Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Shanakiyan Rajaputhiran Rasamanickam told Sri Lanka’s parliament that Tamil voices would ‘not be destroyed’ in a fiery address earlier this month, as refought off several interruptions from Sinhala lawmakers.
Shanakiyan touched on a range of topics including the destruction of LTTE cemeteries and the banning of Maaveerar Naal commemorations last month.\
“It’s a cemetery,” he said, referring to the dozens of Thuyilum Illams that were destroyed by the Sri Lankan military, where thousands of LTTE cadres were buried. “Who touches a cemetery? I mean, how bad is that. How dare you touch a cemetery! Are you that scared? I mean why would you touch a cemetery?”
“This is how Zahran happened,” the lawmaker continued, referring to the 2019 Easter Sunday attack leader. “You keep attacking minorities like this, what is going to happen? Naturally, they are going to react in some way.”
“I went to court in Batticaloa,” he added. “Why? Because there is a mother who wants to light up a lamp for her son. A father wants to light up a lamp in remembrance of his son. For you all maybe it’s LTTE, for me, for him, for us, it’s a different thing. But for a mother, a son is a son… why can’t you respect that?”
“Tamils are going to courts to remember their dead, Muslims are going to court to bury their dead.”
“You all should be ashamed,” he added, speaking on the refusal of the Sri Lankan government to bury Muslim coronavirus victims. "I am ashamed. And I am ashamed of all the Muslim politicians who supported this government for the 20th Amendment.”
As he fought off several interruptions from Sinhala MPs, the Tamil parliamentarian said that it “is behaviour like this that strengthens us”.
"When you all behave like this it strengthens our cause,” he added.
“It’s taken 72 years and you still haven’t been able to destroy our voices. Even if it takes another 75 years, you all will not be able to destroy our voices. What you all will destroy is this country.”
“You all boast that this is a Sinhala Buddhist country, you all can’t even allow a Tamil man to speak!”
See his full speech above.
Rasamanickam, a former SLFP organiser for the Paddiruppu area, has ties to the paramilitary leader Pillaiyan and previously campaigned with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). Earlier this year, extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk Sumanarathna, known for his frequently violent racist outbursts, described his close relationship with the now TNA lawmaker.