Footage from in Umaiyalpuram, Kilinochchi, shows officers of Sri Lanka's Special Task Force (STF) assaulting a woman during a confrontation with residents, after which fourteen Tamil civilians, among them young children, schoolgirls and elderly residents, were remanded, in an operation that began over alleged illegal sand mining.
The STF had entered the Umaiyalpuram area, residents say, ostensibly to halt alleged illegal sand mining. Tensions escalated when officers attempted to arrest a man found with a tractor in a forest area, prompting a confrontation as his relatives and neighbours gathered at the scene. Additional STF personnel were then deployed, and force was used against the civilians present, with footage of the incident showing officers assaulting a woman.
Fourteen people were arrested and produced before the Kilinochchi court, which ordered them remanded pending further proceedings. Those held, according to local sources, include two young children, their parents, two schoolgirls and elderly residents.
The arrests, and the violence captured on camera, have drawn public criticism over the proportionality of the security response and the detention of vulnerable people, including minors, with community members calling for an independent investigation into the conduct of the STF during the operation.
The STF is a militarised commando unit of the Sri Lankan police with a long and documented record of human rights abuses against Tamils in the North-East during and after the armed conflict.
More than seventeen years after the end of the war, the unit and the military remain heavily entrenched across Kilinochchi, the former administrative heart of the Vanni, where the security forces continue to intervene in the daily lives of the Tamil population.