"We congratulate the people of Sri Lanka on their historic Provincial Council elections on September 21.  The high turn-out and participation in all three of the provinces holding elections is a victory for the democratic process.

“Canada is deeply concerned by continuing reports of violence against electoral candidates and an election observer in the lead-up to the three provincial council elections that will take place in Sri Lanka on September 21.

“Such acts of intimidation are completely unacceptable, and the perpetrators of these crimes must be brought to justice.

The highly controversial Northern-Provincial Elections took place today, after a week that saw the attack of an electoral candidate’s residence, the death of a TNA campaigner and several other draconian measures .

Sources suggest that over 60% of eligible voters took part in all districts of the Northern Province. The district of Jaffna had the lowest turn-out of 60%.

The past week saw citizens of the North subject to heightening intimidation and misinformation.

Less than two days before the Northern Provincial Council election, one of the most vocal and outspoken candidates of the Tamil National Alliance’s electoral campaign Ananthi Sasitharan narrowly escaped an attack at her home.

Consequently, an election monitor, who rushed to the scene after receiving a call from Ananthi, was brutally attacked.

Full Coverage: SL army attack Ananthy Sasitharan's home   (20 September 2013)

Fake prints of the Uthayan newspaper were distributed around the Northern Province, exhibited fictitious calls from the TNA that urged voters to boycott the elections. The forged paper went as far as alleging that TNA candidate, Ananthi Sasitharan, had pledged a new alliance to the ruling party, the UPFA.

Copy of fake Uthayan Newspaper- Courtesy www.Seithy.com

Sugash Kanagaratnam, an election monitor with the Colombo based monitoring group, People's Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), made a statement this morning, regarding the incident last night when the Sri Lankan army and paramilitary beseiged the house of the TNA candidate and activist, Ananthy Sasitharan, and attacked TNA supporters and election monitoring staff who had gathered there.

Twenty-eight old Kanagaratnam, who is currently admitted Jaffna Teaching Hospital, where he is receiving treatment for his injuries, is also an Attorney-at-Law.

Speaking this morning from his hospital bed, Kanagaratnam said:

"I received a call from one of Ananthy Sasitharan's (TNA Candidate for Northern Provincial Council and Convenor of the Disappeared families Forum) staff late in the night on the 19th of Sepetmber 2013 seeking to make a complaint that her house was being surrounded by Sri Lankan Army and paramilitary personnel.

I left with a friend to Ananthy's house in Tholpuram, Sulipuram and found out that Ananthy had been moved to a different place because of the threat of violence.

At around 12.40 about 12-15 army personnel in uniform and two in civil [uniform] entered Ananthy's house with weapons. They broke open the doors and got about five of us to come out of the house and forced us to kneel down in a nearby field used for banana cultivation. The army personnel pointed guns from the behind and even loaded them.

I instantly remembered the scenes from the Channel 4 'Killing Fields' documentary and thought that we all were going to be murdered. They wanted to give us the worst possible fear of death.

For some reason they dropped that idea and started assaulting us. All this while I clearly told them in very simple English that I was a lawyer doing election work for a local election monitoring group (PAFFREL).

They kept beating us repeatedly with wooden poles saying "You all speak Tamil Nationalism? You all want the Northern Provincial Council. Take this" in broken Tamil.

In the final run up to the election, candidates of the TNA across the five districts have come together on three key points of their electoral campaign -reaffirming their belief in the Tamil nation's right to self-determination, rejecting the 13th Amendment or the unitary Sri Lankan constitution as a point that can lead to a political solution, and reiterating the need for an international investigation into war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

See also: TNA sets out to win support of the masses (18 Sept 2013)

17th Sept edition of Thinakurral

In advertisements printed in the local Tamil newspapers over the last few days, a total of seventeen candidates from all five districts - eight from Jaffna district including Ananthi Sasitharan and C.V. Wigneswaran, three from Killinochchi and two from Vavuniya, Mannar, and Mullaithivu respectively - have expressed the follow three points:

1) We insist that any political solution should recognise the Tamils as a nation entitled to the right to self determination and shall be based on a united NorthEast.

2) Neither the flawed 13th amendment nor the unitary Sri Lankan constitution can lead to a solution that reflects the aspiration of the Tamil people

3) We charge that Tamils living in Sri Lanka are subjected to genocide. Even after the war, demographic change through the systematic colonisation and land grab are continuing.  We are firm on our insistence that the war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed against the Tamil people during the war and for the last 30 years should be investigated though an international, independent, UN mechanism.