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LTTE pulls northern children out of Independence
By Chris Kamalendran
School children from the North have been banned by Tiger guerrillas from taking part in the 55th national independence celebrations on Tuesday. 'Independent Students' Consortium, a front organisation of the LTTE summoned school principals and ordered them not to release any children to travel to Colombo.

The government was planning to bring 1000 children from schools in the north for the Independence Day celebrations. Minister Jayalath Jayawardena was entrusted with the task of co-ordinating the event.

The organising committee headed by Minister Karu Jayasuriya earlier this week announced that one of the highlights of this year's celebrations would be the participation of school children from the north.

But, the front organisation of the LTTE at the meeting with the principals said that they were not accepting Sri Lanka's Independence Day celebrations and therefore the students should not be allowed to take part. Principals of 21 leading schools from where children were due to take part in the event were summoned to the Zonal Education Director's office in Jaffna for the meeting.

The principals were told that under a programme launched by the government known as 'Linking the south and the north', the government was trying to give a false impression that the people in the north were also celebrating the Independence along with the people in the south.

They said that the independence granted in 1948 could not be considered as independence granted for the minority Tamils. However, they said they had no objection to students travelling to the south under the north-south link programme after the Independence Day celebrations.

A principal who took part in the meeting said they had decided not to allow the children to take part in the celebrations in Colombo.The students were due to leave Jaffna on Saturday morning and the buses were kept prepared.

Dr. Jayawardena travelled to the north yesterday to resolve the matter, but was not successful. In Colombo, a spokesman for the Ministry of Rehabilitation confirmed that the LTTE had blocked the children taking part in the celebrations.

"It is an embarrassment as we have been giving wide publicity about children from the north taking part in an Independence Day celebration for the first time in the recent history," he said. The main Independence Day celebrations are being held at the Independence Square.

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