SL Military shoots dead 2 detainees in Vavuniya internment camp

Sri Lanka military personnel opened fire Sunday morning on detainees in an attempt to stop them making way through the barbed wire fence separating Ramanathan camp and Anandakumarasamy camp located in Cheddikulam, killing two of them and injuring more than two, in a confrontation that developed Sunday morning, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The killers had taken the two bodies away and their identities are not available at the moment, the sources added.

In the beginning when a fence was erected separating Ramanathan camp and Anandakumaraswamy camp it was constructed with barbed wires running straight, parallel to the ground. The detainees from both camps had made a stile through the said barbed wire fence so that they could visit their family members held separately in these camps.

Whenever such a stile was made it was hastily patched up preventing the detainees passing between the camps and when this fence failed to keep them off it was constructed into a regular fence with posts.

But the detainees continued to make a stile through the regular fence and the authorities strengthened the regular fence by running barbed wires crosswise, both horizontal and perpendicular.

The detainees, in a frustrated state of mind due to resentment and anger, did manage to get through even the strengthened barbed wire fence separating them from their near and dear ones Sunday morning when the military personnel opened fire on them.