This week in history: July 5–11
4 July 2021
Map depicting ethnic-majority regions in Sri Lanka
The first week of July 1996, Selliah Rajkumar, a member of the Revolutionary Communist League (forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party), was imprisoned and tortured by the Sri Lankan regime after being falsely charged as a suspected terrorist.
The Tamil worker was held incommunicado at Aralaganwila Police Station in the eastern district of Polonaruwa. He was arrested while traveling from his home in Udappuwa in the Chilaw area to visit relatives in the northern town of Vavunia.
Like many Tamils he was forced to flee south because of the government’s communalist war against the Tamil population in the north. He was residing legally in the south under the Sri Lankan government’s internal travel restrictions.