Seventeen UK Tamil student bodies demand PTA repeal

A coalition of seventeen Tamil youth and university student organisations across the United Kingdom has demanded the full repeal of Sri Lanka's Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and an end to the prosecution of Eelam Tamil artist Sangeethsan Ganeskumar, days after the rapper known as Hiphop Sangee was released on bail but left facing continuing charges over a song.

Ganeskumar, a 24-year-old from Kilinochchi, was arrested on 2 June after Sri Lankan police alleged that videos he uploaded following a performance at a temple festival in Navatkuli, in the Chavakachcheri area of Jaffna, sought to promote the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. He was remanded under the PTA until 17 June, before being released on bail on 12 June, after the Attorney General withdrew the terrorism charge and moved to proceed under Section 120 of the Penal Code, the lesser offence of exciting disaffection. The case against him continues, and campaigners are demanding that the charges be dropped altogether.

In a joint statement, the organisations described the arrest under the PTA as "a blatant violation of freedom of expression and fundamental human rights", and cast it as part of a continuing effort "to criminalise Tamil political, cultural, and national expression while the international community fails to take meaningful action".

The statement placed particular responsibility on the United Kingdom, which it said "bears a particular moral responsibility, having forcibly merged two distinct nations under colonial rule and laid the foundations for decades of discrimination, persecution, and ultimately genocide against the Tamil people".

Seventeen years after the end of the armed conflict, the organisations said, Eelam Tamils remained denied justice, accountability and self-determination. They pointed to the continued militarisation of the Tamil homeland, land appropriation and the suppression of political expression and memorialisation as evidence of what they described as a system of structural genocide, and argued that the use of the PTA against Ganeskumar was not an isolated incident but a symptom of that wider repression.

The coalition called on the United Nations, the international community and governments committed to human rights to demand Ganeskumar's release and condemn the use of the PTA against artists and civilians, to press for the full repeal of the Act and an end to repressive legislation directed at Tamils, and to take meaningful steps towards international accountability for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Tamil people. It further urged action to address the "ongoing structural genocide" faced by Eelam Tamils, including militarisation, land seizures and the suppression of fundamental freedoms.

"The continued failure to act only reinforces a culture of impunity," the statement said. "As Tamil youth, we refuse to remain silent while our people continue to face injustice."

The statement was signed by the Tamil Youth Organisation UK and Phoenix TNG, alongside the Tamil societies of the University of Keele, the University of Brunel, Birmingham City University, Imperial College London, King's College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Roehampton, the University of Surrey, the University of East Anglia, the University of Warwick, the University of Greenwich, City University of London, the University of Brighton and Essex, Middlesex University and the University of Southampton.