SELVANAYAGAM NESAN, 37, lay speechless for six days in a Colombo hospital. “I [was made to] drink Harpic kept for cleaning toilets. I could not withstand the physical torture,” he says. He says he was hung upside down, and was asked to sign a confession that he was linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
More than 13 years after the Sri Lankan civil war, many Tamils in the country’s north and east still fear persecution. The government has used the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), 1979, to arrest what it calls dissidents and has allegedly tortured them into submission. Under the PTA, any “suspect” can be arrested without warrant for “unlawful activities” and placed in detention without being produced before a judge for 18 months.
“We do not have the right to even organise a remembrance event every May 17 to pay homage to our loved ones,” says Lavakumar Lavan, a friend of Nesan who held a Mullivaikkal memorial event in Batticaloa in the east in May 2020. The Terrorist Investigation Division allegedly abused him physically and verbally. Every May 17, Sri Lankan Tamils remember those who perished in the final battle, fought in the northeastern village of Mullivaikkal.
Nesan, Lavakumar and their friends Arumugam Gnanasekaran, Alagarathinam Krishnan and Singarathinam Sathiarasan were released last week as the charges against them could not be proved. All of them spent more than 18 months in prison. “We are used to this torture. We will certainly do it (organise the event) this year, too,” says Lavan.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 15, 2022 من THE WEEK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 15, 2022 من THE WEEK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Angry, Young America
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We need to engage more with communities
Designer Aratrik Dev Varman of the label Tilla has long been a lover of history. One could comfortably call him part-aesthete, part-archeologist, for his clothes dip into vintage styles of the Kutch, Sindh, Balochistan and Afghanistan, bringing alive antique styles and crafts. Tilla, the store and atelier, are situated on a tree-lined avenue in Ahmedabad.
The great luxury slowdown
A year or so ago, if anyone had told me that Tommy Hilfiger would have stolen the show at New York’s Met Gala, I would have laughed. But it seems the end of giant luxury labels is upon us even before we expected it. The American ready-to-wear designer Tommy Hilfiger seems to have created the maximum media buzz at the 2024 Met Gala, according to several data analytics firms.
RAP BRINGS RAPTURE
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Prof Yogesh Singh is the 23rd vice chancellor of the century-old University of Delhi (DU). An engineer with a PhD in computer engineering, Singh has an impressive track record of teaching, innovation and research in the area of software engineering. He has more than 250 publications and his book, Software Testing, published by the Cambridge University Press, is well-received internationally. In an interview with THE WEEK, Singh talks about trends in higher education in India, the challenges faced by big universities, and how to make higher education more interesting. Asked about the perception that Indian graduates are “not employable”, he reacts strongly, and emphasises the difference between training and higher education. Edited excerpts:
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THE MANGO HUNTERS
'Naadan Maavukal' started out as a Facebook group, but what it does offline has helped conserve many indigenous varieties of mangoes
BJP LEADERS, TOO, HAVE HAD ENOUGH
Farmers’ protest has taken the centre stage in Haryana, which goes to the polls on May 25. Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda is confident that the Congress, which has been out of power for 10 years, will regain its hold on the state. “People who voted for the BJP are disappointed today. It is clear that they want change,” he told THE WEEK.