Sri Lanka arrests police over Tamil student deaths

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan authorities arrested and suspended five police officers on Friday over the death of two Tamil students under suspicious circumstances in the former war-zone of Jaffna, the government said.

Police initially said the pair died in a motorbike accident just before midnight on Thursday in the Jaffna peninsula which saw some of the bloodiest fighting during Sri Lanka´s civil war that ended in 2009.

But authorities arrested the officers involved after it emerged that one of the victims had been shot dead, prompting fears of "a police coverup", an official source told AFP.

The government information department later issued a statement confirming that the five officers were arrested and suspended from their jobs in Jaffna, 400-km north of Colombo.

"All necessary steps have been taken to ensure that the law is properly implemented in this regard," the statement said.

Years of harassment of the Tamil minority by Sinhalese-dominated security forces in northern Sri Lanka fuelled a nearly four-decade long ethnic conflict in the country.

Government forces still maintain a large presence in the former conflict zones and keep a close watch on the Tamil population despite the end of the war.

The latest incident in Jaffna came a day after a UN human rights expert asked Colombo to take urgent measures to "clearly demonstrate" its commitment to protect minorities.

The UN has been pushing for a special court to investigate allegations that up to 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed by government forces in the final months of fighting in 2009.

The country´s former government had resisted international calls to probe alleged killings but President Maithripala Sirisena, who came to power in January last year, has pledged accountability for war crimes under his predecessor and promised to promote reconciliation.