Priest arrested over Maaveerar Naal commemorations now released on bail

by Thusiyan
Nov 27, 2020

A Tamil priest at the Bishop of Jaffna’s house who was arrested yesterday by Sri Lanka's security forces, after decorations had been set up for a private Maaveerar Naal commemoration event, has now been released on bail. 

Armed soldiers and Sri Lankan police officers raided the house yesterday evening and seized decorations that had been laid out for the remembrance event. The priest has been identified as Fr. Baskaran.

The raid comes as a military crackdown is underway across the North-East, in a bid to prevent Tamils from marking the day, which commemorates Tamil fighters who lost their lives in the armed struggle.

Add new comment

About text formats

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