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# Thileepan Commemoration Opens at a Tigers’ Cemetery in Mullaitivu
- URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/thileepan-commemoration-opens-at-a-tigers-cemetery-in-mullaitivu/
- Published: 2026-09-15T06:53:03.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T11:45:28.000Z
- Author: Our Reporter
- Tags: September 2026

**MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka —** The 39th annual commemoration of Thileepan opened on Tuesday at the Theravil Maaveerar Thuyilum Illam, one of the burial grounds the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam built for their dead during Sri Lanka’s civil war.

A flame was lit before a garlanded portrait of Thileepan. Those present observed a moment of silence and laid flowers. Members of the committee that maintains the Theravil grounds were joined by political representatives, civil society activists and people from the surrounding villages.

Maaveerar Thuyilum Illam, the resting place of the great heroes, was the name the LTTE gave to the cemeteries it laid out across the territory it controlled. They were among the most heavily attended places in the north during the war. Most were bulldozed by the army after the fighting ended in 2009, and some were built over by military camps and farms. Gatherings at the surviving sites have drawn police attention in most years since.

Thileepan, born Rasaiah Parthipan, was the LTTE’s political leader in Jaffna when he sat down at Nallur on Sept. 15, 1987, and refused food and water. He was pressing five demands on India in the weeks after the Indo-Lanka Accord brought Indian troops to the north. He died on the twelfth day, Sept. 26, at 23.

Theravil was one of several commemorations that opened on Tuesday across the Northern and Eastern Provinces. Observances at Nallur, where he fasted, will run daily until Sept. 26.