No place for politics at Marina protest platform

Protests over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue reached a feverish pitch in the city on Wednesday, with people from various walks of life taking to the streets and joining student demonstrations and rallies.

The Marina turned into an iconic protest venue in the morning after about a thousand students assembled on the beach’s service lanes for a fast. Students raised slogans condemning the island nation’s regime and demanded that the Sri Lankan president be tried in the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

The protestors burnt effigies of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The youngsters kept politicians away from their protest platform. Many political leaders, including CPI state secretary D Pandian, were sent back when they tried to express solidarity with students at the protest venue.

Though the agitating students tried to block the Kamarajar Salai in the evening, police scuttled the bid.

A day after the DMK pulled out of the UPA, the protesting students refrained from commenting on the political development, though they had been critical of the party and TESO in the past weeks. A majority of the students felt that the DMK’s move was too little and too late to benefit the Sri Lankan Tamils.

Students protests hit more than 35 places across the city, police said. Traffic on the GST Road was thrown out of gear after around 100 students from a private college staged a road blockade. Police detained the protestors and later let them off.A group of students who tried to lay siege to the TNCC headquarters on GP Road were detained.

Youths from the BJP were detained when they tried to picket the office of Ministry of External Affairs on College Road in the morning.