A commemoration has been held in Trincomalee in the memory of a group of students who had been shot dead by government defense forces but are yet to receive justice regarding this.
On 2 January, 2006, five students of the St. Joseph’s College and Koneswara Hindu College in Trincomalee had been shot dead near the beach close to Fort Frederick in Trincomalee. The deceased were, Manoharan Rajihar, Yogaraja Hemachandran, Shanmugaraja Gajendran, Logidaraja Rohan, and Thangathurai Sivananda.
Despite being shot, two others, namely Yoganathan Punangulalan and Pararajasingham Gokulraj, managed to survive.
On the 19th anniversary of the students’ murder, which fell on 2 January, parents, relatives and friends of the murdered students and also social activists gathered at the Gandhi Statue roundabout in Trincomalee to remember the students. They displayed photographs of the students, and offered flowers and lit lamps.
Although the government at the time led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed that the defense forces were not involved in the students’ murder, close-up photographs of the murdered students taken by Sudar Oli journalist Sugirdarajan Subramanium confirmed that they had died due to gunshots.
Two weeks later, journalist Subramanium was also shot dead in a high-security zone where the Eastern Province Governor’s Office is located.
When the parents of the murdered students sought court’s assistance, several defense forces personnel were arrested. However, they were later released on bail.
Meanwhile, claiming that the investigations into the incident would dishearten the defense forces, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) staged protests in collaboration with Sinhala nationalist groups in Trincomalee. The President, who is also the leader of the JVP, has repeatedly vowed that he will not tolerate racism. The JVP leads the ruling National People’s Power (NPP).
However, the seven long-drawn-out cases that the government chose to investigate claiming that ‘investigations can be concluded swiftly’ do not include the killing of the five students in Trincomalee.
Meanwhile, the then Road Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa had told the then US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Robert Blake that although the government was aware that Special Task Force (STF) personnel were involved in the incident, it was not possible to file cases against them due to insufficient evidence.
‘It cannot be proven with evidence pertaining to firearms and bullets. It is possible that they use different firearms to murder people,” WikiLeaks revealed quoting him.
The Rajapaksa government, which attempted to subdue murdered students’ parents with threats and intimidation, later tried to silence them by offering gifts.
In his testimony, Dr. Kasipillai Manoharan had said that the Human Rights and Disaster Management Minister at the time and the current Sri Lankan Ambassador to the US Mahinda Samarasinghe had asked him to drop the complaint saying that “no one would benefit from dragging the issue further” and had said that the latter can provide a house in Colombo and protection in return.
The father of slain student Rajihar, Dr. Manoharan, took the Trincomalee student killings to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). However, despite the fact that 19 years have passed, justice is yet to be served.
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