Selvarajah Yogachandran,
() (died 25 July 1983) also known as Kuttimani was one of the leaders
of the former Tamil militant organization
TELO from
Sri Lanka
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, ...
. He was arrested and sentenced to death, and was killed in the 1983
Welikada prison massacre along with the other TELO leader
Nadarajah Thangathurai.
Early activism and TELO
Selvarajah Yogachandran along with
Nadarajah Thangathurai inspired several Tamil student radicals to rise against
Sri Lankan state terror and founded the
Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization in the late 1960s. The group formally constituted itself into an organisation in 1979, inspired in part by the LTTE and the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS). Soon, it had become the most effective of the Tamil militant groups except the LTTE.
Kuttimani was a firm believer that only a free, independent country for the island's Tamils in their traditional homeland will protect their legitimate rights.
Kuttimani, Nadarajah and many others would later be arrested in 1981, in a brutal and intensive government crackdown of most of the Tamil liberation groups and activists.
Nomination to the parliament
Before his death, Kuttimani was officially nominated to the
Vaddukoddai constituency in 15 October 1982, when the then sitting member of
TULF party, T.Thirunavukkarau died on 1 August 1982. However the legal sources, then under the control of President
J. R. Jayewardene
Junius Richard Jayewardene (; ; 17 September 1906 – 1 November 1996), commonly referred to by his initials JR, was a Sri Lankan lawyer, public official and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1977 to 1978 and as the secon ...
, ruled that Kuttimani's nomination as a member of parliament was invalid.
The then Prisons Commissioner Priya Delgoda announced on 16 October 1982 that Kuttimani would not be released from prison to take his oaths at the parliament. Kuttimani's appointment was gazetted while he was under a sentence of death. In a statement issued to explain the reasons for nominating Kuttimani to the vacant parliamentary seat, the TULF officials included five. Among these are two prominent reasons: (1) Kuttimani's nomination is a token protest against the state terrorism perpetrated from time to time through the agencies of the police and military personnel especially on the young Tamils of the country. (2) It is a protest against the death penalty imposed on Kuttimani and Jegan. Subsequently, on 4 February 1983, Kuttimani's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment under the general amnesty proclaimed by President Jayewardene. After this, Kuttimani resigned his Vaddukoddai seat in the parliament, to which he was nominated.
Imprisonment, death and martyrdom
Death sentence
Kuttimani was arrested by the
Sri Lankan Navy
The Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) (; ) is the navy, naval arm of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and is classed as the country's most vital defence force due to its island geography. It is responsible for the maritime defence of the Sri Lankan nation and its ...
on 5 April 1981 and was charged with an array of "criminal acts". The Sri Lankan court sentenced him to death.
The presiding judge said that when he sat down he would pronounce his verdict as required by law. However, before that, he wanted to state that he did not view Kuttimani as a common criminal. He further said that if one day the president was to grant a reprieve to Kuttimani he would be happy to hear of it. Kuttimani's reply showed the world his
yearning for a free country (
Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam (, ''tamiḻ īḻam''; generally rendered outside Tamil-speaking areas as தமிழ் ஈழம்) is a proposed independence, independent sovereign state, state that many Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lan ...
) for his people. This was his reply:
Upon his death sentence, Kuttimani was sent to the
Welikada (Welikade) maximum-security prison to wait for his execution. There were both Sinhala and Tamil prisoners. The Sinhala prisoners were convicted of criminal offences such as murder, rape, robbery, etc. The Tamil prisoners were all militants. The Sinhala and Tamil prisoners were kept apart all the time to avoid racial clashes between them.
Murder
Kuttimani was brutally murdered during the
1983 Anti-Tamil pogrom in the island.
Sinhalese mobs as well as personnel belonging to the Sri Lankan forces went on a rampage in Tamil areas, torturing and murdering Tamil men and children, raping, torturing and murdering Tamil women and girls, and looting and burning Tamil residences and businesses. Police and army (which were almost exclusively Sinhalese) either participated in this orgy of violence against the Tamils or kept a blind eye.
On 25 July, the second day of the pogrom, the Tamil inmates of the Welikada prison, who almost all of them had been detained without any trial, were brutally murdered by the Sinhalese convicts with the assistance of the prison guards. According to Amnesty International, some of the Sinhala prisoners were given alcohol and then were encouraged to attack the Tamil prisoners. A large number of the Sinhala prisoners, with knives and other sharp weapons, stormed into the building where some 35-37 Tamil prisoners were lodged. They stabbed, beat and tortured the Tamil prisoners. Genitals of a few prisoners were mutilated.
Both the eyes of Kuttimani as well as
Jeganathan
Ganeshanathan Jeganathan (born 28 October 1956, in Thondaimanaru) was a political writer and one of the members of former Tamil militant organization Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO). He was arrested and sentenced to death and was kil ...
were mutilated and gouged out with iron bars, since he had dreamed of seeing with them, through another person after his execution, an independent Tamil state. One version has it that Kutimani's tongue was cut out by an attacker who drank the blood and cried: "I have drunk the blood of a Tiger."
He was then murdered and his body was disposed in front of a statue of the
Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),*
*
*
was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was ...
in the prison yard.
See also
*
Nadarajah Thangathurai
*
Velupillai Prabhakaran
Velupillai Prabhakaran (; ; ; 26 November 1954 – 18 May 2009) was a Sri Lankan guerrilla and a major figure of Tamil nationalism, being the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE was a militant organiza ...
*
Sivakumaran
Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran (; 26 September 1950 – 5 June 1974) was a Sri Lankan Tamil rebel and the first Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, Tamil militant to commit suicide by swallowing cyanide.
Early life and family
Sivakumaran was born on 26 ...
*
Jeganathan
Ganeshanathan Jeganathan (born 28 October 1956, in Thondaimanaru) was a political writer and one of the members of former Tamil militant organization Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO). He was arrested and sentenced to death and was kil ...
*
Rajasundaram
Dr. S Rajasundaram was a Sri Lankan Tamil people, Sri Lankan Tamil activist known for his struggle for the rights of Tamil people in Sri Lanka, through peaceful and democratic means. Along with his friend S.A. David, He founded Gandhiyam, a socia ...
*
S. J. V. Chelvanayakam
*
Black July
Black July (; ) was an anti- Tamil pogrom that occurred in Sri Lanka during July 1983. The pogrom was premeditated, and was finally triggered by a deadly ambush on a Sri Lankan Army patrol by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 23 ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yogachandran, Selvarajah
1983 deaths
Sri Lankan Tamil rebels
Sri Lankan Tamil people
Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization militants
Fugitives wanted by Sri Lanka
Year of birth missing
People from Valvettithurai