Slain Sri Lankan MP honoured by Tamil Tigers
By Gandi Douglas,WNS Sri Lanka Correspondent
COLOMBO - Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels have conferred their highest civilian honour on a moderate Tamil legislator killed in Colombo. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said their chief Velupillai Prabhakaran bestowed the title of "Mamanithar," or great man, on Nadarajah Raviraj, 44, who was gunned down on Friday by unknown assailants. "As a parliamentarian he worked tirelessly for the Tamil nation," Prabhakaran said. "He spoke loudly to the world about the Sinhala Buddhist chauvinistic state terror."
Raviraj was a member of parliament from the northern district of Jaffna, the cultural capital of Sri Lanka's minority Tamils. His Tamil National Alliance (TNA) party was regarded a proxy of the Tigers. However, Raviraj, who spoke Sinhalese, was a personal friend of President Mahinda Rajapakse who has asked the foreign ministry to invite British police to help probe the killing. He was the second TNA legislator to be killed in a year. Legislator Joseph Pararajasingham was shot dead while he attended Christmas mass at a Roman Catholic church in the eastern town of Batticaloa. Tiger rebels have for three decades been fighting for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority in the Sinhalese-majority island.
Raviraj had gone to the UN offices Thursday to seek protection for Tamils and other civilians caught up in the fighting. He was also a regular participant in television talk shows and had been severely critical of security forces as well as the government's handling of the Norwegian-backed peace process. The killing was a serious breach of security in Colombo where police and the armed forces have been maintaining a high state of alert for several weeks. Raviraj was gunned down in front of a military barracks during the morning rush-hour when large numbers of police and troops are deployed at virtually every key street junction. The killing comes during an upsurge in fighting on the island where the bloodshed has claimed nearly 3,300 lives in the past year, despite a 2002 truce in the separatist conflict.
posted by wnsworld @ 9:59 PM
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