Lankan courts order suspension of evicting Tamils from Colombo

Colombo, June 8 (UNI) Sri Lanka's Supreme Court today ordered its Police Chief and area police officials to ''suspend immediately'' the evicting Tamils from the budget-lodges in the capital until further notice, officials here said.

The Supreme Court delivered this ''interim order'' when taking up a fundamental rights case filed by the independent research think-tank, the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) with regard to the eviction of over 300 Tamil civilians from the budget-lodges in the capital city of Colombo.

''We received an interim order basically ordering the Inspector General of Police as well as Officer-in-Charge of Wellawatte, Pettah, Paliyagoda and Wattala areas not to carry out such actions until the case is taken up in the court again on June 22 for further hearing,'' a CPA official said.

The Police chief, the Attorney General and other area police officials were cited as respondents in this fundamental rights case.

Police yesterday 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.

Armed policemen carried-out a pre-dawn raid on these lodgers located in heavily Tamil populated towns in the city such as Wellawatte, Wattala, Peliyagoda and Pettah areas and packed over 300 Tamil civilians into buses and allegedly transporting them to northern Vavuniya and eastern Trincomalee districts.

''A total of 376 persons 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 political parties of all ethnic divide and human rights groups have vehemently condemned the government move to evict hundreds of ethnic minority Tamil civilians from the budget-lodges in the capital city of Colombo yesterday.

Although the police has defended this move as part of their program to further strengthen the security measures in the capital city, which witnessed two claymore blasts a couple of weeks ago, the political parties and the rights group have condemned it as a gross violation of the country's Constitution.

UNI