The Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations (AFTA) on January 6 expressed its shock and grief at the murder of Kumar Ponnampalam, a human rights lawyer and general secretary of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, a political party in Sri Lanka. He is reported to have been murdered in Colombo on January 5 by an anti-Tamil group.
Ponnampalam was a fearless critic of the Sri Lankan government and its security forces for their blatant violations of human rights of the Tamil people, noted AFTA.
AFTA does not believe it was a coincidence that only days before the assassination, the Sri Lankan president had issued a stern warning to her critics. "This incident cannot be treated in isolation because in December, the chief editor of the Tamil weekly Thinamurasu, also supportive of the Tamil struggle, was murdered under similar circumstances. These gruesome incidents appear to expose a trend suggestive of attempts by forces close to the government circles to silence the voices raised against the genocidal oppression of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka", AFTA said.
The statement continued: "Tamils in Sri Lanka will miss the lone and courageous voice of Kumar, as will the hundreds of Tamil youth languishing in cruel detention centres across the island. As a human rights activist he was one of the very few lawyers prepared to appear on their behalf on humanitarian grounds. Kumar has relentlessly toiled to expose scores of rape cases and thousands of disappearances of Tamils in the hands of the Sri Lankan security forces and government backed militia.
"Kumar passionately believed in the Tamil people's right to their homeland based on the principle of self-determination. Unlike the Sinhala regimes' racist hatred towards the Tamils, Kumar always respected the Sinhala people and was committed to educating them of the need to recognise this right to progress towards a durable political solution with peace and justice ... His untimely demise is a great loss to all the peoples of Sri Lanka."