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| September 26 is the anniversary of the death of LTTE Lt. Col. Thileepan in 1987 during his hungerstrike appealing for the Indian government of Premier Rajiv Gandhi to honour the security undertakings it gave to the Tamil people alongside its 1987 Accord with Sri Lanka. Click image for details. |
September 26th 2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Lt. Col Thileepan of the LTTE, after he fasted to death on a hungerstrike appealing to the Indian government to honour pledges made to the Tamil people.
Thileepan, the then political wing leader of the Jaffna district for the LTTE, began his fast on the 15th of September 1987, with 100,000 people gathered around the historic Nallur Kandwaswamy Temple in Jaffna. He put forward 5 demands to the Indian government:
- the release of all Tamils held under Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA),25 years later, Tamil political prisoners are still being detained, colonisation has continued unabated, the Sri Lankan military continues to dominate the Tamil homeland, and government-backed paramilitaries are still on the rampage.
- a halt to the state-sponsored Sinhala colonisation of Tamil lands,
- an end to the building of new Sri Lankan military camps in the Tamil areas,
- the withdrawal of the Sri Lankan security forces from Tamil schools, and
- the disarming of Sinhala and Muslim paramilitary militia.
Also see:
Self-sacrifice for the greater good has a long tradition (Opinion)
Witness to Thileepan’s fast (Feature)
See also, the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and the LTTE's response to it.