LTTE Headquarters,
                                                Tamil Eelam.
                                                06. June 1997

PRESS RELEASE
NEWS FROM TAMIL EELAM                                           
                                                
'STUDENTS DAY' MARKED BY CONDEMNATION OF SRI LANKA
	Tamil Eelam's entire student population today roundly condemned
	Sri Lanka's "War for Peace" and hostile occupation of their
	homeland. A detailed statement issued by the Confederation of
	Tamil Students - on what is this year's 'Students' Day' - says
	Tamil students' lives have been disrupted beyond imagination by
	the Sinhala forces occupying parts of the northeast.
	
	The UN Charter enshrines the right of students to be adequately
	protected but the Sri Lankan military does not bother at all
	about the needs of the students, says the statement. Education
	has been pushed to the sidelines in all occupied Tamil areas.
	
	In Jaffna, the statement continues, life for Tamil students is
	intolerable - they are frequently rounded up and searched,
	arrested (without recourse to any legal justice or compensation)
	and hundreds have already gone missing. Tamils are literally at
	the mercy of the armed forces. Jaffna's main university campus
	meanwhile resembles a high-security prison, with the entire
	medical faculty non-operational due to the lack of staff. All
	these problems stem directly from the Sri Lankan military
	occupation, the statement notes.
	
	Meanwhile, many schools in military-occupied parts have been
	totally shut down to house the Sinhala army. Students are
	subsequently not offered new facilities but left to fend for
	themselves. The Sinhala military regime, in this manner, is
	slowly eroding Tamils' educational life.
	
	The students' annual statement also acknowledges that Sri Lanka's
	military adventures on Tamil soil have a specific target - to
	harm civilian life as thoroughly as possible. During these
	incursions, the student population has often been direct targets
	of military strikes, like at Nagarkoil where 40 school children
	were deliberately bombed by the Sri Lankan airforce.
	
	What is more, the statement says, fear has gripped students. Army
	checkpoints littering the Tamil homeland engender panic in the
	young who face the prospect of being picked off and taken away in
	army vehicles. Young Tamil female students on their way to school
	have fallen regular victim to this practice.
	
	In Puthukudiyiruppu today a huge procession of parents, teachers
	and students will march to the Malathi memorial grounds to mark
	the occasion (Students' day).
	
MAJOR EPIDEMIC IN MULLAITIVU
	Due to the massive over-crowding in Mullaitvu caused by mass
	displacements of Tamils diseases are breaking out at a worrying
	rate. The Sri Lankan government's embargo on medicines to the
	Vanni has made matters worse with many varieties of disease
	spreading uncontrollably. Cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea, dysentry,
	scabies, malaria, cerebral malaria and common fever are rampant.
	Without the Sri Lankan government easing its restrictions on
	medicine flow to Vanni, there is no prospect of these diseases -
	affecting chunks of the civilian population - subsiding.

Political Committee,
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

(English translation of the LTTE statement released by
LTTE International Secretariat, 211 Katherine Road, London E6 1BU,
United Kingdom. Tel:0181- 503 4294 / Fax: 0181-470 8593)