People at Thileepan commemoration in Jaffna arrested by police

  Several civilians who were at a commemoration for former LTTE member Thileepan on Friday last week were arrested by the police in Jaffna.  They were later released on police bail. Jaffna parliamentarian Selvarasa Kajendran was also arrested. A social media post which showed police harassing a woman who was present at the location and taking her identity card off her, went viral.  Sources said she is the media coordinator of the MP. Journalists working for a local TV station and websites had also been present at the commemoration. The commemoration for Thileepan, who died in 1987 while he was on hunger strike, was near the Nallur kovil in Jaffna and the altercation with the police had taken place at about 11 am. The police had earlier banned the commemoration from taking place. Former Supreme Court Judge C. V Wigneswaran who is also a Jaffna district parliamentarian in a statement to the media said ‘to my knowledge there is no law which states we cannot remember our dead’. His statement also described how he had seen Mr. Kajendran being dragged by the police and taken in a police vehicle.  ‘A MP being dragged by the police like a common criminal is a high- handed act’, he said.