their cold-blooded murder collateral damage.

Would you accept the pilgrims massacred at Anadarapura to be collateral damage; those at the Pettah bus stand; those at the World Trade Centre; those at the Temple of the Tooth?

Quote:

The area where the youths were shot is a High Security Zone (HSZ).

What were they doing in a HSZ? playing marbles?

I doubt if it was marbles; they were a bit old for that.

Of course all the people in the WTC bombing deserved to die because they were civilians in a High Security Zone. Or perhaps you are not aware that in Colombo nearly all of the Financial district from Galle Road to the port is a High Security Zone. Every time I go to visit my bank I am in a High Security Zone. 45% of the land area of Jaffna is a high security zone.

Stephen,

We may be wasting our time on these posts. I doubt if these chaps have got the marbles to be fair, open minded or think out side box. I fear requesting something like this might over load the brain cells.


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'Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.'

- Henry David Thoreau

I have to say this is excellent news, if the investigation is a genuine one and not just another farce.  Let justice be done and be seen to be done.  Nobody should be above the law.  If the culprits are found, tried and found guilty, then they should not be spared the most severe punishment that the courts can pass.

This is Excellent News but hard to beleive...
Government has still difficulties to find some old cases. Still there is no one has been punished for 23 people killed in Jail in 1983-July.
Does MR makes a different??

Please DO NOT abuse the forum by posting under different IDs'.



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Have the rights to speak & write right...

weeran wrote:

This is Excellent News but hard to beleive...
Government has still difficulties to find some old cases. Still there is no one has been punished for 23 people killed in Jail in 1983-July.
Does MR makes a different??

Yes.
MR can make the difference. He has some specific targets and handling LTTE well. With JVP around.

Please DO NOT abuse the forum by posting under different IDs'.




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Take care

Stephen Jones wrote:

Quote:

The area where the youths were shot is a High Security Zone (HSZ).

What were they doing in a HSZ? playing marbles?

I doubt if it was marbles; they were a bit old for that.

Of course all the people in the WTC bombing deserved to die because they were civilians in a High Security Zone. Or perhaps you are not aware that in Colombo nearly all of the Financial district from Galle Road to the port is a High Security Zone. Every time I go to visit my bank I am in a High Security Zone. 45% of the land area of Jaffna is a high security zone.

Stephan Jones:

You have experience only with secirity concerns related only to LTTE.

I know, the same thing in relation to bothe JVP and LTTE.

If you justify these youth wandering around SLA camps while being adolescents, university students and tamils, you do not know what you ar talking about.

What you say to SLA is;  Get shot from LTTE, then SLA is weak and incapable of defending. OTherwise, just do not harm anyone, let them play fool.

STF clearly responsible for the murder. However the blame does not lie with the STF alone. The chain of events leading to the events are as follows. The armed forces were under constant attack by civilians armed by LTTE. There were grenades thrown almost 2 or 3 a day at troops. Troops did not retaliate, but took defensive measures. The casaulties kept mounting after attacks escalated to claymore blasts resulting in a large number of casualties, yet the troops did not retaliate. Clearly something had to be done without resorting to full scale war. The result was a STF unit instructed to kill anyone lobbing grenades on sight. It was late in the evening near Fort Frederick, a three-wheeler drives by after thowing a grenade. The 5 youths were nearby, but do not run away thinking if they ran, they would automatically become suspects. The STF comes at the scene after hearing the blast to discover these youths near the scene. STF do not ask questions but shoots them dead. Their mistake was not identifyling and killing the passengers on a whree-wheeler who threw the LTTE grenade. If there is a probe on the killings, then Ellian, the Tricomalee LTTE leader must also be answerable. If he cannot be brought to justice in normal courts, then someone should try to take him to LTTE Kangaroo courts to see if justice can be served there.

Technically speaking the STF is not part of the armed forces.  It is a division of the national Police Service headed by an appropriate DIG (currently Mr. Nimal Lewke if I'm not mistaken).  Those five boys were not just killed in crossfire to count as "collateral damage."  They were executed.  Those STF "police officers" (boy is that a stretch) had every ability to detain the boys for questioning instead of killing them in cold blood.  What the hell were they thinking- that the LTTE would somehow get intimidated when five unarmed boys get executed????  It didn't occur to them that the real murderers and killers would laugh themselves silly at the gross incompetence of the Srilankan "police"??????

But again, these executions had nothing to do with going after the LTTE or actually protecting the Sinhalese of Trincomalee.  Its purpose was merely to make the less-intelligent among the Sinhalese "feel" safer, and looking at some of the responses here that strategy has succeeded.


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If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail.- Abraham Maslow

[quote="weeran"]This is Excellent News but hard to beleive...
Government has still difficulties to find some old cases. Still there is no one has been punished for 23 people killed in Jail in 1983-July.
Does MR makes a different??

[color=green]Please DO NOT abuse the forum by posting under different IDs'.
[/color][/quote]

SL government as well as Indian government are in great difficulty in finding killers. Leave the 23 people's case aside for a while, the two governments are still incapable of punishing the basterds who killed Indian Prime Minister and Sri Lankan president. Probably weeran can try to help find and punish the basterds. May be "my side" of problems are conveniently forgotten.

I don't know what SL government or CID is doing when some forum members here have seen exactly every step of this incident and they can explain it frame by frame, what the 5 people were doing, who really were they inside, exactly where they were sitting, who threw the grenade to them (or did they threw it?), who pulled the trigger etc etc specially when the whole thing happened in pitch dark conditions.