President of Student Union attacked in Jaffna

The leader of the Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU) K. Thavapalan has been attacked and seriously injured by suspected Sri Lankan Army personnel.

Thavapalan, who was elected as president of the JUSU in 2010, was followed by the assailants before being attacked with iron bars, causing grave injuries.

He was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital.

Mr Thavapalan has been instrumental in organising recent protests by hundreds of students against grease devil attacks, suspected to be perpetrated by the Sri Lankan Army.

The JUSU was one of the organisations US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake was due to meet in September, but protests by government aligned forces forced the meeting to be cancelled.

The student union, along with Tamil organisations across the world, held a remembrance event on May 16 this year to remember the thousands of lives lost during the final phase of the war, but were subjected to harassment and intimidation by the Sri Lankan military and government aligned paramilitaries.

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button