Tamil Nadu Students Protest Alleged Human Rights Abuses in Sri Lanka

Babu/Reuters Students in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, protesting alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan army against Tamil rebels, on Monday.

CHENNAI, Tamil Naduâ€"The police sought to arrest more than 200 university students in Tamil Nadu’s capital, Chennai as protests raged on college campuses over allegations of the Sri Lankan army’s brutal treatment of Tamil rebels.

“Some of the student protests in the city were peaceful, but I learned that warrants have been issued against 230 people,” said a police officer who was stationed at Anna University, which didn’t see any arrests. He asked to remain anonymous becausehe was not authorized to speak to the media.

Over the past week, thousands of students across Tamil Nadu, including in Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Salem, have fasted, picketed and boycotted classes as they demand an independent investigation into the Sri Lankan government’s treatment of Tamils. Human rights activists say that more than 40,000 Tamil civilians died in Sri Lanka, the tear-shaped island nation east of the Tamil Nadu coast, in the final months of a 26-year civil war, which ended in 2009.

The upheaval in Tamil Nadu has been sparked by the recent release of disturbing photographs and a report on the continued abuse of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Many of the 72 million citizens (as per 2011 census) of Tamil Nadu relate to and support Sri Lankan Tamils, with whom they share a common language.

Photographs that circulated in February appear to show 12-year-old Balachandran, the son of the slain rebel leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velu! pillai Prabakaran, was shot several times at close range in the chest. Last month, a Human Rights Watch report said that Sri Lanka’s security forces used rape to torture suspected members of the rebel group, also known as or L.T.T.E., for years after the end of the war.

“There is a genocide going on in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Tamils are being killed and have lost their human rights,” a postgraduate student of Madras University who was involved in the protests said in a telephone interview. He declined to be identified because he feared the police.

At Madras University on Monday, there was drumming and picketing, the student said. Several plainclothes police officers were questioning staff and students, he said. “If you see an animal is goin to attack your friend, you will try to help them get out of danger. Why cannot we do that It could put pressure on the central government,” added the student.

The Indian central government, headed by the Indian National Congress, has a complicated relationship with Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, husband of the current Congress party president, Sonia Gandhi, was killed in a suicide bombing in Tamil Nadu carried out by woman believed to be a L.T.T.E. supporter.

Human rights activists are urging the Indian government to take a clear stance on a United Nations resolution criticizing Sri Lanka’s human rights record during the civil war, which is likely to be discussed this week.

In February, Tamil Nadu’s chief minister, J. Jayalalithaa, refused to host the Asian Athletics Championships in July as a protest against the Sri Lankan government’s treatment of Sri Lankan Tamils, particularly in the death of Mr. Prabhakaran’s son.

“The pictures revealing Balachandran! ’s deat! h have heightened people’s emotions,” said Ashik Bonofer, a research fellow with the Center for Asia Studies in Chennai, who has traveled to Sri Lankan Tamil refugee camps in India and Sri Lanka. “The students have taken up the issue at various institutes and many students are coming together.”

M. Sakkariyas, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee living in Chennai and an official at the Organization for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation, which represents 69,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees living in 111 camps in India, said the widespread protests may backfire on the very people the students are trying to help.

“People have decided on their own and are conducting protests, but our fear is that sometimes it may lead to unwanted problems for those refugees returning” to Sri Lanka, he said.

“Sri Lankan Tamils living in refugee camps want to return, but they don’t see anything promising as far as the political solution for the Tamils,” Mr. Sakkariyas said. “And then there is the issue of fining suitable jobs, a home and even education for their children, all of which are currently tough to get back home.”