An opposition MP has called on the government to act against those responsible for schoolchildren attending a commemoration for the former LTTE cadre Thileepan in the North, saying pupils took part in school uniform and during school hours.
Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna MP Chanaka Madugoda raised the matter in Parliament on Wednesday, the Daily Mirror reported.
“We would like to know from the Education Minister what action would be taken against the principal of the school concerned if an offence had been committed.”
Madugoda also asked why statues commemorating LTTE cadres were being erected in the North, and why a statement by an MP describing the former cadre Balaraj as a hero had not been expunged from the Hansard. Racism, he said, should not be permitted.
The report does not name the school, the date or location of the commemoration, or the MP whose Hansard remarks he objected to. No government response is recorded, and neither the Education Ministry nor any northern authority has commented publicly.
Context
Thileepan was an LTTE political wing member who died in 1987 after a fast-unto-death in Jaffna. Annual commemorations in September are long-established in the North and have repeatedly become a flashpoint over where remembrance of the dead ends and promotion of a proscribed organisation begins.
That line is drawn in law rather than policy: promoting the LTTE remains an offence, while remembrance itself is not prohibited — a distinction a government minister set out in June. Arrests under the Prevention of Terrorism Act connected to commemorative events have followed in Jaffna and Kilinochchi in recent months.
The specific question Madugoda puts — whether a principal bears responsibility for pupils attending in uniform during school hours — is a disciplinary matter for the education service rather than a security one, and would turn on whether the school authorised the absence.
A second appeal
In the same intervention, Madugoda urged both government and opposition to work together to secure a pardon for Sivarasa Anojan, the Sri Lankan facing execution in Saudi Arabia.
“Both the ruling party and the Opposition should get together to save Anojan.”
That call crosses party lines on a case where religious leaders have also appealed for intervention, the President has been petitioned for clemency support, and former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed has offered his help.
The Daily Mirror is the only verified newsroom to have filed on the intervention.
