> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Shanakiyan Calls J.V.P. Founder a ‘Terrorist,’ Invokes Party’s Bloody Past in Thileepan Bust Row - URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/shanakiyan-calls-j-v-p-founder-a-terrorist-invokes-partys-bloody-past-in-thileepan-bust-row/ - Published: 2026-09-29T05:09:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-29T14:05:56.000Z - Author: Our Reporter - Tags: September 2026 **BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka —** Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, a Tamil opposition lawmaker and the parliamentary leader of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, on Monday called Rohana Wijeweera a “terrorist” and questioned why the Sri Lankan state could officially commemorate the founder of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the main constituent of the governing National People’s Power coalition, while police removed a bust of the Tamil Tiger figure Thileepan from a memorial site in Nallur, Jaffna. “Tributes are held under the leadership of the president for a terrorist named Rohana Wijeweera,” said Mr. Rasamanickam, who represents Batticaloa District in Parliament. He spoke to reporters after taking part in a protest in Batticaloa against the statue’s removal. “If it is said that in this country statues can be erected for those terrorists, including Rohana Wijeweera, and events can be held with state sponsorship and with the contribution and participation of the head of state, what is wrong with Tamil people paying tribute to *Thiyaga Theepam* Thileepan, who sacrificed his life through nonviolence, by peaceful means, and to those who took part in that peaceful struggle?” he said. *Thiyaga Theepam*, meaning “Light of Sacrifice,” is an honorific many Tamils use for Thileepan. Wijeweera’s J.V.P. was no stranger to political violence. It led two armed insurrections against the Sri Lankan state, first in 1971 and again from 1987 to 1989\. The second became a campaign of assassination, intimidation and terror that targeted not only the government and security forces but political opponents, public servants, trade unionists, Buddhist clergy, election candidates, voters and ordinary civilians who refused to obey the movement’s orders. The second insurrection was fueled in part by the J.V.P.’s opposition to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and the arrival of Indian troops — the same accord and Indian intervention that formed the political backdrop to Thileepan’s hunger strike in Jaffna. By then, the J.V.P. and the *Deshapremi Janatha Viyaparaya*, widely regarded as its armed wing, were enforcing their political demands with guns. Amnesty International reported that the J.V.P. and D.J.V. were generally considered responsible for more than 800 killings in 1988 alone. Their victims included members of the security forces, the governing United National Party, and opposition parties that dared to contest elections. The movement tried to terrorize Sri Lankans out of voting. It threatened to kill people who cast ballots, threatened candidates and party supporters, and attacked political rallies. Twelve candidates and numerous party supporters were killed ahead of provincial elections in 1988\. During the campaign for the February 1989 parliamentary election, 14 opposition candidates were killed and several hundred other people, including political activists and supporters, were killed amid the violence. The killing was not confined to politicians. Amnesty documented murders attributed to the J.V.P. of government employees, security personnel and their relatives, alleged informers, Buddhist monks, voters, people who broke J.V.P.-ordered strikes and curfews, broadcasters, employees of state corporations, newsagents who sold publications blacklisted by the movement and even traders selling Indian goods. Bodies of some victims were deliberately left in public as warnings to others. Prominent political figures were among the dead. Vijaya Kumaratunga, one of Sri Lanka’s most popular actors and a politician who opposed the J.V.P.’s campaign, was shot dead outside his Colombo home in February 1988; Amnesty reported that his killers were presumed to have been from the J.V.P. The movement was also accused of killing senior politicians including U.N.P. chairman Harsha Abeywardene and minister Lionel Jayatilleke. The violence reached Parliament itself. A grenade attack on a meeting of the governing party’s parliamentary group in August 1987 killed District Minister Keerthi Abeywickrema and another official and wounded others, including National Security Minister Lalith Athulathmudali. The J.V.P. was accused of responsibility, although five J.V.P. members prosecuted over the attack were later acquitted. The insurgency ultimately helped plunge southern Sri Lanka into a cycle of terror and counterterror. The J.V.P. assassinated opponents and enforced strikes and shutdowns through death threats; government forces and allied groups responded with an extraordinarily brutal counterinsurgency in which thousands of suspected J.V.P. members and sympathizers were killed or disappeared. Amnesty International later estimated that perhaps as many as 30,000 people were killed or disappeared in the south during 1988 and 1989. Tens of thousands of people were killed during the second insurrection and the government’s counterinsurgency campaign. Government forces captured and killed Wijeweera and his deputy in Colombo in November 1989\. The party later entered electoral politics, and its leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, is now president. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam remain banned in Sri Lanka and are proscribed in several other countries, including India. The group carried out suicide bombings, assassinations, and attacks on civilians during the civil war, which ended in 2009\. Thileepan, born Rasaiah Parthipan, was 23 when he died. He died on Sept. 26, 1987, after refusing food and water for 12 days in Nallur, pressing demands directed at India. The bust, which organizers had described as being made of bronze but was in fact made of fiber, was unveiled on Sept. 15 to mark the start of Thileepan’s hunger strike. Local residents had visited the memorial daily since then. It stood at the Thileepan Memorial Square in Nallur. Police removed it in the early hours of Sunday, Sept. 27, a day after the main commemorations ended. CCTV footage from the memorial shows officers removing the statue and taking it away in a vehicle. Police spokesman, F.T. Wootler, said the statue was removed following a complaint that a member of a proscribed organization was being commemorated. The police have said the matter was reported to court and that the removal was carried out under Penal Code provisions relating to public order. The removal followed other restrictions during the commemoration period. On the fourth day of the observance, police confiscated speakers from the Nallur event, saying they were not authorized, and police questioned students at the University of Jaffna during a token fast and refused permission to use loudspeakers. An earlier Thileepan memorial at the site had been vandalized several times, with government troops blamed. “We of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi strongly condemn that bad act that took place in Nallur, Jaffna,” Shanakiyan said. “Not only did they commit that wrongful act, but after it they speak like children, saying they have no connection to it.” The episode has also opened a rift among Tamil parties. The Tamil National People’s Front, which organized the Nallur commemorations, has accused members of Shanakiyan’s party of complicity in the removal. Shanakiyan said some parties were seeking “narrow political gain” from the matter. “Everyone knows it was the Sri Lanka Police that removed this statue from that place,” he said. “I don’t know whether the parties spreading false accusations about this perhaps think that municipal councils have been given police powers. No police powers of any kind have been given to the municipal council.” He said efforts by some groups to divert attention from “this calculated action carried out by the Sri Lankan government- the Anura government,” and to sow wrong ideas among Tamils were “an even worse act.” Addressing the authorities, he said: “Your removing the statue is a bad thing. Having removed it, you are today people without the backbone to say that it was you who removed it.” During the 2025 local government election campaign, a Tamil-language campaign song circulated by an N.P.P. lawmaker included a pledge to build a new harbor named after Parvathi Amma, the mother of the Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. He also noted that the fisheries minister and an N.P.P. lawmaker had visited the Thileepan memorial and paid tribute there the previous year. “Where are they now?” he asked. Shanakiyan said the response to a Facebook post in which he paid tribute to Thileepan showed how far the country remained from reconciliation. “When I look at the comments expressed by Sinhala chauvinist groups, it is clear that in this country we have not come even an inch closer to establishing genuine reconciliation,” he said. The replies to the post, he said, were filled with venom and incitement to violence. He called on all Tamil-speaking people and the entire Tamil community to stand together in condemnation. “When we ask about this, they try to portray us as wrongdoers too,” he said. “From Batticaloa today, we put forward our strongest condemnation of this bad act, the act of removing this statue.”