Police entered the Thileepan memorial premises in Nallur, Jaffna early on Sunday and removed a statue of Thileepan that had been installed there, taking it away in a vehicle, the Daily Mirror and Hiru News reported.
No reason for the removal, and no legal basis for the police action, has been officially announced, Newswire reported. No police statement had been issued at the time of writing.
Timing
The statue was erected at the memorial site in connection with commemorative events marking the 39th anniversary of Thileepan’s death. All three accounts agree the removal came the morning after those events concluded.
They describe the timing slightly differently: the Daily Mirror refers to a commemoration held “last week” whose final day was Saturday, Hiru says the commemoration “fell yesterday,” and Newswire places the removal in the early hours of Sunday, a day after the events ended.
Newswire reports that CCTV footage from the memorial site shows officers removing the statue. Footage published by Hiru News is consistent with that account: it shows uniformed officers loading a pale statue into a police truck at the site in daylight.
Who Thileepan was
Newswire identifies Thileepan by his given name, Rasaiah Parthipan, and describes him as a former LTTE member. He died in September 1987 after a hunger strike at Nallur during which he set out a series of demands directed at the Indian government. The Daily Mirror describes him as having died “after undertaking a hunger strike over demands related to the aspirations of the Tamil people.”
The Nallur commemoration is held annually and has previously drawn police attention. On 18 September — during this year’s commemoration period — Tamil Guardian reported that officers seized loudspeakers at the memorial, saying they were not authorised for use, while a plain-clothes officer filmed those present from a police vehicle.
Not reported
None of the accounts names the police unit involved, states under what order or authority the statue was taken, or says where it has been taken. No political reaction had been carried by any of the three outlets at the time of writing. Ada Derana also reported the removal, but its site was unreachable and its account could not be checked.
