After the genocidal State of Sri Lanka was once again given ‘time and space’ at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the SL judiciary sentenced a prominent Tamil political prisoner, 60-year-old Thevathasan Kanagasabai, with 20 years of imprisonment accusing the former director of the Tamil unit of the ‘National Film Corporation’. Mr Thevathasan has been serving the film corporation as a board member for long time and was finally awarded with the director post to lead the Tamil Unit by the SL government in 2004. Later, he was accused of assisting the LTTE Black Tigers in Colombo. The film corporation director, who has been promoting the cinema of Eezham Tamils, hails from a family with leftist background at Karaveddi in Jaffna.
Kanagasabai Thevathasan
Imprisoned for several years, Mr Thevathasan has been repeatedly staging hunger strikes and protests since 2010.
Each time when he launched peaceful protests, his struggle was contained by SL ministers, including the Justice Minister Rauff Hakeem, who were promising to expedite his case through the ‘Special Court’.
The so-called Special Court, which was announced to expedite the cases related to Tamil prisoners, has been dealing with the cases of the political prisoners as criminal offenders.
The SL State was denying to recognize the Tamil prisoners as political prisoners.
The SL judiciary and all other mechanisms and the military infrastructure have been protecting top military commanders involved in the genocidal and war crimes as war heroes while Tamils who were assisting the LTTE as part of their political struggle are being sentenced with punishments after languishing in the prisons, commented Tamil legal activists in Colombo.
