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Students at the University of Jaffna gathered on Thursday to mark the 51st anniversary of the martyrdom of Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran, recognized as the first martyr of the Tamil liberation struggle.
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The students gathered to listen to the lecturers talk about Pon. Sivakumaran’s sacrifice. They also laid flowers and lit candles at a memorial obelisk at the Jaffna University premises. Sivakumaran, a pioneering figure in the resistance movement, took up arms against the systemic oppression imposed on Tamil students through standardization policies, advocating for their rightful access to education and equality.
Sivakumaran was a member of the Tamil Manavar Peravai (or Tamil Student Federation, TSF) and a leading militant in the early armed Tamil struggle.
On 5th June 1974, Sivakumaran was surrounded by Sri Lankan security forces. He had previously been tortured during an earlier detention in police custody for damaging property of those responsible for the conference killings. Evading torture, Sivakumaran committed suicide using a capsule of cyanide, in order to negate the risk of revealing information that jeopardised the growing Tamil armed resistance movement.
He became the first Tamil militant to die in the armed struggle, and his death sparked widespread grief across the North-East.
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