Ex NPC councillor vows to mark genocide remembrance at 21 places before 18 May

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 May 2019, 22:26 GMT]
Former Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member and ex-TNA parliamentarian M.K. Shivajilingam has vowed to mark Tamil Genocide Week from 12th to 17 May at 21 places across the eight districts in the North and East before taking part in the tenth year marking of 2009 Tamil Genocide Day on 18 May at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal. “We have chosen 21 places where the SL military was committing genocidal acts. It is like the 21-gun salute, the highest respect paid to those who sacrificed their lives,” Mr Shivajlingam, a political leader of TELO said. After inaugurating the first event at Kappaladi along the coast near Mu'l'livaaykkal on Sunday, he blamed the SL State for detaining the student leaders in Jaffna and for harassing himself describing the moves as aiming to suppress the 10th Tamil genocide remembrance on 18 May.

Earlier this month, Mr Shivajilingam, along with two others, was served with a summons by the SL Police to give his recorded statement on 31st May.

The SL Police was threatening to act against him for marking LTTE Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan's 64th birthday on 26 November 2018.





The former NPC Councillor blamed the SL Police for attempting to suppress the remembrance event by creating a fear psychosis among the public using the Emergency Regulations and the clauses of the Prevention of Terrorism Act against those organising the events.

At one of the Remembrance events at Uyilang-ku'lam in Mannaar, a Sinhala bus driver who was shot and killed by the SL military in 1984, would also be remembered with due respects, Mr Shivajilingam said.

The Sinhala bus driver wanted the SL military not to gun down the Tamil passengers in his bus when the Sinhala military went on a killing spree after one of its soldiers was killed in a land mine attack. The driver told the military that they had to kill him, a Sinhalese, before executing the innocent civilians in his bus. He was gunned down before the soldiers shot and killed the Tamil passengers.



Shivajilingam also narrated how the remembrance events were staged every year since 2010 and how the Tamil people bravely marked Mu'l'livaaykkaal Remembrance during the regimes of Rajapaksa and Sirisena and the role played by the Northern Provincial Council.

Mr Shivajilingam and his team were carrying banners that demanded international investigations on Tamil genocide and war crimes committed against the Tamils. The Tamil political prisoners should be released, and the SL military should vacate the lands of the people. The International Criminal Court must investigate those who were responsible for the genocide, and the UN should conduct a plebiscite in the North-East to assert the democratic aspirations of the Tamil-speaking people, were the demands featured in the banners.

Shivajilingam stressed that the 21 events were organised beyond affinity to any particular political party or movement.



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