Decades after the civil war, Thileepan remains a contested symbol in Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan police on Sunday removed a statue of banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ( LTTE ) leader Rasiah Parthipan alias Thileepan from Nallur in Jaffna, officials said.
Police removed the bronze statue after a complaint that it commemorated an individual belonging to a proscribed organisation , police spokesman F T Wootler said.
The LTTE remains a banned organisation in Sri Lanka and is also proscribed in several countries , including India.
Parthipan, popularly known as Thileepan, is regarded as a symbol of Tamil resistance . He was a prominent political leader of the LTTE during the separatist conflict in northern and eastern Sri Lanka.
A ceremony to commemorate him began on September 18 at Nallur in Jaffna. He died on September 26, 1987 , after observing a 10-day fast .
Earlier, those attending the commemoration had protested against police action to ban the use of loudspeakers at the event site.
The original Thileepan statue had been vandalised several times in the past, with government troops blamed for the acts.
Sri Lanka first banned the LTTE in 1998 . The ban was lifted in early 2002 to facilitate the Norwegian peace initiative, but was reimposed in 2009. In May that year, the Sri Lankan Army declared victory over the LTTE after eliminating LTTE chief Pirabhakaran , which had for nearly three decades run a parallel administration in the northern and eastern parts of the country while seeking to establish a separate Tamil homeland.
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