MP Sritharan sets poser for UGC

By Dinasena Rathugamage

TNA Parliamentarian S. Sritharan says that if the University Grants Commission considers the Mullivaikkal Memorial being re-erected in the Jaffna University premises an illegal construction then it should take action to remove various other memorials in other universities too.

MP Sritharan speaking to the media, on Tuesday, in Kilinochchi said that there were many memorials in other universities and there was nothing different between them and the one to be erected in the Jaffna University. “The wrong is there when you attempt to affix a communal identity to that statue”, the MP said showing pictures of memorials erected by undergraduates in other universities in memory of student activists that had been killed by para-military death squads during the time of the JVP’s second insurrection in the 1988-90 period.

Sritharan asserted that the Army had erected many memorials in the North and they had become monuments of heroes but when people there built memorials they were termed as statues of traitors.

He said that one day the children would wonder with whom the government security forces had fought because only their statutes might remain.  Such a situation would help those who want to distort the truth about the past, the MP said.