Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi parliamentarian Sivagnanam Shritharan has called on the government to lift its ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and to allow Tamils to commemorate their dead, prompting a fellow Jaffna District MP to demand that the speech be removed from the parliamentary record, Tamil Guardian reported.

Shritharan spoke during a debate on foreign exchange regulations on Tuesday. Tamil Guardian does not give the calendar date; its filing on Sunday 11 October places the speech on 6 October, the same sitting day on which the government presented its Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill to the House.

“If you are a fair government, lift the ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” he said, according to Tamil Guardian.

“It has been 17 years since the war ended, and not a single bomb sound has been heard here. No Tamil youth has picked up a gun against the military. In that case, why do you still maintain that draconian ban?”

Shritharan contrasted the war memorials erected at Elephant Pass, Mullivaikkal, Kilinochchi, Jaffna and outside Parliament itself with the restrictions placed on Tamil remembrance. “Why can you not grant permission for people of that ethnicity to remember their deceased relatives?” he asked. “What harm does Thileepan’s statue cause to the peace of this country?”

Lifting the proscription would be a first step towards peace, he said: “Foster good intentions among the people. True change lies in that.”

The objection

After the speech, Ramanathan Archchuna, also elected from the Jaffna District, raised a point of order arguing that remarks creating divisions between communities violated the Constitution, and asked that the speech be struck from Hansard, Parliament’s official record.

Chanaka Madugoda of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, who was presiding, said that if the speech contained content promoting the LTTE he would ask officials to remove those parts. Tamil Guardian reports it was not immediately clear whether any part of the speech was in fact removed.

What prompted it

The speech turned on the removal of a bronze statue of Thileepan from the Nallur memorial in Jaffna. The statue was unveiled on 15 September, the anniversary of the start of Thileepan’s fast, and removed by more than 20 police officers in the early hours of 27 September — a day after hundreds gathered to mark the anniversary of his death. Thileepan, an LTTE member, died on 26 September 1987 after refusing food and water for 12 days in a protest demanding that India honour commitments made to Tamils.

Tamil Guardian reports that police have since opened an investigation under the Prevention of Terrorism Act into the statue’s installation and summoned four Tamil figures for questioning, among them Tamil National People’s Front general secretary Selvarajah Kajendren. The Jaffna Magistrate’s Court took custody of the statue on Monday 5 October, days after initially declining to accept it, and adjourned the case to January. That use of the PTA is running in parallel with the bill now before Parliament that is intended to replace it.

The site has been targeted repeatedly: a tower there was destroyed by the army in 1996, rebuilt during the ceasefire, destroyed again in 2007, and its remains demolished in 2012.

The government has defended the removal. Cabinet spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa has said “the laws of our country do not allow the promotion of a banned outfit, including their flags, logo, etc”, and that legal action would be taken against such activities. The LTTE has been proscribed in Sri Lanka since January 2009, months before the armed conflict ended.

Not reported

Tamil Guardian does not give the calendar date of the speech, say whether any part of it was ultimately deleted from Hansard, or carry a response from the government benches to the call itself. It does not say whether ITAK has adopted lifting the proscription as a party position, nor whether any other MP spoke in support. There is no indication of what legal route — gazette, regulation or legislation — would be required to lift the ban.

On sourcing: this desk found no other verified newsroom carrying the exchange. Ada Derana has indexed related coverage but its site has returned a CloudFront 403 to this desk for more than three weeks, so it could not be fetched or cited. Accounts also appeared on sites outside this desk’s verified list and were not used.

Sources: Tamil Guardian.