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Curfew in Sri Lanka after Muslim-Tamil Clash
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| Rauf
Hakim, Sri Lankan Muslim leader
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By
IOL South Asia correspondent
NEW
DELHI, June 26 (IslamOnline) - A curfew was imposed in eastern Sri
Lanka Tuesday, June 25, after a clash between Muslims and Tamils.
Three Muslims and two Tamils were injured as police and international
ceasefire monitors intervened to stop the clashes in the eastern town
of Trincomalee, which was shut down throughout the day as part of a
public protest.
A
curfew was imposed in the afternoon in the town of Muttur. The
Muslim-Tamil clash came in the wake of two anti-Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE) attacks. The first was on some rebel cadres and the
second an arson attack on the LTTE’s Muttur office.
Sources
in the area said that all shops and markets had been shut and
transport came to a standstill Tuesday over the strike. Government
institutions were also closed and most of the Tamil schools were given
a holiday. Attendance at Sinhalese (Buddhist) and Muslim schools was
poor.
Though
Trincomalee is a government-controlled town, the LTTE wields heavy
influence after it was permitted under the ceasefire agreement to
conduct political work in the area. The city is largely multi-ethnic
with an almost equal representation of Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese.
The
first attack against the LTTE cadres has been blamed on the Sri Lankan
Navy, while the rebels suspect a Muslim group is involved in the other
attack. An unknown group allegedly called “Osama Wing” belonging
to an unknown outfit called the “Jihad Group” was blamed by the
LTTE for this attack in which an LTTE office was ransacked.
The
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) leader and Ports and Shipping
Minister Rauff Hakeem condemned the attack, describing it as a
sinister attempt to disturb the prevailing cordiality between Tamils
and Muslims in the east.
The
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) has asked the government to order
an independent investigation into the incident in the islands on
Thursday, June 20, in which two LTTE political activists were
assaulted. The assailants tried to abduct the rebels, before villagers
intervened.
The
SLMM convened a meeting of representatives of the Army and Navy, the
Jaffna police and the LTTE at Jaffna on Saturday, June 22, to consider
the fall-out of the incident. The rebels have accused the Navy of
seeking to subvert the truce by such attacks. It was decided that the
security forces and the rebels would conduct separate inquiries, while
the Mission would seek an independent probe by writing to the Prime
Minister.
The
LTTE-Muslim relations have been strained throughout the two-decades
long Tamil secessionist rebellion which Muslims refused to join though
they too speak Tamil language like the Hindu-based LTTE which expelled
Muslims en masse from areas under its control.
One
June 14, SLMC and the LTTE had formed a joint committee to probe the
grievances of Muslims in the north & east. This follows the April
meeting between SLMC chief, Rauf Hakeem and LTTE chief, Prabhakaran.
Resettlement of displaced Muslims and resolution of matters connected
with cultivation activities of Muslims was to be the immediate
concerns of the committee.
Last
May when some Muslims returned for the first time to their homes in
Jaffna after 12 years since the LTTE ordered all Muslims in the area
to leave, they found nothing but rubble.
After
the government and LTTE entered into a permanent cease-fire three
months ago, rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran agreed to permit the
tens of thousands of Muslims who were expelled from the northern
province to return to their homes. But most of these people who left
without anything and have lived in the poorest conditions as refugees
for all these years came back only to broken down homes and a badly
destroyed city.
On
April 6 the LTTE rebels for the first time publicly apologized for
ethnically cleansing minority Muslims in the embattled Jaffna region
12 years ago, a pro-rebel website reported on April 5. The chief
negotiator of the LTTE, Anton Balasingham, was quoted as saying that
it was a “political blunder” to forcibly evict tens of thousands
of minority Muslims in 1990.
While
addressing a public meeting in the rebel-held Mullaitivu region on
Wednesday, Balasingham admitted that the ethnic cleansing policy could
not be justified, the Tamilnet.com website said. “Let us forget and
forgive the mistakes in the past,” Balasingham said, adding that
Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran was ready to meet Muslim leaders.
Sri
Lanka’s Tamils make up about 12.6 percent of the 18.66 million
population, while the Muslims with 7.5 percent of the population are
the second largest minority group. The Tamil Tiger rebels forced an
estimated 100,000 Muslims out of the Jaffna peninsula, giving them
just 24 hours’ notice to quit. Most of them still live as refugees
in the North-west of the island.
He
said the LTTE was willing to re-settle the Muslims evicted from
Jaffna. The LTTE established a de facto separate Tamil state in Jaffna
after driving out the Muslims. Government forces took control of
Jaffna last December. The LTTE said it would re-settle the Muslims
once its current truce with government forces stabilizes.
Norway
arranged an open-ended bilateral truce between the two sides on
February 23 ahead of possible face-to-face political talks in Thailand
to peacefully end the decades-old ethnic bloodshed.
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