Sri Lankan troops surrounded the home of outspoken Northern Provincial Councillor Ananthy Sasitharan this evening, in what she described as an ongoing effort to intimidate her and those who interact with her.
 
A dozen armed soldiers were standing around the house as Ms. Sasitharan returned after picking up her children from a friend's house at 17:45pm. The troops loitered, staring through her fence, for 30 minutes before leaving, she said, speaking to Tamil Guardian shortly after the incident.
 
"Since Geneva I have noticed a heightened military presence in my area and have been staying at different peoples' houses to avoid the military, but I have now decided to stop moving and stay at home,” she said.
 
Ms Sasitharan played a prominent role in campaigning for an international investigation into Sri Lanka’s wartime atrocities and ongoing rights abuses at the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva last month.
 
“These are attempts to intimidate me and also to scare the Tamil people and remind them that there will be deadly consequences if they speak against the oppression," she said.
 
“The increased military presence in our area is a way of the government instilling fear in our people,” she said, adding that it was part of the intensified military activity in the North-East which began soon after the UNHRC session got underway.
 
“Their very presence is a form of harassment. The people here even feel the presence of the military when they sleep, as their animals are woken as the military moves along the roads in the night."