Protests in the East, despite court order

Members of the civil society, politicians and religious leaders have started a protest march in the Eastern province over a series of outstanding issues, despite a court order prohibiting the protests.

The protest started off at Pothuvil and was heading towards Batticaloa despite heavy rains in the area.

They are due to reach Jaffna by Saturday joining others who are having similar protest campaigns in the north.

Among the issues they are protesting against are issues of land grabs, state sponsored settlement programmes, failure to pay the Rs 1000  wage increase for plantation workers,  failure to follow a UN call to allow burial of those deaths caused due COVID and in support of the UN report on human rights.

Police made several attempts to stop the protestors by showing the court order to them, but they ignored the police warnings.

They demanded an explanation from the police as to how protests in other parts of the country including Colombo are allowed.

Among the protestors were MPs M. A. Sumanthiran,  Govindan Karunakaran and Shanakiyan Rasamanickam  and former MPs T.Ariyanethran and Gnanamuttu Srineshan.

(By Chris Kamalendran/Pix by Farook Sihan)