Anti SL protests intensify in TN, over 400 students court arrest

The anti-Sri Lanka protests in Tamil Nadu are intensifying, with more and more student organisations holding demonstrations and demanding that India take a stand against Sri Lanka in a UNHRC vote. Over 400 students in Chennai holding banners and placards courted arrest outside Raj Bhavan on Monday morning, while students from IIT Chennai held a massive demonstration on Sunday. Over 500 students in an engineering college in the suburb of Ramavaram are also conducting a hunger strike against alleged Lankan atrocities in the aftermath of the 2009 civil war. [caption id=“attachment_665352” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] And the protests are not just limited to colleges. A number of lawyers are protesting outside the Madras High Court, while other reports from Chennai indicate that students from some city schools are on the streets, holding aloft placards showing pictures of the bullet-ridden body of Balachandran. The 12-year-old Balachandran was the youngest son of LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran. A recently released documentary by BBC Channel Four showed two pictures of Balachandran taken by the same camera and hours apart. The first showed him sitting in a military bunker eating some biscuits, while the other showed him dead on the ground with five bullet wounds to the chest. DMK Supremo Karunanidhi has already threatened to leave the UPA unless India votes against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC vote in Geneva later this month.   The government has said that a decision on India’s stand on the US resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council will be taken only after a discussion with Karunanidhi. Sri Lankan ambassador to India Prasad Kariyawasam has called the rising Tamil Nadu protests terrorism.