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Sri Lankan president seeks answers on evictions

Ethnic Tamils look on at their temporary boarding in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Friday. Sri Lanka's highest court ordered police to stop expelling Tamils from the capital. PHOTO: AP

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse ordered the country's police chief to explain the eviction of hundreds of ethnic Tamils from the capital, in an apparent attempt to quell mounting outrage over the expulsions.

Rajapakse's order came on Friday night, hours after the country's highest court ordered police to stop expelling minority Tamils and a rights group warned the evictions could further fuel the country's 24-year separatist ethnic conflict.

Police Chief Victor Perera was asked to submit an immediate report to the president on the manner in which Tamils were sent back home, a statement from the president's office said.

Rajapakse also "called for an immediate inquiry to be initiated to ascertain the basis for this security-related operation," it said.

The Defense Ministry said last week 376 people were rounded up in Colombo and sent home to the north and east -- areas that have been beset by bloodshed for most of the past year -- as a security precaution amid the rising violence that has claimed more than 5,000 lives in 19 months.

Rights groups, opposition lawmakers, the US and peace broker Norway roundly condemned the expulsions, calling them "blatantly discriminatory," divisive and likely to increase tension in the war-torn country.

The Supreme Court, responding to a petition appealing for the Tamils' fundamental rights, moved to quell the furor on Friday by ordering the expulsions stopped.

The court also said those evicted must not be prevented from returning to Colombo, said M.A. Sumanthiran, a lawyer for the Center for Policy Alternatives, an independent think tank, which filed the petition. The next hearing on the petition will be June 22.

On Thursday, senior police officer Rohan Abeywardena said the Tamils were expelled because they had no valid reason to be in Colombo.

Human Rights Watch said the expulsions were dangerous in a country teetering on the brink of all-out civil war.

"Nothing could be more inflammatory in Sri Lanka's polarized climate than identifying people by ethnicity and kicking them out of the capital," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Friday.

"The government has every right to take action against individuals who are reasonably suspected of committing a crime and to take security measures when there are threats to the public," Adams said. "But that doesn't mean it can arbitrarily discriminate against a whole group of people."

The US embassy issued a statement calling for the evictions to stop and urging the Sri Lankan government to make public the destinations of those removed and ensure their safety and well-being.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's military said yesterday troops had killed 30 rebels in a fierce jungle battle in the island's restive east and that three insurgents committed suicide with cyanide capsules to avoid capture.

"We estimate troops killed 30 Tigers, plus three Tigers committed suicide in front of our troops," a spokesman for the Media Center for National Security said.

He said troops had overrun four Tiger bases.
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