2nd Lead (Adds details)

Japanese students hold Sivaram memorial

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 June 2005, 00:06 GMT]
Students at a Tokyo university where Tamil political columnist and military analyst Dharmeratnam Sivaram was scheduled to speak shortly before he was abducted and murdered by unidentified gunmen in Colombo on April 28 held a memorial Tuesday this week.

Students from the International Internship Program at Chuo University in Tokyo who had been expecting to listen to Mr. Sivaram’s speech gathered at the Faculty of Policy Studies to pay their respects, sources said.

“The murder of a person such as Mr. Dharmeratnam, who enthusiastically sought for and fought for the fair rights for Tamils by being a bridge that … across ethnicities, has given a profound obstacle to the achievement of peace between Tamils and Sinhalese,” student representative Mitsugu Maekawa said.

“Such a loss of the key person makes us reconsider how difficult it is to untie all the tangled causes of conflicts … between the two sides,” he said.

“However … we want to believe that there is still a way in which both sides concede for peace, respecting each other under different system of governance on the small island,” he added.

Ms. Suvendrini Kakuchi, a Sri Lankan Tamil journalist based in Tokyo, was invited by Chuo University to speak at the memorial for Sivaram.

Thanking the university and the students for the opportunity to address the event, she said that Mr. Sivaram's murder would not silence the ideas and ideals he stood for. This memorial is another reflection that the pen is truly mightier than the sword, she said.

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