{"id":4487,"date":"2007-06-07T13:13:45","date_gmt":"2007-06-07T18:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=4487"},"modified":"2007-06-07T11:50:25","modified_gmt":"2007-06-07T16:50:25","slug":"almost_like_a_v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/07\/almost_like_a_v\/","title":{"rendered":"“almost like a variation of ethnic cleansing”"},"content":{"rendered":"

On our News tab, Interloper pointed out a BBC article<\/a> about Tamils who were evicted from budget hotels by police in Sri Lanka’s largest city, Colombo.<\/p>\n\n

Police in Sri Lanka have forced hundreds of the minority Tamil community out of the capital Colombo for what they say are security reasons.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n
They launched overnight raids in Tamil areas of the city and forced guests staying in budget hotels onto buses.<\/blockquote>\n\n
Police said that Tamils who were in the capital “without valid reasons” were made to board buses bound for the north and east of the island.<\/blockquote>\n\n
Police said that the move was necessary amid fears of renewed civil war<\/strong>.<\/blockquote>\n\n

The raids were justified in the name of impeding the Tamil Tigers; they were also meant to protect.<\/p>\n\n

They also said the measure was being taken for the safety of the Tamil community amid a rash of abductions across Colombo blamed on the rebels and the security forces.<\/blockquote>\n\n

How many of you believe this? I’m not judging, I’m asking.<\/p>\n\n

A statement released by the government said that the evictions were made “without communal considerations”…<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n
“There have been instances where some ‘lodgers’ have lived in the Colombo area for over six months without making any progress, on the pretext that someone has to obtain his or her identity card or passport,” the statement said.<\/blockquote>\n\n
“The resulting action by the police is required considering security demands such as the recent Tamil Tiger bomb explosions resulting in several innocent lives lost, and severe damage to property.<\/blockquote>\n\n
“Investigations have also confirmed that those responsible for these brutal killings have hatched their brutal plans and executed them from these lodgings,” the statement said.<\/blockquote>\n\n
It said that a total of 376 persons – 291 males and 85 females – have left in seven buses for destinations in the north and east.<\/blockquote>\n\n

Tigers have “no comment”, but mainstream Tamil leaders are disturbed by the move:<\/p>\n\n

“This operation is a very bad example,” Tamil political leader Dharmalingam Sithadthan told the AFP news agency.<\/blockquote>\n\n
“It is OK for the Tamil Tigers to indulge in this sort of ethnic cleaning because they have no moral responsibility, but a government can’t behave like this,” he said.<\/blockquote>\n\n

Apparently, it’s an anti-loitering sort of measure:<\/p>\n\n

Colombo Inspector General of police Rohan Abeywardene told Reuters that some people who had no valid reasons to be in Colombo were “just hanging around”. <\/blockquote>\n\n
“They have been requested to leave and told they had better get back to their own villages,” he said.<\/blockquote>\n\n

Those rounded up (and they don’t know where they are being taken, by the way) were typically from poor, rural areas who were looking for better employment opportunities.<\/p>\n\n

Human Rights concerns? Here’s where my title came from:<\/p>\n\n

“This is almost like a variation of ethnic cleansing,” Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the independent Centre for Policy Alternatives think-tank told Reuters.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n
“It is quite appalling.”<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On our News tab, Interloper pointed out a BBC article about Tamils who were evicted from budget hotels by police in Sri Lanka’s largest city, Colombo. Police in Sri Lanka have forced hundreds of the minority Tamil community out of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}