Mathiaparanan Abraham Sumanthiran, PC (. ) born 9 February 1964) is a

Sri Lankan Tamil Sri Lankan Tamils ( or ), also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, form the plurality in the Eastern Province a ...

lawyer and politician. A successful civil lawyer who practices civil litigation, human rights and constitutional law, Sumanthiran has served as Member of Parliament from the

Jaffna District Jaffna District ( ''Yāḻppāṇam Māvaṭṭam''; ''yāpanaya distrikkaya'') is one of the 25 districts of Sri Lanka, the second level administrative division of the country. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a ...

from 2015 to 2024, and National List from 2010 to 2015 from the

Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK; ; , ) is a Sri Lankan political party which represents the Sri Lankan Tamil minority in the country. It was originally founded in 1949 as a breakaway faction of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC). In 1972, ITA ...

Early life

Sumanthiran was born on 9 February 1964 at the

Church of South India The Church of South India (CSI) is a united Protestant Church in India. It is the result of union of a number of Protestant denominations in South India that occurred after the independence of India. With a membership of over 4.5 million, it ...

's McLeod Hospital in Inuvil in northern

Ceylon Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

. His family are from the Vadamarachchi region of the

Jaffna peninsula The Jaffna Peninsula (, or ) is a region in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is home to the capital city of the province, Jaffna, and comprises much of the former land mass of the medieval Jaffna Kingdom. The peninsula was historically ...

; his father is from Karaveddy and his mother is from Kudathanai. Both of his grandfathers were teachers in Vadamarachchi. Sumanthiran grew up in

Colombo Colombo, ( ; , ; , ), is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. The Colombo metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 within the municipal limits. It is the ...

and was educated at

Royal College, Colombo Royal College, Colombo also known as; Royal Colombo, Colombo Royal College or Colombo Royal) is a Single-sex education, boys' school located in Cinnamon Gardens, Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Started by Joseph Marsh (priest), Joseph Mar ...

. After school he joined the

University of Madras The University of Madras is a public university, public State university (India), state university in Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1857, it is one of the oldest and most prominent universities in India, incorporated by an ...

, graduating with a B.Sc. degree in physics. He then proceeded to

Sri Lanka Law College Sri Lanka Law College (abbreviated as SLLC), formerly known as Ceylon Law College, is a law college, and the only legal institution where one can enrol as an Attorney-at-Law in Sri Lanka. It was established in 1874, under the then Council of Le ...

, qualifying as an

advocate An advocate is a professional in the field of law. List of country legal systems, Different countries and legal systems use the term with somewhat differing meanings. The broad equivalent in many English law–based jurisdictions could be a ba ...

. Sumanthiran is a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

Christian. He was vice-president of the Methodist Church in Sri Lanka.

Career

Law

Sumanthiran was

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

in 1991. He then started practising law in

, appearing in

civil litigation Civil law is a major "branch of the law", in common law legal systems such as those in England and Wales and in the United States, where it stands in contrast to criminal law. Glanville Williams. ''Learning the Law''. Eleventh Edition. Stevens. 1 ...

cases in the supreme court, court of appeal, commercial high court and district courts. His successful cases include the privatisation of Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, privatisation of Lanka Marine Services and the closure of Pramuka Bank. He has appeared in a number of fundamental rights cases and judicial reviews of parliamentary legislation and executive action including the charging of levy for water and establishing a revenue authority. He prevented the forced expulsion of Tamils from Colombo and successfully challenged an anti-conversion bill which the courts struck down as being unconstitutional. He has also appeared for petitioners against the proposed 18th and 19th amendments to the constitution which were found to be unconstitutional and required two-thirds majority in Parliament and a referendum. He has worked on a number of

public interest In social science and economics, public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society. While it has earlier philosophical roots and is considered to be at the core of democratic theories of government, often paired ...

cases including the ongoing attempt by residents of the Valikamam North High Security Zone to get their land back from the Sri Lankan military. His human rights work has led to him being threatened, harassed and branded "traitors in black coats" by the Sri Lankan military under the then President's brother

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, (; ; born 20 June 1949) was a Sri Lankan politician and military officer who served as the eighth President of Sri Lanka from 18 November 2019 until his Resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, resignation on 14 July 202 ...

. Sumanthiran has become one of Sri Lanka's top human rights and constitutional lawyers. He received an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

degree in internet and electronic law from

Monash University Monash University () is a public university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Named after World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the ...

in 2001. He was made a

President's Counsel A president's counsel ( postnominal PC) is an eminent lawyer who is appointed by the President of Sri Lanka as an individual "learned in the law". The term is an honorific that replaced the Queen's Counsel (QC), which Sri Lanka ceased appointing ...

in 2017.

Politics

Following the 2010 parliamentary election Sumanthiran was appointed to the

Parliament of Sri Lanka The Parliament of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (Sinhala: ශ්‍රී ලංකා පාර්ලිමේන්තුව ''Śrī Laṇkā Pārlimentuvā'', Tamil: இலங்கை நாடாளுமன்றம் '' ...

as a National List MP representing the

Tamil National Alliance The Tamil National Alliance (TNA; ISO 15919: ''tamiḻt tēciyakkūṭṭamaippu'') was a political alliance in Sri Lanka which represented the Sri Lankan Tamil minority of the country. It was formed in October 2001 by a group of moderate T ...

(TNA). In May 2012 he was elected

's (ITAK) Secretary for Foreign and Legal Affairs. He became one of ITAK's two Assistant Secretaries in September 2014. Sumanthiran contested the 2015 parliamentary election as one of the TNA's candidates in

and was re-elected to Parliament. In January 2017 the

Sri Lanka Police Sri Lanka Police (; ) is the civilian national police force of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. The police force is responsible for enforcing criminal and traffic law, enhancing public safety, maintaining order and keeping the p ...

's Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) arrested several former members of the

militant The English word ''militant'' is both an adjective and a noun, and it is generally used to mean vigorously active, combative and/or aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in "militant reformers". It comes from the 15th century Lat ...

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; , ; also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organization, that was based in the northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eela ...

(LTTE) in connection with the attempted assassination of Sumanthiran. It was alleged that two aborted attempts were made to assassinate Sumanthiran on the B402 Soranapattu-Thalayadi Road near Maruthankerny on 12 December 2016 and 13 January 2017. Five former LTTE cadres - Mariyanayagam Lewis Ajanthan/Louis Mariampillai Ajanthan (alias Jana, Kadalavan) from Championpattu, Maruthankerny; Karalasingham Kulendran (alias Master, Cholai) from

Kilinochchi Kilinochchi (; ) is the main town of Kilinochchi District, Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Kilinochchi is situated at the A9 road some south-east of Jaffna. It was the administrative center and de facto capital of the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) until ...

; Murugiah Thavaventhan (alias Vendran) from Kilinochchi; Chandrasekaralingam Vasudevan/Gnanasekaralingam Rajmathan (alias Mathan) from

Trincomalee Trincomalee (; , ; , ), historically known as Gokanna and Gokarna, is the administrative headquarters of the Trincomalee District and major resort port city of Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. Located on the east coast o ...

; and Velayanthan Vijayan from Mannar - were charged with possession of explosives and narcotics but the TID informed the magistrates court in Kilinochchi that there had been a plot to assassinate Sumanthiran. The five suspects were

bail Bail is a set of pre-trial restrictions that are imposed on a suspect to ensure that they will not hamper the judicial process. Court bail may be offered to secure the conditional release of a defendant with the promise to appear in court when ...

ed in September 2017 by the High Court in

Jaffna Jaffna (, ; , ) is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka, Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna District located on a Jaffna Peninsula, peninsula of the same name. With a population o ...

. The suspects weren't initially charged under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) but in July 2018 they were

indicted An indictment ( ) is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that use the concept of felonies, the most serious criminal offense is a felony; jurisdictions that do not use that concept often use that of an indi ...

under PTA regulations at the High Court in

. Sumanthiran was re-elected at the 2020 parliamentary election. The preferential vote count held at Jaffna Central College on 6 August 2020 was marred by violent clashes between supporters of various candidates from various parties. Relatives of TNA candidate Sashikala Raviraj (widow of Nadarajah Raviraj) accused Sumanthiran of interfering on the vote count. However, the Center for Monitoring Election Violence, an independent

election monitoring Election monitoring involves the observation of an election by one or more independent parties, typically from another country or from a non-governmental organization (NGO). The monitoring parties aim primarily to assess the conduct of an elect ...

body who were present at the count, blamed the incident on lack of understanding of the counting process by candidates and their supporters combined with ability to spread unsubstantiated rumours on

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

. Sumanthiran denied the allegations, pointing out the counts were carried out and verified at different locations in each polling division, where counting agents for each candidate were present, before the results were brought to the primary counting centre at Jaffna Central College. Sumanthiran is one of a trio of MPs (the other two being R. Sampanthan and

Mavai Senathirajah Somasundaram Senathirajah (; ; 27 October 1942 – 29 January 2025), commonly known as Mavai Senathirajah, was a Sri Lankan politician who was a Member of Parliament. He was the leader of the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) from 2014 to 20 ...

) who lead the TNA. In January 2024, he ran for the leadership of the ITAK against S. Yogeswaran and S. Shritharan. Shritharan was elected by secret ballot on 21 January 2024. The same year he lost his seat at the 2024 parliamentary election.

Electoral history

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sumanthiran, M. A. 1964 births Alumni of Royal College, Colombo Alumni of Sri Lanka Law College Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi politicians Living people Members of the 14th Parliament of Sri Lanka Members of the 15th Parliament of Sri Lanka Members of the 16th Parliament of Sri Lanka Monash University alumni Politicians from Colombo Lawyers from Colombo President's Counsels (Sri Lanka) Sri Lankan Methodists Sri Lankan Tamil people Sri Lankan lawyers Tamil politicians Tamil National Alliance politicians University of Madras alumni