The Daily Plan-it / Dean of Students Blog, Columbia J-school

This will be a timely and open discussion with two veteran Sri Lankan activists, sponsored by The Center for Place, Culture and Politics at The Graduate Center, CUNY (http://web.gc.cuny.edu/pcp/events.html).

With a deepening humanitarian catastrophe in Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the brink of military defeat by the Sri Lankan State, we are grappling with important questions about the future of a political solution and the conception of peace in Sri Lanka. Join us is a public conversation with two veteran Tamil activists who were involved with Tamil militancy in their youth to discuss possibilities for the future after thirty years of militarization and armed struggle. The conversation will explore the shifts in political engagement, the decimation of dissent, and the concerns of ordinary people caught between a brutal non-state force and a repressive state.

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Nirmala is a Sri Lankan Tamil activist who lives in exile in London. She was the first woman to be detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in the early eighties. A survivor of the government engineered Welikade prison massacre, Nirmila was subsequently freed from prison by LTTE guerrillas. She left the LTTE as a result of the total lack of internal democracy within the movement and its serious human rights abuses. Nirmala is the sister of Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, founder-member of the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), who was assassinated by the LTTE for her outspoken views.
They are the subjects of the documentary No More Tears Sister by the National Film Board of Canada.

Ragavan, a founding member of the LTTE, left the movement in the mid-1980s after ten years of involvement with Tamil militancy, due to the increasingly authoritarian character of the LTTE and its internal abuses. Ragavan lives in exile in London and is active on questions relating to democratization and a political solution in Sri Lanka. He has worked in solidarity with the Dalit communities of Sri Lanka.

Both Nirmala & Ragavan are active members of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum (SLDF), an international network of Sri Lankan democracy and human rights activists campaigning
for a political solution through a democratic and just political process.

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To contact organizers of event, please email: pchandrasekaran@gc.cuny.edu

Sponsored by

The Center for Place, Culture and Politics

at The Graduate Center, CUNY