Assassinated Tamil journalist remembered in Batticaloa

Journalists in Batticaloa gathered at the Gandhi Park on Saturday to remember their colleague Subramaniyam Sugirdharajan, who was shot dead in Trincomalee after exposing the Sri Lankan Special Task Force's killing of 5 Tamil students, in a case that has been dubbed the 'Trinco 5'. 

Politicians, religious leaders and civil society organisations joined the journalists as they garlanded a portrait of Sugirdharajan. He was gunned down 14 years ago.

Sugirdharajan, who was a journalist at the Sudar Oli paper, had accompanied one of the father of the murdered students, Dr Manoharan to the mortuary and published photos showing the bodies with point-blank gunshot injuries, thereby disproving government claims that the students had been killed by a grenade explosion.

^{The family of Subramaniyam Sugirdharajan mourn besides his body after he was gunned down in Trincomalee.} 

The 'Trinco 5' – remains one of the highest profile killings in Sri Lanka to receive international attention, listed in 2014 by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' report on the island as one of four ‘emblematic cases’ of the government's failure to ensure accountability and having been raised repeatedly in international forums.

To date no one has been held accountable for the Trinco 5 murders or for the killing of Sughirdharajan.