Lankan police evicts hundreds of Tamils from Colombo lodges

Colombo, June 7 (UNI) Sri Lankan police today evicted hundreds of Tamil civilians staying temporarily in low-budget lodges, as a part of its effort to further strengthen the security measures in the capital city, which witnessed two claymore blasts a couple of weeks ago.

According to reports, police carried-out a pre-dawn raid on these lodgers located in heavily Tamil populated towns in the city such as Wellawatte, and packed over 300 Tamil civilians into buses and allegedly transported them to northern Vavuniya and eastern Trincomalee districts.

''A total of 376 people consisting of 291 males and 85 females have left for their homes in seven CTB (Ceylon Transport Board) busses in Vavuniya, Batticaloa, Jaffna and Trincomalee,'' Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) of the Ministry of Defence said in a report.

Claiming that ''the temporary occupants, who cannot provide valid reasons for their stay in the Colombo area, will be sent back to their homes under arrangements by the Police'', the MCNS reports claimed that the investigations into the recent blast in the city have indicated that ''those responsible for these brutal killings have hatched their brutal plans and executed them from these lodgings''.

The sudden actions by the Sri Lankan police resulted in a commotion in the national parliament with Tamil MPs protesting the government move hampering the proceedings for a couple of hours.

Parliament sources said the Tamil MPs sat in the well of the House in protest and disrupted the proceedings until the speaker temporarily adjourned the sittings.

Inspector General of Police, Victor Perera had said last week that Tamils from the war-ravaged northern and eastern provinces were spending long periods of time in Colombo without any valid reasons and that they were a threat to national security.

UNI