COLOMBO: A peaceful strike was observed in Sri Lanka’s northern Tamil areas on Tuesday in protest against the killing of two university students by police in Jaffna district.

The strike was called by Tamil political parties and organisations.

All government offices, banks, commercial establishments and educational institutions were shut and public transport remained off the roads from 6am to 6pm.

Students of ten universities in the non-Tamil speaking South of Sri Lanka held demonstrations in support of the protest of the Northern students, contributing to stemming any major race based incidents.

Although a few posters have sprung up in the North announcing punishment to police offers engaging in destructive activities and a brawl ensued outside a bar in Northern Killinochchi between some youth and the police, the situation was largely in control and no major incident occurred, northern sources said.

University students Nadaraya Kajan and Pavunraj Sulakshan of Jaffna, who were on a motorcycle, were killed on the night of Oct 20 when the police opened fire on them at a checkpoint because they did not stop when the police asked them to.

President Maithripala Sirisena had ordered the arrest of the five policemen manning the checkpoint while a Jaffna court had remanded them till Nov 4 and sent to a prison in the Sinhalese-dominated Anuradhapura district for the safety of the Sinhalese policemen.

Meanwhile the chief minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking Northern Province, C.V. Wigneswaran, has appealed to the people of the province, especially the youth, to be calm.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2016